Road Rage: Let’s get personal

Is it a habit? A sickness? A test of patience? I have always wondered why we all seem to be plagued by the horrible and stressful feeling of road rage at least once in our life.

I would like to say that people are generally optimistic in situations, however when there’s a car trailing a good 5 inches from my bumper or an incessant honker driving 20 miles under the speed limit, the sickness called road rage overcomes a person’s body. And they turn ugly.

Just last week I was on my way to Atlanta, a notorious city for its bumper to bumper rush hour and fast highway speeds, and I found myself right smack dab in the middle of a road rage-off. A black corolla and red mustang had somehow boxed me in and were zooming in and out of the lanes, me in the middle. I did not know how to calmly address the situation because I was afraid for my life. I really thought a 3 car pile up was just seconds away.

Why they were angry at each other in the first place? I don’t know. I was just an innocent bystander caught in the middle of this chaos. It seems like the obvious solution to just merge over and speed up ahead of them, however I was caught off guard and sandwiched between them to do anything but maintain my position. So I did, and I paid for it. Apparently merging over was exactly what they WANTED me to do, I just didn’t know it at the time. I finally got the hint that it was actually ME they were raged against and wanted me out of their way. I was only able to conclude this after I they each introduced me to their little birdie friend and flipped me off. Needless to say I did not reciprocate the favor and once a clear lane opened up I merged over.

There was no need for these people to become so agitated and impatient with me when I had neither purposefully or knowingly, for that matter, done them wrong. I was just a mere inconvenience for wherever they were going, and thus had to be dealt with.

After this unforeseen situation, I hope that I will put away all my urges to curse and swear and lose my patience on the road and really step back and assess a situation before it turns nasty. High blood pressure and ulcers are not worth most of the road rage situations people typically find themselves in anyways. These ailments are also not a fine fortune when we know very well that most of the road rage we encounter are not on a personal level. A car is JUST a car and it’s sad to say but some people feel more powerful behind a honking wheel or impatient tailer, but their intentions are not personal. Just an annoyance that leads to more impatient people. So let’s lay off the rage, even if we feel it’s deserved.

Instead, let’s take a moment and ask ourselves, What’s really the problem? What is the most effective way to combat this obstacle? Will yelling and getting red-faced really help the situtation? If we all step back and look deeper into these minor situations, we might save ourselves from even more obstacles and detours awaiting us in life.