Diary of a Wolfeman

Okay, yeah, I’m jumping on the bandwagon here with this post, but I will not link the original article because it already gets enough traffic – which is what I’m here to talk about.

Road rage comes from people not knowing how to drive being in front of people that DO know how to drive.

I grew up in small towns scattered about Southern Oregon, which collectively had less than 25k people, LOTS of twisty back roads, and LOTS of rain. I learned how to surf the same way any Oregonian kid does: by driving a small car with bald tires in a howling deluge. (1977 Subaru GL wagon floated on 1/4 inch of water, but stuck to snow like glue. Go figure.)

I have been driving (legally) for almost 19 years now, and have never caused an accident. The most serious accident I have been involved in as a driver was the time that poor girl slid into the ass end of my ’74 Plymouth in ‘Vegas at a stop sign during a rainstorm. I wiped the paint off my bumper, but she had relocated her front end over a foot to the rear.

None of my skills matter at this point, though, because the moment a single drop of water falls from the sky here in the Portland Metro, you remember that about half of the people on the road DIDN’T grow up here, and haven’t the foggiest notion about how to drive in the rain. Nevermind the fact that they’ve been here for several years at this point, they can’t seem to figure this shit out.

Where a sane and skilled driver would slow down 5mph or so and lengthen his following distance, these people freak the fuck out and drop to about 30mph. This causes all the folks who CAN drive to crawl up on their ass, and in very short order you have a big pile of idiocy doing a bumper-to-bumper crawl down the 26.

In clear weather, I can get home from work in 30 minutes during rush-hour traffic. At anything more than a sprinkle of rain, it goes up to an hour, sometimes as bad as 1 1/2 hours. To. Go. 20. Miles. No, less than that – it can take that long just to get to the Tunnel, which is still a couple miles short of home.

An hour, sitting there with some asshat in an SUV shining his headlights DIRECTLY INTO MY BRAIN all because the fuckheads in front can’t figure out that the rough pavement they are driving on is DESIGNED for better traction in wet weather and they don’t have to slow down this much.

On top of that, those hundreds of SUV’s around me are being driven by one person with no passengers, taking up as much space as they possibly can without upgrading to an actual semi. Me, I drive my car to client sites, so I have to drive. Most of these idjits just drive because they can’t be bothered to take the train. Heaven-fucking-forbid they walk the two blocks from their house to a bus stop. NOOOoooo, they NEED to drive that behemoth to work and take up MY road!

THAT is what causes road rage.

I am a Techie – I build things. I have a degree in electronics, an understanding of explosives, rocketry and engineering and all the machining skills necessary to construct and mount missile launchers on my car. Do you know why I haven’t done it yet?

Because then I’d have to drive through the debris field created by me blowing your slow ass back to wherever it was you learned to drive and out of my way. As soon as I can figure out how to completely incinerate your smoking remains before my tires get there, then I will be a lot calmer.

What’s that beeping noise coming from your OnStar console? That’s the missile-lock warning. Get the FUCK out of my way.