HEY! Move ya #$%*ing cah!!!
After work today, I had to drop someone off on Moody Street. I pulled to the side, and put my blinkers on. For some reason, someone pulled behind me. I’m not sure why, since it wasn’t a driving lane, it was just the side of the road. Anyway, afterwards, I was about to pull into the street, and the guy who pulled behind me shouted: “HEY! Move ya #$%*ing cah!”
WTF?! I was not obstructing traffic; I don’t know WHY he was behind me…but even so, was that neccessary? I mean, if I was really impeding his progress, wouldn’t a simple light tap of the horn suffice?
What must be going on in that man’s life to make him react with such anger? It must be dreadful!
Road rage is a funny thing. I think there’s a sense of anonymity while driving, and it’s probably the same reason why people are jerks online but oftentimes cowards in real life.
There are a few types of road rage:
1. The “Hey, the light’s been green for a fraction of a second! Better honk!” type. Sometimes a honk really IS necessary, but these imbeciles can’t waste a second of their precious time before the previous person proceeds through the intersection.
2. The tailgater kind. Ya really think driving 6 inches behind me is going to make me go the 65 MPH you want in a 35 MPH zone? Nope.
3. The swerving kind. “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date!” You’re not going to get to your destination ANY faster if you get pulled over or wind up in an accident.
4. The vocal kind. Is cursing at a stranger because they’re not abiding to your schedule really necessary? How emotionally unstable you must be to let something like that get to you.
One of the scariest encounters I’ve had with road rage is #4. It was when I lived in Alameda, California…I was preparing to cross the street and a woman in an SUV stopped to let me go. I didn’t start walking into the intersection because the people driving in the other lanes didn’t stop to let me go. The woman started SCREAMING at me from her car.
“Pedestrians have the right of way! You’re supposed to go! I stopped to let you go. You better start walking across the street NOW!” and she kept going on and on and on. I felt particularly vulnerable because I WASN’T in my car and I had this woman in an SUV just shouting at me while I was standing defenseless on a street corner. And I wasn’t even doing anything wrong! I was just dumbfounded and didn’t know how to react. So I just ignored her.
I always ignore people with road rage. Sometimes the temptation is there to antagonize them further but I can’t bring myself to do it. They’re probably total psychos to be acting this way on the road and honestly, I worry that if someone makes a road rage-filled person even more angry they could get violent. A car could be a real weapon if someone wants it to be.
Filed under Greater Boston (General), Massholes on the road |7 Responses to “HEY! Move ya #$%*ing cah!!!”
Leave a Reply
Looking back on it, you have to admit that the incident whre the polite driver yelled at you is somewhat amusing
Hahaha…she was VERY adamant that I cross the street!
Sheesh!!
I used to be really bad with road rage, but not to the point where I was directly yelling at people. The most I’ve done in the past year is the other day when I gave someone the finger… right out my window for the world to see. It must have been an amusing sight for everyone else, because the other car was flipping me the bird, too. Here’s what happened (in short):
I was getting on the highway from an onramp that drives straight into the next exit - so merging is necessary. But you can’t merge unless you start to drive - you can’t just sit still and wait, then merge, because it’s a HIGHWAY. There are three lanes of traffic (or two, I can’t remember right now), and the far left lane (the FAST lane) was empty. This girl in the right lane was driving too fast for me to merge, but when she came up close enough, she slowed a bit - but I still couldn’t merge; she was just too darn close to me. So she sped by, beeped, and flipped me off. I didn’t cut her off or anything, I was still in the exit lane!! But then within a minute or two I didn’t even give a hoot about it…
I just can’t get too mad on the road anymore - usually I get pissy, yell in my car (windows closed), then say, “well, they probably didn’t see me.” Even if it’s blatently untrue (like if they intentionally cut me off), it helpes me calm down and realize it’s not a huge tragedy.
Man, I’m so glad I don’t drive. Although apparantly even pedestrians are not safe from road rage. :)
I’ve had cars do that before… stop for me but no one else is stopping and then they get annoyed that I’m not taking them up on their benevolent offer to cross the street. One time a guy in a truck stopped, and then he honked his horn because I wouldn’t cross, so I looked at him sternly and shook my head ‘no’ emphatically… he drove off. :)
I like your “Road Un-rage”…when you smile, nod, and wave at another car, letting him/her into the lane, letting them make their turn, etc.
:)
I moved to Seattle in 1997. Highway 99 is an important highway that runs in front of downtown seattle. Just south of Seattle are the old Duwamish flats, Highway 99 runs over the Duwamish river at the first avenue south bridge. Between 1994 and 1998, the period of the rebuilding of the bridge there were a lot of long lines. Needless to say there was a lot of road rage at the time, and I seem to recall quite a few shootings between drivers. It seemed to me the road rage in the seattle area died down after the bridge was completed in ‘98.
That’s really scary! I tend to worry about things like that which is why I always just ignore crazy drivers.