My Thoughts Exactly: Pushy Drivers

Sunday, 03 October 2010 | by Pat's Picks

The Complaint Box feature in the Sunday New York Times tackled an annoyance that is near the top of my rudeness list: drivers who don’t wait their turn when traffic is backed up.

There aren’t many times that I get aggressive in traffic. But I really get worked up when a driver has so little respect for everyone else on the road that he (or she) thinks its OK to ignore the long line of traffic at a backed-up exit and drive up to the front and muscle in. When I see that’s about to happen, I attach the front bumper of my car to the back bumper of the car ahead and make it really clear to the pushy driver that his line-cutting is going to have to happen somewhere else. The rest of us all waited our turn. We didn’t like it either, but that’s how civilized society works.

Times editor Alice DuBois was the author of the piece in the paper. She says she’s found otherwise reasonable people who argue to her that this behavior isn’t line cutting—it’s skillful driving. She offers this: try walking into Starbucks on Monday morning and “skillfully” cut into the front of the long line when the person who’s really next doesn’t move up quite fast enough. Without the anonymity of your car, you’ll probably feel ashamed and selfish. Cutting a line in your car is no different.

Read the entire “Pushy Drivers” essay in the New York Times.