Road Rage

When I learnt driving 4 years ago in the small town of State College, PA, I was unaware of the term called road rage. There were less lanes on the road, there were lesser cars on the road and people never seemed to be in a hurry. There was a 5 second delay between lights turning red in one direction and turning green in the other. In addition to this, people would wait a couple of seconds before they rev their engine. In those days, driving outside the small town was always an adventure.

My first encounter with traffic was on the garden state parkway in NJ. Thanks to the traffic and some rude drivers, I was introduced into the world of road rage. In my early days, I was still a little apprehensive of my driving skills and would therefore mind my own business and be careful of other jackasses on the road. As I set out on various road trips across the north-east, I got a further flavor of traffic and road rage in cities like Philadelphia, DC & Pittsburgh.

You encounter different kinds of people on road. There are those who are on cellphone and thus too busy to give an indicator, and then there are ladies who are busy putting their make-up and wont budge when the light turns green. Then there are drifters who change lane unknowingly cause they are busy looking for a CD in their back seat. The tailgaters are the most annoying, and a lot of times I wish I had a Hummer just to jam my brakes and let them rear end into my vehicle. In the east coast, people respect the left lane and always yeild to the fastest guy on the road - but apparently this idea has never hit the west coast, as people refuse to respect the left lane and fill it with some really slow drivers.

When it comes to traffic, no place can rival Southern California. Despite having a whooping 26 lane interchange between the 5 & 405, there is still traffic at this intersection. By virtue of traffic, I developed a lot of patience to wade my way through bumper to bumper traffic. No other freeway in the country can get on to your nerves like the 405 - a virtual parking lot at places, don't be surprised to hit traffic at 1:00 am at night. Some of the interchanges in LA are phenomenal, especially the 5(or possibly 6) layered 110 & 105 interchanged. For all the hype, I found the traffic in LA to be mellow. At times, you were driving on a 10 laned highway, and lane changes would have seemed to be a challenge. But, I found traffic to be more sane than a lot of other big cities.

Over the years, as I have become more and more complacent with my driving skills, I have seen a steep decrease in my patience for nitwits driving on the road. Despite having far less traffic than LA, Houston gets on my nerves with its uncivilised traffic. At most times indicators don't mean a thing, as people refuse to yeild. The road is ruled by the size of the vehicle and there is no dearth of super sized Texas trucks in this town. On a daily basis I see many of those, who cut you abruptly, give no indicators while turning or drive really slow on a fast lane. Most of the times, I shout expletives from the comforts of my car and relieve my aggression. But what is annoying is the fact that these reckless drivers think that they are cool or they have a laid back attitude. However, they fail to realise that anyone can drive recklessly, its the common sense which prevents us from doing so and converting our freeways into a tolled accident way.

I know cities in Asia are clogged with traffic, and I have met with the same fate here in US. All major cities, despite the number of lanes are still bad. Some stay bad only at peak hours, while other like LA or some of the Bay Area freeways (notably 880) are bad all the times. I was expecting to see a different story when I travelled to Europe. But Alas! the traffic was the same, the lanes were lesser, but the cities still had traffic galore....and more traffic only translates to more road rage.