Rant: Road Rage

The most useless freeway sign in California is the one that reads, Slower Traffic Keep Right.

The major problem with this dictate from the State is that few motorists in California – at least the section of the state between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles that I normally travel – use their rearview mirrors. Of all the accessories on an automobile none is more under used. How do I know this? Because every time I head out on the highway I find myself behind some motorist cruising in the fast lane at 60mph, who, if he or she would simply look in the rearview mirror, would see my car on their tail and change lanes.

Just the other day I was driving south on the 101 in the fast lane when I had to slow for a Toyota Camry doing about 62mph. I had been doing a steady 70mph until I caught up to this joker. I wanted to move into the near right lane and scoot around, but no break in the traffic presented itself. I speeded up to get closer to the slowpoke blocking my way, hoping that he or see would notice me and move the hell over, but this was wishful thinking. The driver of the Camry was oblivious.

I flashed my headlights. Nothing. I tapped my horn twice. Nothing. I let out a string of curses: “Jesuschristassholemotherfuckingpinheadlimpdick.” This made me feel better but did nothing to remove the Camry from my path. I wished my Honda was equipped with a laser beam that could project a message in foot high letters on the offender’s rear windshield:

MOVE…THE…FUCK…OVER.

I hit the turn signal and hoped someone would give me room to pass this jackass, but my fellow motorists were not in a charitable mood.

“Look in the rearview mirror, asswipe,” I screamed.

After a few more minutes of this irritation I had space and made my move, swinging to the right and quickly back into the fast lane in front of the Camry. As I shot by I looked at the Camry’s driver and prepared to salute with my middle finger. “Don’t do it,” my wife said, mindful of the fact that there are a lot of unhinged people on California’s freeways, some of them armed to the gills.

But how could I flip off a white-haired woman who looked like a dead ringer for Mary See? She was hunched over the steering wheel, hands at ten and two o’clock, totally focused on the road directly in front of her.

Nine hours later on a northbound stretch of 101 outside of Ventura it happens again. 9:30 p.m., traffic sparse, I’m doing 75mph with the cruise control on, anxious to get home after a long day at Disneyland, and I’ll be damned if a Jeep Cherokee is in the fast lane doing all of 60mph. Another codger, I thought, a fugitive from Shady Acres nursing home, out for a late night joy ride along the ocean. Though I could have passed easily enough, I stayed on the Jeep’s ass for a mile or two, determined to make a righteous point about the rules of the road. More wishful thinking. The Jeep's driver was yet another California motorist with no use of a rearview mirror and no regard for Slower Traffic Keep Right.

Enough being enough, I veered right and jammed on the gas until I pulled even with the Jeep; old or not, armed or not, I was giving this idiot driver the finger.

Except the driver wasn’t old at all, and neither was the woman sitting beside him. Twenty-something’s by the look of them, sharing what appeared to be a joint, laughing uproariously and taking no notice of me whatsoever. What’s the point of flipping off a couple of stoners who are feeling blissful and at peace with everyone in the world?

I hate it when the joke’s on me.