I was driving home last night, in the darkness, when a car pulled out of a side street and almost intersected my car.
As they swung from the left side of my car to my bumper, I felt blinded by the brightness of their high beams, which stunned me for a moment as I tried to absorb what was happening. But that feeling of surprise quickly gave way to anger as they accelerated to within inches of the back of my car, tailgating me until we reached a stop sign and they turned a different direction.
I hate when people drive selfishly. I hate when they tailgate, when they creep into oncoming traffic instead of stopping at stop signs, and when they don’t use their signals to change lanes or make an unexpected turn. I have so many pet peeves when it comes to driving, I feel like I’m on high alert any time I get behind the wheel, and with good reason. That one time I let my guard down and drove through a light turning yellow, I got into an accident with an oncoming car turning left into my lane and I felt so stupid for thinking I could trust the other car to follow the law and yield.
But what does all of that anger do for me? It is nameless and faceless, sparked by drivers in automobiles I will most likely never meet. As I drive around, letting myself get irritated by all of my pet peeves, no one knows. It just gets bottled up until something better comes along.
I used to wish I had some way of conveying to the world my displeasure with other drivers. I dreamed about having an electronic banner that wrapped around my trunk, so I could program messages and send them out like a news ticker in Times Square. I would write things like, “Blue car driver not paying attention — get off phone!” and “Pass on the left!” and any other irksome messages I wanted to send. Instead, I use my horn as a line of defense, which, surprisingly, seems to offend my fellow drivers more than if I used hand gestures to show my feelings.
One time years ago, I did come face to face with another driver who narrowly missed colliding with the back of my car. I was stopped at a marked crosswalk, which had children walking in it, waving orange safety flags as they crossed the street. A brown sedan came flying up behind me, and rather than braking, or looking around to notice the yellow crosswalk signs on either side of the road, the driver swung to my right, pulling into the street shoulder to speed past me just as the kids were right in front of my engine.
No one was hurt, but I was livid. Not only did the driver almost seriously rear-end my car, in which myself and two of my young children were sitting, but she almost took out the four middle school students crossing the road. After the kids made it across, I drove on, and it just so happened that I ended up right behind the car that had passed me. We slowly made the same turns, into the same parking lot of the same store.
Here was my chance. All of those times on the road I wished I had an electric sign, and didn’t, and all of those times I honked my horn but could never tell the other person why, all of those years of the bottled up belief that there was no way someone could be a maniac on the road and still be a good person, whatever that means, came to a head at this moment, as I got out of my car, and came face to face with the woman who almost hit me.
I thought she might be apologetic. I thought maybe she saw the students as she zipped through the crosswalk, and she might say something to acknowledge her error.
But no. She was older, old enough to be my grandmother, with freshly permed and dyed hair, prim clothes and sparkling jewelry that glinted in the sunlight as she strode toward me with a severe look on her face.
She spoke first.
“Are you following me?” she demanded.
“No,” I replied. And then I returned the volley. “You almost hit me! My children are in that car. And you almost killed those students in the crosswalk. Why did you think I was stopped?”
She didn’t back down. She was so angry that I would dare to confront her. She didn’t see the kids, or the crosswalk, and she didn’t know why I was stopped, but how dare I speak to her this way.
“You have no idea what is happening in my day,” she sputtered, as she turned to go into the upscale clothing store. “You have no idea.”
And I called after her, “Your day would be worse if you had just killed someone. Pay attention.”
I turned back to my car, looking at the wide eyes of my children, who saw the whole scene. They were mortified. And I was shaking. I had thought it was my civic duty to make that woman realize the error of her ways, but after it was over, I wasn’t convinced it was the right thing to do at all. I didn’t feel better. I felt worse.
So, for those who shine their high beams into the eyes of oncoming drivers late at night, or roll through stop signs, or follow too closely, I will not design a scrolling electronic sign to hang on my car to tell you off. I will not tap my brakes to scare you. And I will not speed up to keep you from merging. I will give you space. I will keep up my guard. And I will try to let my pet peeves go.
But I will still use my horn.
Amy Choate-Nielsen writes a bi-monthly column on her family experiences and lessons learned from her grandmother, Fleeta, who died before she was born.