Due to my work, I drive something like 35,000 miles a year and have done for over 25 years.
Over that time I have obviously seen a big increase in the number of vehicles on the road, a dilution of skills as more unskilled drivers join the dwindling number that seem to know how to handle a truck, car, van or whatever they are driving and a change in driving habits, but something I have started to see lately which I find really quite disturbing, is the fury and anger drivers and motorcyclists are starting to show towards one another.
Twice in the last week I have seen a pretty harmless manoeuvre on the part of one driver, acknowledged with complete and utter rage from the other. In one case this was provoked by a car safely overtaking another car. The women in the car that was overtaken went NUTS, jumping about and leaning on the horn for hundreds of yards after being overtaken.
What's the matter with these people?
I have been cut up, chopped off, brake tested by slow cars that have pulled out in front of me, had cars drive into the side of me when I was at a junction, had idiots chop from the outside lane of a motorway, across three lanes to get down a sliproad etc etc etc. These kind of antics can make me a bit cross, and I'll occasionally have a bit of a shout and a rant to myself, but it really is just part of the rough and tumble of road use.
I have heard of road rage, but never really seen it, and the things I've seen this last week go beyond rage into blind and lasting fury, and I really can't understand where this anger comes from.
There really are some very repressed people out there.
Over that time I have obviously seen a big increase in the number of vehicles on the road, a dilution of skills as more unskilled drivers join the dwindling number that seem to know how to handle a truck, car, van or whatever they are driving and a change in driving habits, but something I have started to see lately which I find really quite disturbing, is the fury and anger drivers and motorcyclists are starting to show towards one another.
Twice in the last week I have seen a pretty harmless manoeuvre on the part of one driver, acknowledged with complete and utter rage from the other. In one case this was provoked by a car safely overtaking another car. The women in the car that was overtaken went NUTS, jumping about and leaning on the horn for hundreds of yards after being overtaken.
What's the matter with these people?
I have been cut up, chopped off, brake tested by slow cars that have pulled out in front of me, had cars drive into the side of me when I was at a junction, had idiots chop from the outside lane of a motorway, across three lanes to get down a sliproad etc etc etc. These kind of antics can make me a bit cross, and I'll occasionally have a bit of a shout and a rant to myself, but it really is just part of the rough and tumble of road use.
I have heard of road rage, but never really seen it, and the things I've seen this last week go beyond rage into blind and lasting fury, and I really can't understand where this anger comes from.
There really are some very repressed people out there.