Leah claims I have road rage issues. Nonsense, I say.
I regularly move about town on foot, on my bike, or in the car, and I always see plenty of examples of inconsiderate, selfish, and downright dangerous driving. Do I get frustrated? Yup.
The problem is that we live a block from a high school and have to drive through the university campus on the way to work. So if we can manage to get out of the driveway in the morning without getting creamed by some 16-y-o driving his dad’s Lexus down our street at 50 m.p.h., we still have to deal with 30 or 40 sorority girls curising around aimlessly with their cellphones pressed against their heads.
Great example this morning. We came to a four-way stop near our house just after a young woman driving a huge pickup. It was just the two of us at the intersection. She had the right of way, but she just sat there, staring at me, no turn signal or anything. Finally, she managed to make her turn, and it became clear why she wasn’t able to signal her intent: She was holding a cup of coffee in her free hand.
Even if her failure to signal weren’t illegal, it’d still be just plain rude and disrespectful. Am I supposed to pull out in front of her crap hauler with my daughter and wife in the car and just hope she’s not going to plow into us?
Leah’s much more tolerant of this kind of thing, I think because she doesn’t recognize it as an indication of a larger societal decline. Maybe global warming will get us all before the bad drivers do.