On the road: Do you really teach bad drivers a lesson by retaliating for their bad behavior?
Cheryl muttered under her breath as she got even closer to “Mr. can’t find the gas pedal” and started looking for a gap to change to the right lane and go around. No small feat since everyone behind us was doing the same thing and there was quite the stream going past us on the right.
Eventually however, we did get around and I breathed a sigh of relief because she had us so close to the guy that we were practically pushing him. You know the feeling; so close that you want to climb into the back seat! My relief was short lived though, because Cheryl immediately swung back into the fast lane in front of slow driver and put on the brakes.
“What are you doing”? I asked calmly over the sound of the horn from behind.
“Teaching him a lesson” said she tersely staring him down in the rear view mirror and responding to his horn honking with the same spirited finger that he had extended to her moments ago.
This fortunately was the extent of the exchange as Cheryl gassed it back up to her customary 15 to 20 km/h over the limit and left him behind, but I was left wondering if there really was any learning happening as Cheryl intended.
In truth, Cheryl wasn’t trying to teach this guy a lesson, she was simply retaliating for what she saw as either stupidly slow driving or the insult to her that the finger represented. The finger that Mr. slow driver gave her was just retaliation for her horn honking, so who really started this?
Can we really teach another driver a lesson by trying to irritate them as they may have irritated us? Of course not, after all, when was the last time you learned to be a better driver as a result of a lesson delivered by one of your fellow road users?
Retaliation for actual or imagined slights or plain and simple bad driving is the first step down the path to serious road rage incidents. They are in the headlines all the time! Someone gets out of their car at an intersection and assaults the guy who “just cut me off.”
Of course we would never stoop to such lows but our attempts to teach others by retaliating in response to their behaviour are provocative and invite escalation.
Does the target of your lesson carry a baseball bat (or worse) under the seat to provide his own lessons? You may be inviting violence that you never anticipated. I remember when I was just a teenager and two guys in a car followed my Dad home one night for some reason and we all got into it in the driveway!
Crazy dangerous stuff!
Cheers!
Spencer
