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Rageless Travel Begets Rageless Travel

© Julie J. Murelle

My mother was a religious woman. As we would be driving down the road she would be singing, "Glory, Hallelujah...,"and then suddenly, without warning, "JERK!" would spew from her lips as a nearby car did something that my mother disapproved of.

In actuality, my mother could have been a stunt driver for the Blues Brothers or the movie Speed. A lovely woman? Yes. A safe driver? Not in this lifetime.

My mother used to scare the stuffing out of my sister and I when she would drive. She would pass parked cars so close that Laurie (the aforementioned sister) would yank her leg over and shriek, like that would move our car away from those precariously close parked cars we were whizzing past at breakneck speed.

She did a 360 into a snow bank one winter day, laughing all the way. She provoked road rage in people in the 1970's, when I don't even think that the phrase had been coined.

Needless to perhaps say, as an adult, I feel stress when the people around me drive poorly. I have been known to whip out that phrase, "Jerk!" upon being cut off. (But I have had to revise my Jerk! Repertoire when my children are in the car and it has now turned into me yelling out in a Jerry Lewis-esque way, "Oh, Lady!!!!!!"

So, how does one relax when one is in the car, with all the people out there cutting us off, dialing on their cell phones, and driving lousy in general? Road rage is in my opinion, fear based. You see people driving like nuts and threatening your loved ones when you are trying to get them from point A to point B, and yes it makes you mad. Also I think that it is also a matter of pride and the feeling that when someone cuts you off or exhibits rude road etiquette that you are being dissed.

Well, for one thing, making sure that you are following all the rules and keeping your eyes on the road is one thing. Stay your own course, I always say. Do what you know is right and don't let that road rage peer pressure change who you are. If someone cuts you off, it is their bad behavior, if you retaliate; you just sink down to their level. Be the bigger person.

Secondly, use your turn signals. It does not make you weak to let the drivers around you know that you are planning to change a lane or make a turn in their general vicinity. As a matter of fact it empowers one to let people know what you are planning on doing with a two-ton piece of machinery.

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