Richard Baum

I don’t know whether heavy rain brings out maniacs, but in the showers last night I was a victim of road rage, and it made me sad that people can be aggressive for absolutely no reason at all.

I was returning from the fish and chip shop (Dockers, the new one on Bury New Road near Lidl – and very nice it is too) when I made the major strategic error of turning onto Kings Road. I had momentarily forgotten the vital lesson that one should never go anywhere near there in a car because whereas the area was designed principally as a thoroughfare, it is in fact a car park. This was clearly demonstrated last night when about thirteen cars were trying to turn about four different ways, simultaneously navigating between parked cars strewn across the place and abandoned by all and sundry. It was like the aftermath of a stock car rally.

And of course it was raining very heavily, so people were wet, and hot air was blowing to keep windscreens clear, so they were hot too. And wet, hot people don’t like being stuck in traffic jams. As anyone who’s seen “Falling Down” will confirm.

Amidst much hooting and tooting and not moving anywhere, there emerged from the back seat of a Toyota Corolla someone who could best be described as an urban orang-utan, swinging his arms and grunting in my general direction. I wound down my window and began to decipher the string of obscenities with which he put forward his opinion that without several cars reversing, he would be stuck there all night. Whilst I couldn’t fault the animal-man’s logic, his pointing, shouting, swearing and generally menacing behaviour was absolutely unnecessary.

What makes people get so cross, so quickly? If anyone in any of the cars he’d been screaming at had been equally angry, they’d have got out and belted him. It was only sheer cowardice, rather than respect for the law, which stopped me getting out myself. His entirely unreasonable behaviour made me fill up with rage. How dare he come pointing his angry fingers at me? How dare he launch into a string of language barely fit for the mess deck of a Navy frigate, in the middle of a street with families everywhere? What gave him the right to fill the air with his noxious anger, just because someone had held him up for thirty seconds on a Thursday evening?

I am firmly of the view that he is exactly what he mouthed at me when he drove past. But I won’t type the word out on here.

Was it always like this? If there was traffic fifty years ago, did drivers get out of their Austin Sevens, remove their hats and monocles, and launch into a fearsome tirade against the occupant of the stationery Vauxhall Victor? Or do we live in a time now where this type of behaviour has come to be within the boundaries of acceptability? I don’t know if any of the other drivers victim to this abuse were as shocked as I was. I hope they were.

I think my feelings of rage were more down to frustration than anything else. Not frustration that I was stuck in a jam because of an atrociously parked Volvo estate, but because this grunting, screaming madman could get away with his flood of swearing without any form of retribution whatsoever. And because if anyone had calmly told him to keep it down, they’d probably have been rewarded with a beating.

The only consolation would have been that his getaway would’ve been blocked by the traffic.

I wish we could reclaim some of the respect that went before. Politicians talk about this all the time, and real solutions are obviously hard to find. But I wish we’d all have got out and politely told this guy where to go last night. That we didn’t was to be expected, but he couldn’t have beaten us all up and he’d have learned that there are better ways to get out of traffic jams than shouting at drivers til they drive away scared.

This guy had kids in his car. That’s the most depressing thing. They’ll learn that shouting is the way to get things done. That patience and mutual understanding aren’t worth bothering with if you’re big and strong enough to frighten other people. I don’t know how to fix this, but I enjoy thinking about it, and I know other people do too. And hopefully we can find a way soon. Because going out for fish and chips shouldn’t be this hard.

Rick