I try to average 78-85 mph these days while driving, just to keep away from the danger. The growing danger of the sick-brained, doltish menaces behind the other wheels, of course.
Between the ever-multiplying semi-trailers, the road-ragers and the mentally deficient, and the young people, and the very old people, and obviously the majority or at least over a third of women, but especially the women reared in this obnoxiously anti-social and sociopathic Smart-phone Day, Night, and Age, the frightening trial of driving has almost become too much stress to justify beyond trips to the various apothecaries, the grocer, and my workplace. Let alone when you're also listening to the vocal-fried cheer-leaders of war on NPR, for some daily, masochistic reason, like i do. So each time I am able, I'll speed ahead and past the other lurking, texting, dazed but aggressive, vindictive and fluoridated clown-world motorists.
Thankfully I drive mostly at night, or else in a safe-flowing direction away from the metropolis, in the mornings. One time when I lived in an area where I didn't need to brave the interstate to go to work as i do now, I experienced a fit of road rage directed At me from someone else. A grotesquely red-faced, rich, snarling and poorly-heeled puppy no older than 22 who i was forced to flip off because he was driving like the villains in Mad Max. Mind you, i reserve the middle finger for extremely rare circumstances, and may flip someone off once every 10 years, at most. But my middle finger caused this horrible young psycho-bro in the starchy white shirt and khakis such umbrage that he audibly, loudly screeched off the road to turn back and start macho combat procedures with me, as i tried to enter the gas station store. I was able to defuse and confuse him with my calm contempt and returned, more specific, adult threats. He did chatter away insultingly at my back as i walked off, but in God's eyes, i basically humiliated and kicked his ass. Thank God he didn't vandalize my car, it took me a minute or two to go check on it. It always seemed to me, just based on a sizing up of he and his Mercedes that he clearly didn't buy through honest labor, that he was probably spawned by a powerful man of some kind, like a barrister or chief constable.
Another time, someone afflicted with probably a similar existential rage and stupidity as the apoplectic puppy, almost flipped their car behind me but somehow came to a safe stop on the side of the road. They had been mercilessly tail-gating me coming down a winding and perilous mountain road, so i gave them the universally recognizable, polite and necessary Noticeable raised hands-shrug of contempt and bafflement into the rear-view mirror, which almost always works to get them off one's tail, and without generating any great hassle or fatalities, but this time with that motherfucker something seems to have been wrong with their Generation Z brain. I literally looked as if in slow motion into the rear-view some distance on, and their insanity was causing them to wobble back and forth, side to side on their axles as they completely lost control after a jerky attempt to correct themselves, and it was in theory my fault because i had shrugged at this mad person, and their reptile, Triune Brain response was to tail-gate me even more aggressively. That's how i perceived the event or interaction, at least, and i'm not unperceptive, especially while driving.
Another time, someone afflicted with probably a similar existential rage and stupidity as the apoplectic puppy, almost flipped their car behind me but somehow came to a safe stop on the side of the road. They had been mercilessly tail-gating me coming down a winding and perilous mountain road, so i gave them the universally recognizable, polite and necessary Noticeable raised hands-shrug of contempt and bafflement into the rear-view mirror, which almost always works to get them off one's tail, and without generating any great hassle or fatalities, but this time with that motherfucker something seems to have been wrong with their Generation Z brain. I literally looked as if in slow motion into the rear-view some distance on, and their insanity was causing them to wobble back and forth, side to side on their axles as they completely lost control after a jerky attempt to correct themselves, and it was in theory my fault because i had shrugged at this mad person, and their reptile, Triune Brain response was to tail-gate me even more aggressively. That's how i perceived the event or interaction, at least, and i'm not unperceptive, especially while driving.
And yet another time a probable redneck junkie nearly drove me off the road, veering well into my lane headlong on a narrow two-lane road flanked by ditches, just a few miles on from the site of the previous incident. These days you never know when someone might nod off, or expire spontaneously from mystery-arrhythmia, and smash into you head-on. Also, you wouldn't be surprised to hear that quite nearby at the gas station, within a three-year span, a very dazed and slow-behaving junkie-type backed into my parked car in a wide open parking lot, as i watched it happen coming out of the store, and then I let him go. Miraculously, it was a very minor scratch his giant redneck clunker truck caused. He double-clasped my hand through his window as if I'd married his junkie daughter into fabulous riches, but he did so only once I'd made it clear that I wasn't calling the cops. I'm honor-bound to tell you that within 5 miles of every single one of these incidents, a gas station was only 6 years ago the site of a road rage incident that resulted in one psychotic redneck shooting to death what very likely was another psychotic redneck. The south, as they say, is a "Culture of Honor," and this has always in criminology been cited as a reason for the excessive murder rates here, as compared to other regions of the USA.
Many people have to learn by experience and from very harsh lessons. It's just tragic that this often includes the error of drunk driving. Whatever the statistics are for fatalities due to drunk driving, consider that they're not accurate. They're not high enough. Every year people disappear, some of them are in their cars at the bottom of a distant gorge or a lake, pond, river, or ocean, never to be found.
Keep an eye on these disastrous, impetuous drivers of this day and age and generation. These awful, sped-up weasels and lite-sociopaths with their drug addictions and their very important social media feeds, and their minds salted and boiling over the fact that their gf has been cheating on them the whole time with a football player of another race, and their scary disregard or ignorance of the hideous physics of automobiles at high speeds. It's possible that you've noticed i have a reasonably astute grasp of or insight into modern american human psychology, or of sociological conditions, generally. When i drive my motorcar, i'm doing the same kind of taxonomizing and crude but careful observation of driving styles, mores, and varying conditions, risks, and demographics. I'll tell you very certainly that young people drive worse and worse every year---distracted and dangerous, and so then, sociopathic as i like to think---and that covid seems to have given some of us a permanent and sometimes aggressive brain fog (this is actually a thing discussed around the world as to drivers and driving, since covid), and that women do the observable majority of the insane behavior of Tailgating. Young people in general do most of the tailgating, perhaps because of all the adderall and other prescription meds, and the manically sped-up pace of their demonically technologized lives and minds, etc., but still it can be said that females do merit that ass-hugging distinction within any group. I was kidding about averaging that speed while driving, but i'm very thankful otoh that my car has a powerful enough engine to allow me to escape when necessary. Please, all, be as safe as possible out there and drive as defensively as you're capable. Think of the children, even the 35 year-old ones.
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