Dec 10 2010
Sam Ang reflects on road rage in his years of driving
The driver-rider relationship; a vicious cycle of Tom & Jerry where we always try different ways to get back at each other. Yup, I’m a rider myself and it’s no surprise that my next few paragraphs relate strongly to my bad experience on the road with drivers.
In my close to 3 years of riding, I can surely say my near accidents involve 90% with cars rather than fellow bikers. Perhaps might be the size of my bike? I don’t know. All I do know from all these near death incidents is that such drivers do not check their blind-spots and confidently change lanes or overtake other vehicles thinking they are the next Sebastian Vettel. Surely it looks cool to see someone doing that on the track and may have caught the F1 flu bug but we’re talking about public roads here and we have many lives depending on each other’s actions.
So when met with such drivers and we nearly collide with them, the next best thing many of us would do besides flashing the finger (which I know almost all of us have done it at some point of our lives) is to let loose on the horns which often results in a not-so-kind feedback from the other party and ends up in a tailgating session. It’s not uncommon to see such happenings everyday on the road. Recently, we saw an increase in cases where drivers start confronting each other. The most memorable to me being the batman incident – Man threatening to hit the other driver with a baseball bat after being confronted when his bat-mobile nearly got involved into an accident with that other driver.
Do we resort to violence when being confronted? Doesn’t one know the consequences of causing injuries to the other party should they be charged? It is really that worth it to react in such a way? I suppose when one meets such a situation, it’s hard to stay clear minded. Could it be that we are facing so much stress with our everyday work that we feel frustrated at everything that goes wrong? With modern day equipment, everyone can become an instant star once their unglamorous behaviour appears on Facebook, You-tube or Stomp but apparently that did not stop people from keeping their cool.
I witnessed a road bullying incident few days ago and wrote in to the Traffic Police department which I got a reply saying that they will take appropriate action against the driver. I suppose it will just be a stern warning to him. Does a stern warning actually prevent one from committing the same thing again? How about a hefty fine instead? Like they say, moneys coming out of their own wallets hurt the most. Or maybe revoking their license? Hmm… might be a good way to reduce private commuters on the road. With the skyrocketed COE prices, I hope it does not lead to a further increase in road rage. Suddenly everyone is feeling pissed because they don’t get to buy a new car.
Sam Ang is a 25 year-old undergraduate and he loves to go on the Internet. Having a strong belief in his opinions, he is an advocate for issues that relates closely to his life.
