Bright Lights – Dim Wits: The Loss of Civility on our Roadways

This morning when I was driving in to work, some cretin was right behind me for approximately nine miles with their bright lights on. It wasn’t that this person of subhuman social abilities failed to realize that their brights were on…they would dim them for each car approaching from the opposite direction, and then immediately brighten them again as the car passed us. It was okay to blind me, but not the approaching cars.

I’ve noticed this more and more frequently of late: a total disregard for the other drivers on the road when it comes to civility and common courtesy. It’s pure selfishness; an attitude that “I am much more important than you”. So they feel justified to pull out right in front of you, usually when they could have waited 3 or 4 seconds and you would have been passed them, with a clear roadway behind you. Turn signal use has plummeted; it’s as if they have forgotten what that little stick on the left side of their steering wheel is for. You wait for a car to pass, only to find out after-the-fact that it is turning off just before you. You get out of your car and some mutant has dumped the festering remains of their mocha latte on the parking lot for you to wade through and track inside the store or onto your car’s carpets. They block the lane in front of you so that they can make an illegal turn into a parking lot, or hold up a huge line of cars and make everyone miss the light so they can turn left at a no-left turn intersection.

What’s the answer? I would hope it’s not road rage, although I have to admit to secretly coveting a pair of 50-caliber rotor guns on my front bumper, or being able to call in an air support attack by an A-10 Warthog. Nothing would please me more than to see these morons disintegrate in a hail of subsonic lead, but we should take the middle path, the higher road. Instead, let’s all believe in reincarnation, and pray that each and every one of these uncaring, obnoxious dolts comes back as the slow, lumbering June bug that just splattered on your windshield.

PS: To the a-holes with the blue plasma, Xenon, and H.I.D. headlights out there who argue that it’s safer to use these bulbs “because you can see the road better”: remember that you are blinding that driver hurtling towards you at 70 mph. Something to think about.
Mick Vann ©