Losing control of our emotions while driving is one of the dumbest things we do as a species. We're cocooned in a coffin of glass, plastic, leather, and steel, rumbling ahead at speeds god didn't intend, and at a time when our judgment should be at its sharpest, we often allow emotion to yank us out of the driver's seat and fully take the helm. And sometimes we don't just allow it, we rapaciously seek it out. Have you ever been in the car with someone who has something shitty to say about every other car on the road? Their preoccupation with everything outside of their control leaves little cognitive room to deal with the job of piloting their vessel properly. As I get older, the concept of caring about other drivers' behavior gets increasingly foreign. Which is an improvement, considering I was one of the worst transgressors of emotional driving for more than a decade.
I once rear-ended someone at a stop light because I got right up his ass after he cut me off. It wasn't even a conscious decision. Getting right up people's asses was just what I did. When he got out of his car to check his bumper, I held my hands out, palms up, as if it was his fault. I stayed in my car which was the only redeeming decision of the transaction since further escalation was highly probable if I got out. I was convinced he caused the whole incident. Such was the depth of my delusion.
Years before, when I was still in high school, I followed someone home after they yelled "moron!" while passing me as I waited to turn into a gas station. I needed gas. Hence the waiting. But I didn't need gas so desperately that I couldn't turn off my blinker, get right up this guy's ass, and tail him all the way to his house, stopping at the end of his driveway to glare as he pulled into the garage. And oh, by the way, he had kids in the car with him. These are the actions of an unhinged psychopath.
And my driving fury wasn't only triggered by people outside the car. I was once leaving a convenience store with a girlfriend and we got into an argument. I don't recall what it was about, but at some point, I felt compelled to aggressively wrench the steering wheel to induce a sudden U-turn and head back to the store. When I looked over, my girlfriend had completely squished the donut she was eating because her fist involuntarily clenched in terror when I rage-turned. Rear-ending someone is one thing, but ruining a perfectly good vanilla frosted donut is going too far. I obviously had a problem.
And if I wasn't raging at other cars or people daintily holding food, I was probably speeding. Speeding goes hand in hand with unbridled emotional driving because the part of your brain responsible for rationality (small though it may be) takes a smoke break during both activities. But while emotional driving gets you in trouble with your fellow commuters, speeding usually involves the police. I enjoyed speeding in my youth and got pulled over a few times, but it wasn't too egregious. Until one day I wanted to drag race away from a stoplight. There was no other car, mind you, I was just being a jackass. By the time I saw the police lights in my rearview mirror, I was going 89 in a 45. "What possible explanation do you have for going that fast?", posed the officer. I could only muster one word, posed meekly as a question: "Immaturity?" He wryly acknowledged my succinct honesty and got back in the squad car to write up the citation.
I'd never been to court before. As many speeders were in attendance, I came to realize this must be an epidemic of sorts. When we get a ticket for a moving violation in the US, we get points on our license in addition to the monetary fine. Getting points on a license is bad. They're like demerits and if I accumulate too many, my license gets suspended. However, we have the option of appearing in court to answer for our crimes and while it's not a guarantee, usually the judge will expunge the points if we complete an educational driving class online. Hence the line of vagrants began about ten feet away from the judge's bench and extended back toward the entrance to the courtroom. One by one we proceed forward, listen as the judge states our charge, then offer up an explanation. I was all but shitting myself. What could I possibly say to the judge to explain nearly doubling the speed limit? However, the guy ahead of me tempered my nerves when he had to answer for his 115 mph citation. Thanks, guy.
The judge was gentle and sweet and reminded me of Alan Alda. He recited my charge and asked me for an explanation which I remorsefully provided. He peered down at a paper he lifted up and told me since I had an "ok" driving record, I could avoid getting points on my license by taking the 8-hour online driving course. I vacated the building and with a sigh of relief, my first and hopefully last court appearance was over.
Back at home, I commenced completing the driving course. For the unfamiliar, this is similar to a driver's education class taken in school, but condensed into an online format and time-locked so all the sections add up to 8 hours. Each section has a video, then you answer some questions, and at the end, there's a larger quiz to determine if you pass and thus avoid the points. Everything was moving along until I reached a section about properly preparing yourself mentally to drive. This wasn't something I remember covering in school. Reading that section was like someone slapping me awake from a nap.
Wait, the other drivers aren't out to get me? When someone is tailgating me on the highway, I'm supposed to simply move into the next lane without making it my life's mission to exact revenge? Hang on, I'm NOT supposed to follow people to their house if they yell at me from their car? Impossible.
In an instant, everyone I ever blamed for a driving incident switched from perpetrator to innocent victim. They weren't the assholes, they were the innocent victims of my assholery. I was the antagonist. I felt terrible, but only for a moment, because that feeling was replaced with an overwhelming sense of relief. I didn't have to feel any emotion toward other drivers anymore. Instead of seeing them all as NPC's getting in my way, I saw them as other people who have stuff to do and they're not thinking about me at all. Even the guy tailgating me on the highway. He doesn't dislike me. He's not trying to one-up me by passing me. He doesn't feel any way about me. He simply wants to go faster than I'm going. That's it. If I feel uncomfortable with him following so closely, I can move over and he'll be out of my life forever. So that's what I started doing. Moving over. "Just move over" became my mantra.
When I tried it out for the first time, it worked better than I expected. I was anticipating a transition period during which I'd be at war with my habit of getting pissed off. Instead, it's like I was a completely different person. My stress levels dropped, I felt more compelled to let people in front of me when merging since I was no longer competing with them for line-leader supremacy, and something else unexpected happened as well. I stopped speeding. In the 10+ years since that court appearance, not only have I avoided getting a speeding ticket, I haven't even been pulled over.
A few weeks ago, I was leaving the airport to head home after dropping someone off. There are two lanes that curl around toward the main highway and there was a car to my left and slightly ahead so my front bumper was aligned with their rear. Suddenly, a third car came racing up behind, got right on the other car's ass so we were essentially door-to-door, and after only a moment, pulled violently into my lane (with me still in it). Acting purely on instinct, I yanked my car into the shoulder and hit the brakes to avoid the collision, then pulled back into my lane as that car raced away. The old me wouldn't be writing this story. The old me would be dead in a heap of metal on the side of I-95 outside the Philadelphia airport because I chased down a lunatic and rammed him off the road. The "just move over" me? He just moved over.
I think we all tend to imagine other people giving us more thought than they do. It's a byproduct of our ego and is a natural part of the human experience. When I was younger, I thought everyone on the road was in competition with me, trying to thwart my efforts to get where I was going. Taking that driving course made me understand how selfish and egotistical that mode of thinking is. When we're just walking around day-to-day, the stakes of this egotism are pretty low. They might lead to some stress, anxiety, or in severe cases paranoia, but that's usually the worst of it. When we drive, however, failing to control our ego and emotions has real consequences. I’m not proud of the dumb shit I used to do. It was, after all, dumb shit. But if that court appearance never happened, I might still be losing my mind out on the road. I’ll take my day in court, thanks.