Vehicular Aggression

The standard Safe Practices for Motor Vehicle Operations, ANSI/ASSE Z15.1, defines defensive driving as "driving to save lives, time, and money, in spite of the conditions around you and the actions of others." This definition is taken from the National Safety Council's Defensive Driving Course. It is a form of training for motor vehicle drivers that goes beyond mastery of the rules of the road and the basic mechanics of driving. Its aim is to reduce the risk of driving by anticipating dangerous situations, despite adverse conditions or the mistakes of others. This can be achieved through adherence to a variety of general rules, as well as the practice of specific driving techniques. I don’t necessarily agree with/adhere to these ideals. I am what some would call an offensive driver (some have described me as aggressive and the terms “road rage” have been used a time or two). This is a product of my childhood mostly and the events of me learning how to drive. I don’t apologize much for my zeal for driving, except when I have a passenger go white knuckle while taking an off ramp through a toll plaza. Some people can handle my aggressiveness and a few have been saved by it (ask my brother). However, it is something I am trying to correct.

I said it was a product of my upbringing and indeed it could be. My father, a good man if not a little reckless behind the wheel, was the inspiration for both my brother and my driving prowess. Our old house that we lived in through elementary school was off of a fairly busy road in our part of town. We had an alley like most the older neighborhoods which didn’t have a convenient way of getting to when coming from one direction on that busy road. So, in order to resolve that problem, our father would often drive the wrong direction on the wrong side of the road in order to get to and from this alley. It was bold and sometimes scary, but absolutely the definition of offensive driving. This is why I got part of my driving gusto from. The other half of it came in high school. Right after I got my license, my two best friends and I drove to the panhandle to campout at one of their relative’s farms. On the way out there we took a more casual approach to driving and had a lot of fun making up names for stuff and talking about women. It was a fun trip. We ended up staying a little longer than expected on our return day and one of the guys needed to get back to spend some time with his girlfriend. We were hauling butt back to Dallas but the route to the panhandle is not all interstate, so we got stuck behind traffic and what-not. Long story short, one of the guys taught the other two of us to drive a little more aggressively. Then, we took it a step further on our own. The guy who had to get back was driving 90 miles an hour at one point down a two lane state highway weaving in and out of traffic (this began a long life of me testing the boundaries of my driving).

Some people don’t get this on the job training, so to speak, and some are just more cautious due to situations that have happened to them. Not me. I did a spinning 540 on an icy toll road my senior year of college and that didn’t phase my driving one bit. I’ve been in numerous other accidents as well, nothing has really changed. Like I said, the only thing that has really got me to calm my driving fire has been having passengers in the truck who were uncomfortable with that type of driving. There have been plenty of them. But, most people don’t seem to mind too much, so I don’t adjust out of it. I have to admit, if I am driving my niece, I am the complete opposite. If my father is around, I am also a lot more cautious (I know I learned some bad driving habits from him, but I don’t want him to know that). There are times when I am rip-roaring around the roads of Dallas when I have pause that isn’t caused by someone in my vehicle. One of those happened today when someone, driving much like me, came speeding off the toll road to deliberately cut me off. How do I know it was deliberate? I was on the access road and sped up to try to make it in front of him before he came out of the toll booth. Somehow, even with navigating the toll booth he sped up to faster than he had been going before and slid barely in front of me as the lanes merged. I don’t think I’ve done anything that extreme before, but I don’t want to be like that regardless. So, next time you are riding with me and you see that I’m being remotely aggressive…remind me to check myself.

Let’s face it; if everyone was just a little bit more defensive in their driving, then the roads might be a safer and happier place.