A little taste of road rage ~ October 5, 2005

David Heiller

I was heading over to St. John’s Lutheran School last Thursday to take a photo of the “student of the week” for the Bank of the West ad.

I stopped at the corner of West Caledonia and North Kingston. An RV was coming from the right, but I had plenty of time to turn left in front eat him.

Or so I thought. He didn’t think so. I’m assuming it was a guy because, well, it was a kind of guy thing that happened next.

He drove his mammoth vehicle up close to my bumper and honked his horn. It wasn’t just single honk, or even a double one. It was one continuous honk, and it lasted for three blocks, all the way until I turned right onto East Taft Street.

I glanced out my window to see who was driving. Maybe it was Darth Vader. I thought I would catch a wave of the good old flag, but he was already past me and hurtling angrily onward.

He had to be angry. Either that or his horn was stuck, or he was trying to impersonate a Towboat.

I’m sure this gentleman has a different perspective on what happened. He’s probably still steaming about the idiot in the little red car that pulled in front of him on his very busy Thursday afternoon.

I don’t think I did any bad driving, but maybe I did. It’s sometimes a relative issue. It still doesn’t explain his anger. A simple honk would have sufficed to tell me his opinion of my driving. That would have translated into “You jerk.” His continuous blast would not have translated into English that could be printed on this page.

I’m puzzled by road rage. I think that’s what this was. And it brought out an interesting reaction from me. When I realized that he was blaring his horn non-stop at me, I slowed down! I got angry. I thought, “I didn’t do anything wrong, you idiot. But I’ll show you now. We’ll just go nice and slow.” I didn’t even pull over when the road widened in front of St. John’s Church.

Anger begot anger.

Things could have gotten worse, A few what-ifs pop into my mind. In these days when your average Joe might be packing a .38, you never know. Luckily I had to turn when I did.

You may have a road rage story of your own. I recall watching a truck driver and car driver going at it on Highway 23 north of Askov, Minnesota, about 10 years ago. I was driving behind them, and I could see the truck driver waving his fist and trying to pass. The car driver, who I knew to be a hothead, wouldn’t let him; he would speed up and slow down, that kind of thing.

The car driver finally turned off the highway, drove into town, and got out of his car to walk to the bank. I stopped across the street at a gas station. The trucker roared into town, stopped in the middle of the street, hopped out, ran over to the man, punched him in the face, then got back in his truck and drove off. It was a very strange and scary thing to witness. I don’t know who started the altercation, but it should not have come to that.

So I’ll offer this in closing: control your temper, drivers. I don’t think my advice will do any good.