I get honked at a lot in traffic. And it’s angry honking. It’s mostly not my fault.
I hate driving. If our area had decent public transportation, I would rarely get behind the wheel. Driving is terribly boring, and sometimes it forces you to make quick decisions.
I’m what you would call a deliberate decision maker, pondering the merits and drawbacks of even the most inconsequential decision. I may have been at a restaurant 50 times, but I still want to read the menu from front to back, and then from back to front, just in case something was missed.
Behind the wheel, I try to decide whether there’s adequate time to pull into traffic. The deliberation is so long that by the time a decision is made there is no longer time to safely get on the road.
Those angry honks from those waiting behind me are understandable. A perfectly good opportunity to turn was squandered and slowed everybody down. I get it. And believe me, I avoid left-hand turns like the plague to spare my fellow drivers from my lollygagging antics.
But other times, people start honking at me for not pulling into traffic when there definitely isn’t adequate time. On more than one occasion while making a left-hand turn at a stop sign, I have had some honking maniac who (after having to wait a whopping 30 seconds) has changed lanes to pull into the right-turn lane and then screeched their tires, making a left-turn in front of me, nearly causing an accident. And then guess who catches up to them half a minute later at the next red light? Me. The slowpoke they just had to get in front of.
I get honked at for going the speed limit. I’m just not a person who hurries; I’ve been about three minutes late everywhere I’ve ever gone for my entire life. You should have seen my high school tardy record. It was a doozy. I see no reason to start rushing to be on time now. It seems rather silly to try to “make up” time by speeding and putting people on the roads at a greater risk because of my tardiness. If I leave my home late, I simply expect to arrive at my destination late and that’s that.
I have no desire to turn my morning commute into an opportunity to clock in a new “personal best” for speed. The office will still be there whether I get there three minutes later or not.
Why is everyone in such a big hurry? Surely not everyone speeding on the road has some sort of super important job where lives are at stake if they don’t arrive at the earliest possible second.
Besides, almost without fail, the people who do their best Mario Andretti impersonation off the line at a stoplight or try to Tokyo drift around a corner end up stopped at the next red light with the people they left in the dust. So, what was the point of all that dangerous driving? Why not slow down and smell the roses instead?
I even get honked at as a pedestrian. I can’t tell you how many times I have been walking on the sidewalk minding my own business and have merely looked across the street, when some overzealous wannabe do-gooder has slammed on their brakes and started frantically waving me to cross over into oncoming traffic.
Mind you, this never occurs at a crosswalk, it’s always in the middle of a block while traffic from the other direction is whizzing by and crossing the street would get me flattened into a pancake. So, imagine my consternation at being on the receiving end of an angry honk for simply shaking my head “no thank you” to the opportunity to become roadkill.
You’d have thought I’d flagged the driver down, begging to cross the road, rather than merely looked in the direction of a shop on the other side of the street. I’m a curious person. I like to look at stuff while I walk. So, sue me.
After I had my son, I bought a “baby on board” sign to put in my back window and that seemed to slightly curtail people honking at me for refusing to drive like a bat out of hell. When the suction cup that held it in place broke, I noticed an uptick in angry honking again. I’m considering buying one of those “Please be patient, student driver” bumper stickers.
Now, lest I lead you to believe honking should be outlawed, there are often two types of drivers who I believe deserve to be at the receiving end of a honk: first, people who drive SUVs that are approximately the size of a city bus (I’m looking at you Suburban, Tahoe, Escalade and Yukon drivers.). In my experience, the larger the vehicle, the less likely the driver is to remember they have side and rearview mirrors, and just make lane changes willy nilly whenever they feel like it and good luck to everybody else.
The second most honk-worthy are drivers who have JoyFM bumper stickers. Listen, folks, I like the song “Jesus Take the Wheel” as much as the next person, but you people have got to stop taking that song literally. Please keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times.
If I had a nickel for every time somebody with a JoyFM bumper sticker had absent-mindedly wandered halfway into my lane and about sent me into the ditch, I could buy myself that new hopefully honk-repelling bumper sticker.