A few days ago I got caught in
cross-town West End rush hour traffic. It had been some time since I had been
this way. Every light that could be was red. Every parking lot full of cars,
trucks and enormous SUVs (with one passenger – the driver) was emptying onto
the roads. And every nerve seemed to fray.
It was actually scary at times. The
disregard for other people some drivers have is dangerous. Tailgating in a line
of tailgaters at 45 miles-per-hour is dangerous. Switching lanes precipitously
is dangerous. Trying to beat red lights is more than dangerous. It is illegal
and potentially deadly.
All of that was going on.
Have the pressures of the times
made some of us less heedful while driving?
I think so.
About a year ago I posted the
following. I thought it might be useful (to some, anyway) to post again:
(Originally published Oct.
24, 2014) –
Maybe
you’ve had this experience. You are
stopped by a red traffic light. You are in the right-hand lane of a four-lane
street. You intend to go straight ahead when the light turns green.
Before it does
though, you hear a horn blow, and it is no mere toot. It is full-blown, its
length announcing the presence of an Attitude.
You look about expecting to see
someone blocking another car, or about to swerve into the attitudinal honker’s
lane. Either scenario would justify a good warning honk.
But you see that the only other car
around is a rather crappy looking old thing, sitting low to the ground, painted
with a worn patina of gun-metal primer – the kind that might encoat a nuclear
submarine.
USS Heap is right on your rear
bumper. Its driver grimaces in a millennial scrunch.
The traffic light has only been red
for about 30 seconds, and now it turns green. You proceed cautiously ahead with
an eye on your rear-view mirror.
Once clear, you see Joe Honker jerk
his car into a sharp right-hand turn … and was that an ugly hand gesture
directed at you?
He roars off – not because he’s got
a hot engine. It’s just a wimpy four-banger with holes in the muffler, the kind
you jab with an ice-pick to make it sound souped-up.
Once you are clear of the intersection
and safely on the way you reflect on this rencontre.
Why would a reasonable driver
demand with an obnoxious honk that you – showing no right-hand-turn signal –
would break the law and run a red light so that he could exercise his right to
turn right on red?
Of course it was irrational…but not
an isolated incident these days. I’ve experienced others, and they seem to have
proliferated in recent months. You may have had similar encounters.
Can we understand this phenomenon?
Is it drugs? Or is it some sort of
twisted understanding of entitlement? Certainly it’s nothing new and seems to
be more widespread nowadays.
I think it could be both – maybe one
too many Red Bulls? – combined with a sense of egocentric entitlement.
Entitlements, after all, seem to be much in the patois of politicians and their
toadies these days. We are raising generations of attitudinally challenged
newly “entitled” folks. Add them to the already entitled notions many of us may
have just by virtue of being theoretically free people, and we have ourselves a
social stew with a hint of advanced navel-gazing in the mix.
And can that be the product of
politicians over-promising increasingly credulous generations no longer
expected to leave high school – or college, for that matter – with a complete
understanding of our Constitutional heritage and the rule of law?
And worse – are these historically
deprived folks unable to understand that we do not have the right to challenge
the rights of others just for the selfish need to turn right on red when
someone else is ahead of them?
How petty.
And how dangerous.
