By Michael Cartel
Motormania 1950 ©Walt Disney
Like the Goofy cartoon of kindly Mr. Walker turning at car ignition into monstrous Mr. Wheeler, many lose their humanity and gain reckless courage when wrapping four-thousand pounds of car around themselves.
I don’t know if it’s just the general sleaze factor or the overcrowding, but I remember a time when drivers didn’t run red lights, blast horns or form malicious intents.
The term road rage was coined in 1987 by L.A. TV local KTLA when car to car shootings began a contagion on the 110, 10 and 405 freeways. While the gunfire ended the following year, the Los Angeles roads still effect the worst emotions and the best chance to study human folly.
Drivers will slow and stare at nothing more than a broken-down freeway car that will produce a SigAlert adding hours to your drive, taking years off your life. If you have to change lanes on the freeway then you’d better not use your directional signal. The car traveling behind in your intended lane (no matter how far back) will try like hell to keep you from getting ahead of him. I might understand this particular illness from a friend who was obsessed with out-racing everyone on the road. He just couldn’t allow a car to get in front of him. He went to a therapist because of speeding tickets. He later died from speeding.
Rage of Achilles
There are always three or more cars that jump into the tiny space immediately ahead of you, without looking, without a signal, offering many chances for a crash. All because you didn’t want to ride the tail of the car you’re following. At the other end, whatever speed you’re running, a tailgater will find you. Drivers try to intimidate others who travel at the speed limit, even in the slow lane. If you’re in the fast lane you risk insults and obscenities from that narcissist in the convertible with the phone in his ear or eyes.
Researchers who over-breed test rats in a milk crate find that their tiny subjects develop ulcers, tempers and savage indifference. With humans under freeway pressure you add obscene gestures, sadism, insolence and eventually gunshots.
L.A. drivers have, for whatever reason, adopted the New York City ritual of horn honking, flaunting stop lights, and the death wish of opening up driver-side doors at fast approaching traffic. Even the once pristine Ventura Freeway, like a Manhattan subway, is now trashed with ’80s era New Yorker graffiti.
I suppose that most of us drive responsibly, even courteously, with grace under surpassing pressure. But there’s just enough idiots, with or without guns, drunk and sober, to give paranoia a good name.
Story borrowed from my Valley Vantage newspaper in 1991 ©Michael Cartel