Barbara J. Hamby

sign-up for our email list

Road Rage Revisited

This morning my eye caught two headlines on the AOL news. Interestingly, they were adjacent to each other. The first was about road rage. The second, about high blood pressure. Well, what a coincidence--you think?

When I read the article about road rage, I wasn’t surprised that Miami was rated as the worst city in the country. In a recent trip through the Ft. Lauderdale airport, we encountered the most rude people I’ve met on my extensive travels. Perhaps a psychologist might analyze what there is about living in Florida that would cause residents to lose their manners. The threat of hurricanes, possibly? The cloying humidity? Whatever.

The most surprising part of the article, for me, was the fact that Portland, Oregon is rated as having the most friendly drivers. We locals know what a wonderful place this is to live, so maybe our residents are more mellow, or perhaps the rain dampens hot tempers. Whatever, I’ve seen a good bit of road rage here locally, so I wonder how much worse it must be elsewhere, if we’re the best.

A few years back, I wrote a little verse about road rage:

Middle Finger Macho

To jerks behind the wheel driving in all directions
Who love to show off your middle finger erections;
I’ll never take a poke at any of you,
Because I know the joke’s on all of you.

When your blood pressure shoots to the moon
And a stroke or heart attack bursts your balloon,
I’ll still be smirking, chuckling and deep breathing
Long after you’ve ceased your ridiculous seething.

I must admit that I’ve been scared a time or two when I was the target of a road raged driver. In one particular incident the driver sped off, squirreled around recklessly, and appeared to put himself in more danger than anyone else. He was lucky that time and didn’t hit anyone or anything, at least while he was in my line of vision.