Honolulu Lite
OF of all the psychotic behaviors that afflict automobile drivers, the strangest is their refusal to to let other cars pass them. The silly psychology
of road rageI came across such a driver the other day on the Pali Highway. Here's the situation: The right lane is clogged. The middle one's almost as bad. But the left lane is mostly open. Except for ONE car that is matching the speed of the cars in the middle and right lanes. I pull up behind him, keeping a respectful distance. He doesn't speed up. He just continues to blockade the highway. It's a rolling blockade, slower than the speed limit.
Then, a car in the middle lane slows down, providing some passing room. So I slip into the middle lane and begin to speed up. That's when the guy in the left lane begins to speed up. I wasn't sure what was going on until we reached the next pack of cars. Then he slowed down and began a new blockade. This guy simply didn't want anyone to pass him. Why?
We've all experienced these brands of nitwits before. Some of them will race like the devil to keep from being passed and reach the next clump of congestion. Obviously, this is some kind of ill-conceived aggression. Keeping people from passing them must give these jerks a sense of power. They must see their commute as some kind of race that they can only "win" if they don't let anyone pass them. But why? Don't they realize that there are literally hundreds of cars in front of them? Don't they realize that if they had left the house 30 minutes later, all the cars they are so worried about passing them would already be at their destinations? There is no race.
BUT what is the psychology of someone who becomes obsessed with controlling other vehicles in the driver's general vicinity?
It's probably all tied in with the basic "road rage" phenomenon, the idea that many perfectly normal people can suddenly become perfect idiots when they get behind the wheel of a car. Sheathed in metallic armor, drivers become road warriors, where the slightest provocation becomes a life or death issue.
I know, because I was one of those idiots when I was younger. I could flip off people with the best of them. Then one day on the North Shore a carload of young lads whom I had greeted with the one-finger salute for some imagined infraction came after me. One of the frisky youngsters took out a baseball bat and swung at my car's rear window while we were racing along side-by-side at about 65 mph. I slammed on the brakes just as the kid swung the bat, creating an immediate 120 mph differential in our relative positions in the space-time continuum, almost ripping the kid's arm off in the process. The excitable chaps then pursued me at high speed until I was able to seek refuge in a gas station and call the cops.
The enormity of the stupidity on all sides of this episode, including the possibility that several people (not the least of whom, me) could have been extremely killed, convinced me to adopt a more Zen-like attitude while driving.
ONE exercise that helps is this: If another driver is angering you, remember that if you had left the house two or three minutes earlier or later, you wouldn't even have met up with the boob. It's pure chance that you are anywhere near this idiot. Is it worth jeopardizing your life or the lives of innocent bystanders just because you took a little longer brushing your teeth that morning than usual? I don't think so.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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