Houston traffic is notorious for being bumper-to-bumper frustrating.

My temper gets the best of me sometimes, especially when someone zooms across four lanes of traffic in front of me to make the exit.

I’ve seen people reading a book while driving, blaring music so loud my eardrums hurt and forgetting their vehicle was equipped with turn signals.

But I saw something this week I never expected to see.

Road rage on steroids.

I was making a U-turn underneath the interstate. Waiting to merge, I noticed two cars in the intersection to my right had been in a fender bender. One of them had run the light, and the car headed south had been T-boned.

Cars were zipping around the wreck, so there wasn’t an opening for me and the dozen or so cars behind me to merge.

But then, in less than a minute, the unbelievable happened.

The car that had T-boned the side of the other car backed up. I thought it was to start clearing the intersection. But then the driver put his or her car into drive and bashed the side of the other car again.

Things like that happen in the movies, not in real life, I thought. The person behind me honked, and I moved as there was an opening. I thought about going back but there was no way to get to that intersection with traffic from all directions.

I drove away with my mouth open. I’d seen road rage on videos but never in real life, never to that level of anger and frustration.

This person’s car was banged up, but to intentionally bash it in again, and endanger the safety of the person in the other car as well as him or herself, was unimaginable.

There’s really no excuse for acting like an out-of-control lunatic when things go wrong. But there are quite a few reasons why people’s tolerance is at the empty mark.

Covid tops the list.

At the beginning of the pandemic, our loved ones were isolated from us while they were sick. We weren’t allowed to see them in their final days, weren’t allowed to say goodbye.

For two years, we lost the opportunity to take vacations, visit relatives, or go to the movies. Now a variant of the virus is making the rounds, and we’re cancelling activities again.

There’s the heat.

Southerners know July and August are two of the most miserable months of the year. In a state where it’s hot a good bit of the time, having a string of 100-plus degree days ignites tempers as well as brush fires. And we haven’t even gotten our first electric bill.

These days, it’s become acceptable to be a rude, obnoxious human being. Acting as a decent human being is no longer the first choice.

We need to start seeing people wearing an apron, a name tag or a uniform as a person.

A teenager saving money for a car or tuition.

A single mom working a thank-less job to provide for her children.

A father taking the job nobody else wanted because he wants to provide for his family.

A teacher struggling with demanding parents and a system that demands more than anyone should have to give.

A driver who made a mistake in judgment. Not someone who purposely left home, hoping he or she could wreck her car and yours.

The time is now to give people a break.

Revenge therapy doesn’t work. You don’t have the right to lose your temper and cause someone else to fear for their safety.

If another driver is traveling slower than the traffic around them, that’s their choice, not a personal slam to you.

If the clerk in the store isn’t perky and friendly, perhaps it’s because they’re the only one who showed up for work that day and customers have been rude and obnoxious for the past four hours.

Put yourself in someone else’s shoes and rein in that temper.

Show compassion and civility.

Let’s make the world a better place.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.