I commute to work every day about 13 miles, primarily using the Capital Beltway. There are some occasions when I can easily see the opportunity to "flip out" on my fellow drivers. We all surely have in our pasts an incident of road rage that we are not proud of. I'm also a "New York" driver, so my tolerance is already lowered. I am really peeved by the driver I refer to as "shoulder suckers." A shoulder sucker is one that will ride the shoulder of a road to avoid traffic and congestion on the main roadway. I will often move to the right lane and position my car half on the shoulder to keep "shoulder suckers" from getting past.
Recently an incident captured the headlines here in DC regarding a woman accused of road rage. A North Carolina woman hurled a McDonald's cup of ice into the car of a fellow driver who had cut her off was sentenced to probation after a hearing in Loudon County, Virginia. The incident took place last July on Interstate 95. No one was injured. The woman is a mother of three, with a husband serving in Iraq, who had planned to go to nursing school. She told the Washington Post, "Now people are going to see me as an angry, road rage, convicted felon. And it really upsets me, I must have been wrong . . . but seriously, God. Lesson learned. Lesson learned is one hour in this place." Gee, ya think?
We spend an inordinate amount of time in our cars. There is certainly going to be more circumstances where these types of events will take place. There are countless websites out there dedicated to road rage, including this one. There is most certainly a level of anonymity that we all enjoy in our cars, but the human factor will eventually come into play for us one day. How will we handle it? I hope to do better than I have reacted in the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment