Reader: Road rage incident merely a ‘symptom’ created by victim’s disease
Posted by Brad at 5:52am Friday, February 22, 2008
As a follow-up to my post a couple of days about about my “not-so-excellent adventure” during my morning commute on Wednesday, I was taken aback a bit by a comment by a reader on another blog. Oklahoma’s iconic blog dustbury linked to my post, under the much better headline “Duel on the Broadway Extension,” which led to comments on his blog and quite a few new visitors to my blog — thank you, Mr. Hill!
While I’m not immune or even adverse to critical comments, one particular commenter’s remarks caught me by surprise. Apparently, I wasn’t the victim of road rage, but rather than instigator of an understandable reaction by another driver that I egregiously inconvenienced. You see, from this commenter’s viewpoint, I was asking for it…
every time i read a complaint about a specific road rage incident, without exception it has that “mom, he hit me *back*” attitude to it. the complainant always prefaces their screed with “all i did was… (insert lame excuse for not paying attention)”, and then blames the other driver(s) for reacting to a problem that the complainant caused.
the linked article is only the most recent of this kind of story; i hear at least two a week from a coworker about his commute.
road stupidity and driver inattention are the diseases, road rage is merely a symptom that will go away when those diseases are cured.
In my response, I likened that logic to telling the victim of domestic abuse that the abuser’s violence was merely a symptom that would go away when the disease of “spousal stupidity or inattention to the needs of the other” are cured. It wasn’t the other driver’s fault that she acted with insane road rage, it was my fault for crossing her path.
Here is the rest of my response:
I’m curious, hattiesburg, as to why you feel that I wasn’t paying attention. I wasn’t going slower than anyone else in traffic… in fact, I was changing lanes to move around someone who was going slower. I didn’t change lanes without looking either; she was more than a dozen car lengths behind me when I moved into that lane. I maintained going at or above the speed limit.
And even if I did pull into that lane inadvertently, is that an excuse for a response that seriously put both her and me, as well as the drivers around us, at risk?
People have cut me off, driven much slower than me and the rest of traffic (usually as they gab away on their mobile phone), and generally acted stupid while behind the wheel, but I have never put another driver in jeopardy no matter how much they pissed me off.
Road rage of any kind is more than a symptom, it’s a very serious problem.
I can see it now: “Judge, it’s not my fault that I wrecked that other car and killed that family. They were slowing me down and it just made me mad and they made me act the way I did because they were driving stupid.” Not guilty by reason of “the victim made me mad and I couldn’t control myself” defense.
Be encouraged, road ragers, spousal abusers and barroom brawlers. You have an advocate in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
On Feb 22, 2008, Karla said:
How come I have a feeling that Hattiesburg has a road rage problem of his/her own?
On Feb 22, 2008, hatless in hattiesburg said:
1) i “had” a problem, which is thankfully decreasing all the time.
2) i don’t live in mississippi, i just made up the blog name as a take on that “sleepless in seattle” theme. don’t paint its citizens with the broad brush you use on me.
3) the rest of your extrapolation is beyond absurd and not worth responding to.
On Feb 23, 2008, Brad said:
1) That’s good news!
2) Thank you for setting the record straight. I guess that I, too, am guilty of making mistaken assumptions.
3) It was a more than reasonable response to an utterly absurd argument and I suspect that the suggestion that it’s “not worth responding to” is more likely “not able to without postulating even greater absurdities.”