road bastard
Have any of you seen that Goofy cartoon in which the meek family man turns into a raving lunatic as soon as he gets behind the wheel? It’s probably the funniest cartoon I’ve ever seen, but even more importantly, it’s totally true. Driving can bring out the worst in people.
In point of fact, it is on the road where all that is wrong and twisted with the human race is given free reign, where all the repressed and submerged psychoses bubble to the surface, and men become monsters, women become … wyverns?
Shane Nickerson, in an effort to improve our lives and our society, has instituted the Asshole Fine. Basically this means that anyone who behaves in a manner Assholeish must pay a fine. Nearly all Assholeish behaviors are exhibited while driving. For example, driving a vehicle with a bumper sticker with any character from Calvin & Hobbes urinating. Instant Asshole Fine.
I would now like to dispense a mass Asshole Fine to about a thousand and one drivers. I shall explain.
To get across Pasadena, I often take one or the other of the broad avenues running from East to West. Most often, I find myself on Del Mar, which as any native of Pasadena will tell you, is probably the fastest way to cut across the city, especially when the 210 Freeway has gone into parking lot mode (i.e. nineteen hours out of every day).
Del Mar is a 35mph zone. I often go 40 to 45 (sorry, mom). Since the police are not friendly to me in a generalized sense, I’ll be damned if I risk another speeding ticket (yes, another — I still have nightmares) and push it to 50.
I really don’t think going 45 in a 35 zone is pokey, do you? Yet invariably some mofo creeps up on my tail and tries to basically drive up on top of me, in some pathetic bid to pressure me into going faster.
I’m not talking driving a bit close behind me. I’m talking driving up so close that it’s a miracle our bumpers don’t touch, until the tailgater’s car completely dominates my rear-view mirror. I’m talking about being so close that, if an animal or a kid ran in front of my car and I had to slam on the brakes in a hurry, the person behind me would have no distance to react, plow into me, and probably knock my own car forward into the animal/kid.
I fucking hate tailgaters. I think a special level of hell should be reserved for said fuckheads, where the fires get nice and toasty, and Shane’s Asshole Fine should be at the maximum permissable by law. If you are not a tailgater, thank you. If you are, please mend your ways and turn from the Path of the Asshat before all is lost. Because those fires burn hot way down there, man.
And, do these tailgaters actually think that I’m going to go faster just because they’re breathing down my neck? It reminds me of telemarketers — do they really believe that making me annoyed by tying up my phone is going to induce me to go with their service? Same with tailgaters. Taking out their pent-up aggression to get home three minutes faster by endangering themselves and me is really kind of impotent. All it does is make me angry.
Case in point. Some while ago, in the foggy mists of the recent past, I was driving home through a quiet neighborhood back to my house, armed with cappucinos. I was going a hair over 40 on a 35mph street. The entire distance in front of and behind me was empty of vehicles. Post-morning rush hour. The only car was some complete asshole young woman in a black BMW, tailgating me like she was a particular unpleasant breed of tick which had lodged itself in my rear license plate.
She clung to the rear of my car for about a half mile of driving (over the speed limit, mind you) before I became so infuriated that I slowed down, first to the speed limit, then five below. Then ten below. Finally, I came to a dead stop right in the middle of the road.
I tried to glare at her through my rear-view mirror. But instead of perhaps flooring it and whipping round me, or giving me the finger or something, anything, instead I discovered to my horror that she was taking the opportunity of me stopping dead right in the middle of the road to re-apply her makeup in her own rear-view mirror. Like it was completely natural that the car in front of her might come to a complete standstill in the middle of the road and that under no circumstances was it at all possible that it was because she had been tailgating the car in front of her to the point of extreme danger for the last mile.
So I started forward again. And, sure enough, like a lover who cannot bear to be parted from the embrace of her loved one, she proceeded to tailgate me to the extreme tailgating permissable by physical law, until I finally turned off onto the side street which would lead me home, and we were twain.
Why? Why must people do this? This young woman wasn’t even being particularly aggressive. In her case this was like some kind of sick, depraved psychological condition manifesting itself on the road. A need to belong, perhaps? A need to be cozily close to the person ahead of you, to avoid being alone? Had she put on the wrong contact lenses that morning and actually mistakenly believed I was actually a few car-lengths ahead of her? Was she in need of medical of professional assistance?
For those who know it, Foothill Blvd. is a major two-lane thoroughfare that kind of runs parallel to the 210. I cannot count the number of times that I have been driving along at over fifty miles per hour, while someone behind me tailgates me the whole bloody way, even though there are no cars whatsoever in the other lane and they can easily shift over to pass me. Yet they don’t. They just spend the whole way breathing down my neck while I drive and drive and drive and become more and more infuriated. They just cling, oblivious, needy.
In my roundabout sort of unprofessional way, I suppose I’m coming to the conclusion that there are two principal types of tailgaters: those who cling because it is their way, and those who push because they want to go faster and you’re in their way. Both are equally annoying, both must be charged the maximum possible Asshole Fine.
On the German Autobahnen, where nearly two-thirds of the highways have no speed limit, tailgating is a major offense, because it’s so dangerous. Unmarked police cars with camera equipment drive around catching people in the act. Then they cut their heads off. No, they don’t, but I’m told that the ticket bears a heavy price tag. No cop has over pulled over a tailgater here in America in the sum of my experience. Have any of you even heard of someone getting a ticket for tailgating? I’d feel good if you did, but I bet you haven’t.
Tailgaters. Mend your ways before you roast, roast, roast.
I wonder if Shane has made his first million from collecting on the Asshole Fine yet?