Rant 1/25/03

            I don’t like cars and I don’t like to drive. And yet I work at a job that takes me an hour and a half to get to each day. I don’t like people and I don’t like crowds. And yet I crave attention to my artistic and creative work. “I am large. I contain multitudes.” (An official Lordshazam No-Prize to anyone who can tell me the source of that quote.) I am, in essence a bundle of contradictions that sometimes seems about to drive me mad. It’s no wonder that one of my favorite comic book characters was the Batman villain Two-Face who was constantly at war with himself to do good or evil. Many times, this disparity gets in the way of my thinking and can cause some problems. Lately, however, I find that the one area that all my many minds agree on is the utter worthlessness of the American driver.

            Many is the time I’ve been driving down the American Highway and find myself barely able to control my anger at some stupid move made by the driver in front of me as they rush headlong to their own destination of doom. It is amazing to me how some people, who can be some of the nicest, gentilest people you’d ever know, become total whackos once they get behind the wheel. These people suddenly begin pulling stunts that one would never tolerate in polite company. Jumping in front of others. Stopping short. Cutting other drivers off. Driving down residential streets at the speed of sound. And yet they would be amazed if you were to hold a mirror up to them and show them their actions. Surely they don’t act like that. It must be someone else you’re talking about. And then they’ll go out and do it all over again.

            Psychologists will call this “Road Rage” but I beg to differ on this. My own doubts aside, psychologists seem to be more concerned with finding mental diseases and dysfunctions rather than just simply calling a cigar, “just a cigar”. Sometimes some of these people act like this because, a) they are idiots or b) they’re simply a pain in the ass. In many cases, they may be both. There is a vast conspiracy in this country in which personal responsibility has been reduced to near microscopic levels. “It wasn’t me, it was the drugs (or booze, or my bad childhood, or the aliens telecasting evil thoughts into my brain) so don’t blame me, ok?” But it’s hard to accept any type of excuse when you see drivers risking their lives and those of others for nothing more than the desire to arrive at a destination a few minutes earlier. Now, here’s the strange part, often it’s not the drivers of sports cars who are the worst offenders. It’s often the drivers of SUVs or pick-up trucks. These drivers move through traffic with all the consideration of an elephant walking through a china shop. Drivers of sports cars have made a significant investment in their cars and are loath to risk their precious vehicles. Trucks and SUV drivers seem to feel that they are invulnerable and, even worse, that everyone should get the hell out of their way NOW!

            But on the other hand, part of this could all be a result of frustration on our parts as this small state of Rhode Island has to hold more and more drivers in the same amount of space. In my spot of little Rhody, the population has increased drastically over the past ten to fifteen years due to the uprise in real estate and the growth of the local college. While it’s true that one could literally drive from one end of this state to the next in an hour and a half, it now takes over a half hour just to get OUT of this town to the highway! Even though Rhode Island is rated as one of the worst states for the conditions of its roads and bridges, the primary reason for that is that this state was simply never meant to handle this amount of drivers on a daily basis. Like so many other areas of modern life, drivers are jumping out of every intersection, every corner, in a mad dash to get somewhere in a hurry only to find themselves wondering why they had to get there so quickly. Many is the time when I would arrive at work with my heart pounding and blood racing from a morning fighting the local hordes on the road. It usually takes about an hour or so to calm down and get myself focused into the work for the day then, by the end of the day, have to go through it all again. Is it any wonder that I spend the weekends looking for ways to AVOID driving? That I will often go to elaborate lengths to limit my driving and avoid areas of large congestion? I refuse to go anywhere near Rt. 6 in Seekonk on the weekend because of the insanity that takes place there on a minute to minute basis both on the roads and in the parking lots themselves. I often look for ways to share rides with people so that I don’t have to drive and might even be able to enjoy the ride for a change but that doesn’t happen very often either.

            In this fast-paced, make every minute count world, it is amazing to me that it is still not moving fast enough for some people. Is moving faster that important that it is worth running the risk of life ending injury just to go a little faster? For me, I’d rather go back to horses or, better yet, develop a reason not to leave the house at all.

            But that’s just me.