Honk if you have road rage!

John Merli
Published: July 10, 2008

You may have caught that news item a couple of weeks ago that reported on road rage on our highways. It seems that at least one thing these hothead drivers have in common (other than the obvious
fact, of course, that they’re idiots) is that they adorn their vehicles with lots of bumper stickers.

So much for those cars with the “My son is an honor roll student at blah-blah middle school.” But the interesting thing is it doesn’t really matter what the bumper stickers say. It’s not as though they’re all
neo-conservatives or ultra-liberals, flaming Libertarians, religious fanatics or horse lovers or (name-your-own-fool). It’s the mere presence of lots of bumper stickers and other unsightly signage that should
tip us off to stay clear of these folks who apparently think we’re actually interested in what they think about anything.

Some of the reasoning given for these findings by the researchers had something to do with these drivers exhibiting a certain amount of territorial behavior: “This is my vehicle and I use it as both an
instrument for communicating and as a weapon, so don’t tick me off!” Behavioral scientists figure that if someone is that territorial about their vehicle, they may naturally extend that attitude to the
roadways, as well.

I suppose between the Internet and e-mail, and cell phones and home phones, and online blogs, sign language and face-to-face conversation, some people just need yet another means to convey their
thoughts to the rest of us. And what better way to do this than to take a perfectly decent looking car, truck or SUV and adorn its back bumper and rear window with stickers espousing their personal
views on politics, religion, guns, America, abortion, Armageddon, the environment, Bush, Obama, McCain, education, and bad drivers (who they inadvertently encourage to drive even worse by making
them creep up behind their vehicles so they can read in small print, “If you can read this bumper sticker, you’re driving too close!”).

According to the study, another element that may single out the rational drivers from those potential road-ragers among us, albeit to a lesser degree, seems to be those vanity license plates that say
something about their “clever” owners that often make us cringe, or smile, or maybe scratch our heads in puzzlement. (“LVU2BOO”?) Of course, the commonwealth of Virginia encourages us to order
vanity plates because they cost more than those plain old run-of-the-mill plates, so I suppose if we were on a debating team we could argue that the state is encouraging us into road rage — not that
some of those long waits at the DMV itself wouldn’t do it. (For those of you without a wit of sarcasm within you, that was sarcasm. No need to write me. Again.)

Still, apart from bumper stickers and vanity plates and other seemingly territorial adornments tacked onto our vehicles, the truth is there are probably a lot more basic reasons why a relative handful of
drivers seem to be taking out their personal frustrations on other motorists in greater numbers. Driving out of a gas station immediately after spending $60 to fill up the car probably doesn’t put a lot of
drivers in a really good mood. (And so what’s the first thing they do after paying their huge gas bill? Jump back behind the wheel and head for the highway!) Throw in a faltering economy, maybe mortgage
woes, job uncertainty and rising food costs and pretty soon you can start to wonder why we ever venture out of the house in the morning.

Sometimes it might be wise to not drive at all.

At least we’d avoid all that road rage out there and more importantly, all those bumper stickers commanding us to “Honk if You Love Jesus” or making our day with the warm and friendly “Ask Me if I
Care!” — along with totally original and thought-provoking “Some Village Must be Missing its Idiot.”

But $4 gas has moved many of us to public transportation, notably the Metro, where road rage (rail rage?) isn’t an issue. Well, not yet anyway. Some of those train conductors sound like they’re right on
the edge.

John Merli has been a Potomac News columnist since 1985. He has worked in the media for more than 30 years. E-mail him at .