A Little (road) Rage
(copyright 2001)

Say what you will about Yankee ingenuity, once upon four wheels, it takes the back seat. Our nation is uniformly inhabited by motoring delinquents and road morons.

We're a people so able at so many things, so why the foolishness on asphalt? The fact is, there is no uniquely American genius; there is, however, a uniquely American social compact that has for over two hundred years emancipated mankind's innate talents and unleashed upon the world technological, political, money making, and automotive revolution. No mistake, then, with freedom removed from the roads ineptitude reigns.

Rules replace civility, the absence of civility requires more rules, and so on. Rather than to engender civility, the barrage of arrows, lights, limits, and speed bumps have replaced the respect you cannot be trusted to display to your fellow motorists, pedestrians, and reasonable law. As Benjamin Franklin might have said, had he a drivers license, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve... to drive fifty-five."

Bad law makes bad citizens. Our roads are case in point, especially with unreasonably low speed limits. Other cultures have either found ways around it or punted limits altogether. Mussolini got the trains on time, but there was nothing he could do about Italian drivers. We won't talk about the French. The Germans are another matter, but then again, nobody makes a twenty-mile pile up like the Germans. Into the Capitalist era the Chinese are pretty good at road chaos, for where else will you find a headline, "Two Motorcycles Collide: Seven Dead." But here in America, we've perfected organized ignorance.

Having removed responsibility and consequence from driving, the only ones left to outrage are the drunks and "aggressive drivers." Responsibility has been delegated to the lawyers, while the insurance companies have picked up the tab for consequence. Where else is an accident akin to hitting the lotto? That's nothing new, by the way. You could run up massive judgments in 1910 just as quickly as today. The cost of liability insurance has remained constant to easy money over the years. Back then, however, the convenience of a chauffeur was not only to get his hands dirty for you when it came time to change tires, he might even spend the night in jail on your behalf. Heh, that's what class warfare is all about.

Rather than regulate stupidity, we've channeled driving like trolley cars. No wonder we let our children -- and our ancients -- drive. A drivers examination amounts to successfully fitting of the square peg in the square hole, or a lucky guess at multiple choices, and driving proficiency is measured by the ability to distinguish an octagon from a triangle. Know the difference between "R" and "D" and you're licensed to kill. In Arizona, your double-0 status is good for thirty years.

Now that you've got the Queen's Warrant, don't think, just follow the arrows. And don't ever jump the tracks, especially not to get around the moron in front of you. And watch out for the guy turning left with his right blinker on. He'll never get a ticket. You will, though, especially when you exercise that final escape, the sidewalk. The judge won't be amused by your insanity defense -- that the other guy was crazy -- and the insurers will continue to subsidize technically-lawful idiots with your now even more expensive policy.

In the early days, the AAA and a host of motoring clubs and magazines dedicated themselves to road civility. Seems that boys and machines got along magnificently from the beginning, and the boys couldn't control themselves. These "rogues," "scorchers," "joy riders," and "autocrats" who scared horses and offended Madame were considered the "enemies of the sport." The motoring establishment lobbied legislatures and Congress for more restrictive road laws. They actually welcomed the stop sign and red light. Ever since, it's been a struggle between road excess, safety, and everyone else's liberty. Guess who won?

Come one hundred years of motoring, courtesy has been replaced by rules, which have replaced responsibility, which has removed consequence. Abraham Lincoln called for a political religion dedicated to "a reverence for the constitution and laws." That was long before the automobile. Today the law itself is your conscience: you break it, you pay eighty bucks, double if in a work zone, and you're absolved. Have you now any greater respect for the law you broke? Reverence today is measured in points against a license. Lincoln knew nothing of the Duesenberg Eight or the small bock Chevy. Neither did old Abe ever sit through a ten minute Washington D.C. red light at four a.m. with the "no turn on red" sign taunting him insane and a cop patiently waiting behind, trying his impatience. The motor nannies might better have followed Teddy Roosevelt's attitude towards the prohibition crusaders: "If ever there was a wicked attitude it is that of those fanatic extremists who advocate a law so drastic that it cannot be enforced, knowing perfectly well that lawlessness and contempt of the law follow... the very worst possible way of solving the problem."

Just as trebling eight mile an hour speed limits in the early days proved too much temptation for the "worthless sons" of New York's rich (the century speed mark was passed as early as 1904), the fifty-five was one of the most ill-conceived laws wrought upon a people. T.R. was only half right: it criminalized half the nation. The other half turned into self-righteous pansies. And they're with us yet: yeah, you, you speed limit-hugging, left lane-running, traffic asphyxiating fart who blocked my way last week on the Beltway; I gave you your two sanctimonious miles of blinkers, your Pharisaic mile of headlights, and my loving three feet of space between us before I swung around your blind right side. You may call me a lawless speeder; yeah, well, I call you a vigilante and a slower.

Notice how with higher limits speeding has actually decreased? NHSTA won't admit it, but the motels must have taken note. Folks previously bored silly by the double nickel today happily buzz onward to destination. Efficiency and profits in trucking have to be up: take 25% off the time to run across the country and you're looking at real dollar savings. Just think of the economic boon to the pizza industry were every speed limit raised by ten.

There is one downside to reasonable speed limits. I actually miss the fifty-five days of warrior driving in my Mustang 5.0 LS. Making DC to New York without a ticket at double the speed limit was great fun and a great challenge, especially without ever using the median -- heh, I believe in self-moderation. Now I'm overcome by the temptation to just sit back at five-over and not worry. I've been decriminalized.

States that have enlarged reasonableness to the seventy-plus range suffer less and less the curse of Road Warriors vs. Prohibitionists. Those still beholden to Jimmy Carter's velocity, or even the 65, remain in contempt of decent social discourse and the bad habits of irresponsibility remain. Things are improving on our highways, but elsewhere road civility is still seriously challenged. I live in the Washington, D.C. area. Between ludicrous speed limits, dumb traffic rules, and dumber traffic, driving here is an act of self-immolation. In DC, we go either ten or eighty, that is, either passing on the right or proving L.A. a traffic jam wannabe.

We almost found paradise. About ten years ago, a business group put together a private toll road from Dulles Airport to Leesburg, Virginia. I was ecstatic at the possibility, as this was during the dark days of fifty-five. Sadly, capitulation to the State and by limiting their imaginations to profitability, not liberty, and it's just another toll road patrolled by State Troopers and for an ever higher fee to fill corporate not government pillow cases. After numerous restructurings and price hikes, it's still profitable only for the ticket collectors.

That was always my dream: the private race course that got me to work and back. It actually happened. The greatest of the first generation of American motorists was William K. Vanderbilt. He not only launched the first American road race, the Vanderbilt Cup, but he solved the speed problem to which he was himself notably and perpetually subject. When he left Newport in search of higher speed limits, he found that only greedy magistrates awaited him in Long Island. So he did the natural thing to a man worth tens of millions 1904 dollars: he built his own road.

Vanderbilt's was the first modern highway: no horses, no commercial traffic, no intersections. Just 45 miles of sweet, smooth, and cop-free concrete. It never fully worked out, for Vanderbilt himself succumbed to speed limits, though far more rational than others, and he lacked the taking powers of a government needed to build a straight road. (His was built along a patchwork of the properties he was able to buy.) It was a magnificent gesture and the true gentleman's ultimate flip off. want me off your road, fine. Get my own damned road.

I'm no Vanderbilt, so I can't build my own highway free of carts, cops and morons. My only solution has been to mount a sticker on my front bumper with, toidi ,tfel eht no uoy ssap rehtar d'I

-Bromley, 2001