I Don't Believe in Road Rage, But I Understand!

I'm a very calm guy.  In fact, some of my friends wonder if anything bothers me at all.  I can't help that I'm a very nonchalant guy.  I like to keep things in perspective, so that keeps me grounded.  I'm usually pretty patient, but sometimes, there are some things that can raise my blood pressure.  And it usually involves people not respecting the roadways.

Road rage happens to all of us.  However, some overreact when compared to others.  I don't angrily blow my horn (any more -- people get shot for less) or throw finger signs.  I usually just mentally curse people out in my head and keep it moving.  But there are two things that irk me when it comes to sharing the road:

They acted like we weren't even there.

Cyclists

If there is any group of people on this planet who seem to feel more entitled to the road, it's cyclists.  They act as if they have bumpers on their bikes.  Just recently, I was going to visit my grandmother.  She lives kind of off in the country, so the roads are just two lanes for most of the way.  I rolled up behind a group of cyclists.  It was close to 20 of them and they were just pedaling away around 15 mph.  In my mind, I'm thinking, "Well, I'm sure that they'll get over to the side and allow the cars to pass.  After all, it's a curvy road, so the only way to get by is for them to allow us to do so."

Yeah, I don't know why I thought that.

They rode and chatted for close to 3 miles while me and roughly 8-10 vehicles followed them like we were in a parade.  They never made an attempt to pull over on a side street to allow us by or even ride single file to give us room.  They just left us back there to cruise as if we didn't exist.  By the time I got to my grandmother's house, you could probably see a vein popping out of my neck.  If I'd only had a snowplow, I could have just shoved them off in the ditch and kept rolling.

Very frustrating to get stuck at an intersection.

Intersection Blockers

These are the people who pull into an intersection although there's no room on the other side to clear the lane.  So, when you get the green light to go through, you can't go anywhere because these numbskulls are blocking your way as in the photo above.

If they only allowed machine guns on the front of cars.

I took that photo at a very busy intersection in Jackson.  Every day at 5 PM, people clog the lanes knowing that they're blocking you, too.  But, like the cyclists, they don't care.  Because they obviously think that they're more important than you and that your time isn't valuable as theirs.  All you can do is wait on them to clear the intersection and hope that you still have a green light.  If not, you may have to do it all over again with the next set of idiots.

Old schoolers will get this reference.

Conclusion

If I were to ever snap and take a tire iron to someone's knees some day, then know that one of these two types of people would be the recipient of me going Tonya Harding on them.  People should respect the roadways and everyone on it.  It would make the commute to your destination go that much better if the person next to you is considering you when making decisions.

But that's not the world that we live in.  Everyone thinks that they're more important than you and that you should understand that.  That's why people pull out in front of you, refuse to let you merge, and things of that nature.  Society gets more disrespectful each and every day.  I guess that I may as well get used to it because there doesn't appear to be enough people willing to change it.