Thursday, January 27, 2011

Comedic Road Rage

One of the biggest downsides to working as a stand-up comic is the travel.  Especially when you are poor like me and don't make enough money to afford a plane ticket.  Typically I will drive more than 50 thousand miles each year, which I'm sure is the leading reason why my blood pressure is so high.  It amazes me how many bad drivers there are on the roads.  So much so that I often have to send texts to my friends mid commute to warn them about all of the idiots I keep spotting behind the wheel.
Of course I'm not such an idiot.  No one is if you ask them.  It doesn't matter if a person is legally blind, they will swear on a stack of nuns that they are a good driver.  Its just that everyone else on the road is a maniac who can't be trusted with a Nerf football, let alone be allowed behind the wheel of a motorized vehicle.  Apparently these "maniacs" must spend their entire lives continually circulating the nations highways in their cars, because they never seem to be around to defend themselves when a group of us "sane" drivers are complaining about them.  It seems the only way we can complain to those idiot drivers directly is by honking our horn, or an obscene hand gesture, or my personal favorite, a McDonald's milkshake thrown from the drivers side window. 
Personally I've always felt the horn was a bit of an impersonal way of voicing a complaint.  After all it can only make one noise, and you have to use that noise to voice an entire range of emotions, from "Heads up moron the light has turned green." to "You @#*ing idiot!  You almost got me killed and if I had a gun right now I would use my second amendment right to riddle your car with lead, just like the founding fathers would have wanted!"
I really think cars should be equipped with at least five horns of various sounds and loudness levels.  That way you could use them for the various situations that come up.  In addition the front grills could come with electronic message boards which could display prerecorded messages like "move to the right lane if you are going to drive so slow" and "Did you know your truck is flashing me it's nuts?"  My favorite idea is floodlights on the back side of your car.  That way the next time someone flashes their brights in my rear view mirror I could return the favor and hopefully blind them off the road.
Police, unfortunately, look down on such behavior which they like to call road rage.  According to a study I made up for the purpose of this rant, America has twice as many cases of road rage as any other country in the world.  Of course in our defense we have twice as many miles of road, and twice as many drivers.  I'm sure this is one of the reasons why we also have the highest gun crime rate of any other country.
I am fortunate to live in Boise Idaho where rush hour traffic means two of the four lanes are occupied.  Here the only type of road rage you experience is when you are on a windy mountain roads and you get stuck behind an old person who thinks they know how to drive an RV.  The problem with these drivers is they never just drive an RV.  They have to have an RV that is pulling a boat, which in turn is pulling another car.  So not only is it impossible to pass them, but even if you could it would be illegal because technically that would be passing three vehicles at once.  These same senior drivers seem to think it would be pointless to pull over to the side of the road and let people pass, I think it's because they assume the trail of 15 cars behind them is a convoy who enjoys driving in their cars slower than people can pedal a bicycle. The odd thing about road rage is it only happens on the road.  You would never start swearing at an old lady who is moving slow in the check out line of a grocery store.  That would be rude.  The socially acceptable thing to do is to stare at them with your arms crossed while you ramble off a few choice words in my head and then complain about her to your wife when you get home.  You know... what civilized people do. 
Perhaps the reason why it's different in a car is because no one can hear you.  The cocoon of silence prevents people from hearing when you shout swear words or sing to the top of your lungs to Lady Gaga.  Just remember that even though they can't hear you sing they can see you singing at a stop light and laugh in your face.  That's why I always carry a gun in my glove box so I can put them back in their place.

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