Bad driving alarming on multiple levels
Rush hour on the Southern State Parkway near exit 22. Aggressive driving could be a manifestation of a growing lack of care and empathy for one's fellow humans. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
The news this week from AAA that nearly every motorist on Long Island and across the country engages in aggressive driving could not have surprised anyone who traverses our roads with any regularity. The astonishing part was that those 96% of the people surveyed nationwide by AAA confessed to their transgressions. On Long Island, we rarely admit so readily to behavioral flaws.
Of course, we didn't need a survey to confirm what we see. It's arcade mayhem day and night on our highways and byways.
It's not only the young guys who treat our roads like Formula 1 speedways, weaving in, around and through traffic with nary a concern for the terror they're instilling in their fellow drivers. Those kinds of miscreants have been around forever. Now their machines are faster.
And now they have competition from a new class of belligerents. You typically find them behind the wheel of a big SUV or pickup as they ride your bumper — not blowing their horn, not passing you, not shaking their fist, just sitting there, courting disaster from inches away, waiting for you to give in and move over.
No less alarming is a third group who considers the laws that govern driving less like actual restraints and more like suggestions, or advice you might want to follow. Their casual disregard for legal strictures is astounding.
Examples abound. The driver who uses the shoulder as a driving lane at any speed. The driver for whom lane markers are merely highway art. The driver whose turn signal is rusting from disuse. The driver unwilling to wait in the long line of cars at the red light who crosses the double yellow line into an oncoming traffic lane, jets all the way up to the left-turn lane, then accelerates sharply when the light turns green and veers right to cut off the cars who had been waiting patiently. The driver who seems to think that the five-second rule is the cushion you have for blowing through a red light.
None of these drivers seems to realize that at some point they will end up like Blanche DuBois, relying for their safety on the kindness of strangers.
Now, we also know that not all aggressive driving is equal. When you're going 60 mph in the inside lane and approaching someone in the middle lane crawling along at 50, what are you supposed to do? Slow way down to stay behind them and change two lanes to get to the far left just to avoid the aggressive driving sin of passing on the right?
The fact that such driving is taking place is disturbing. Equally worrisome, if not more so, are the reasons for the surge in bad behavior. With nearly every kind of aggressive act increasing, often dramatically, in recent years, there is more than the traditional "I was running late" rationalization at play.
I'm loath to write this off as just another manifestation of our divided country, but it is true that lots of folks spend lots of time being angry and triggered and living on a trip wire. You don't have to know anything about the politics of someone to feel good about cutting them off if they did something wrong to you.
It feels like something more darkly profound is at work. Perhaps a growing lack of care and empathy for one's fellow humans. Or an insistence on prioritizing oneself over others at all times and in all places. Or an obliviousness to the fact that others around us have the same needs, goals and desires that are just as valid as ours — like getting somewhere quickly and safely.
Whatever it is, we need to address it, and soon.
None of us own the road. We all share it. We need to start driving as though we understand that.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
