Letter to the Editor: Growing menace
BY Jim Mixon, Tulsa
Sunday, September 30, 2012
9/30/12 at 4:41 AM
Road rage is rampant out there. Every day I see motorists tailgating, blaring horns for up to 20 seconds, usually in response to the heinous crime of being cut off. Expletives are shouted. Rubber is burned. Sign language is doled out generously.
I recently witnessed an extreme case of road rage at a grocery store parking lot. Two motorists had cut each other off in such a way that one of them was going to have to back up before either car could move. Since each driver thought it was the other's duty to retreat, they sat there leaning on their respective horns for about five minutes.
When neither budged an inch, they jumped out and, after a brief shouting match, proceeded to duke it out right there in front of the store, amid a growing group of spectators. A hefty woman in one of the cars got out to help her guy fight their common adversary, pulling him down from behind by his hair. (The petite woman in the other car wisely chose to stay put.)
Since it was about 110 degrees, it did not take long for the pugilists to lose interest in fisticuffs. They re-entered their cars, and both backed up and departed, something they could have done 10 minutes earlier.
The Oklahoma Driver's Manual calls road rage "the fastest-growing menace on the highway today." It appears the ODM is not on the reading list of many drivers.
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Associated Images:
Cars inch their way through a traffic jam on U.S. 169. MATT BARNARD / Tulsa World file
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