NOTHING CHANGES Different age. Same rage

Posted on 08/11/2016

As a kid, the two-week ‘summer holiday’ was an annual ritual that for us usually entailed a drive of around 300 miles in the family car - from the ‘dark satanic mills’ of Yorkshire to the sandy beaches of North Devon.

My brother and I would squeeze in the back and, with a jam-packed trunk and all kinds of stuff – wooden surfboards included - tied on top, the trip would take seven or eight hours. We usually travelled overnight, as my dad swore the relative lack of traffic cut hours off the trip. Unfortunately this strategy also made for a horribly uncomfortable sleepless night with nothing to do but stare out into the darkness: BBC radio being off the air for a large part of our journey.
I was reminded of those trips this weekend when I drove a similar distance (300 miles each way) to retrieve my 14-year-old son from summer camp in New Hampshire. Unlike the family car of old, I was driving a modern SUV with all the trappings one takes for granted in a modern vehicle, including GPS and satellite radio. The amazing thing was that on dry roads in perfect summer weather, with all the benefits of modern automotive technology and two or three-lane highways for 90 percent of the route, it took me almost as long to cover the distance as it used to do in dad’s Austin Cambridge 50 plus years ago.
Why? Traffic, traffic and more traffic – all exacerbated by a succession of major and minor accidents. But really, almost seven hours to go 300 miles up on Friday and back on Saturday – sheer insanity!
And when I wasn’t edging along at an almost walking pace, it almost got worse. The toe-curling frustration of sitting bumper-to-bumper for hours on end never fails to bring out the crazies as soon as – usually for no apparent reason – traffic suddenly opens up for a few miles. These idiots seem to fall into four clear-cut categories:
The weaver: These Kamikaze drivers treat highway driving as if it is some kind of video game. With no apparent concerns for anyone’s life, including their own, they specialize in weaving at speed across any number of lanes, forcibly wedging their way into gaps that – as if by the rules – must be of less than a car-length. I have to confess that once when I came around a bend to find one such weaver who’d cut me off a few minutes earlier, on his side in a ditch, I couldn’t hold back a joyous “Yes!”
The tailgater: These are possibly even more annoying than ‘now you see me, now you don’t’ weavers because they sometimes tack themselves onto your back bumper for miles on end.
When you can’t see their entire car in your rearview mirror they are too close. For some reason tailgaters feel they have exclusive rights to the passing lane and, even while you are in the process of overtaking traffic, they come right up your derriere. One of my favorite tricks with these idiots used to be to flick on my lights, which they’d misinterpret as brake lights. Not that easy any more with daytime running lights on most cars but a delicate touch of the brakes usually sends them a ‘back off’ signal… just don’t hit them too hard!
The left lane squatter: It should be noted that this is an altogether different animal to tailgater targets. These are the drivers that get into the left lane on a highway and stays there for their entire trip, whether it’s two or two hundred miles. I’ve long since decided they are a lost cause and it’s simply easier to go around them than to flash your lights and get hot under the collar. These drivers also tend to be older and totally oblivious to the fact that there are other people on the road, so give them a wide berth - especially if their left turn signal is flashing incessantly.
Ambulance chasers: So you’re stalled in highway traffic that has hardly moved in ten long minutes and you know there has to be an accident up ahead. This is validated when you hear an emergency vehicle’s siren coming up behind you and, like a good citizen you do the right thing and pull to the side to open up a lane for them to pass. Without fail, immediately behind the ambulance, fire truck or police car you can count on a cavalcade of dimwits following way too close for safety in the emergency vehicle’s wake. Just what goes through these peoples’ befuddled minds is beyond my ken.
Unlike on my nocturnal trips with my parents, today’s kids have a surfeit of entertainment available to them in the car. So much so that coming home on Saturday I don’t think my 14-year-old looked up from his iPhone more than a couple of times … he had after all been denied it for two whole weeks at camp! We could have driven through the Grand Canyon and I don’t think he would have noticed.
So no matter how much such roadtrips may have changed for the passengers, I am sure my dad’s frustration level with other drivers 50 years ago was much the same as mine today. In fact I clearly remember chastising him with exactly the same words that my son hit me up with this weekend, “Dad, dad – calm down. That dumb driver can’t hear you yelling - but I can!”
Ah yes … “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”