It’s Twitter Gumming Up Our Roads

Road rage articles are all the rage.

5 min readSep 10, 2022

Driving was briefly beautiful in the early lockdown. Driving has become madness since.

There’s always someone who thinks themselves above the rules: speeding, changing lanes, or making right-hand turns from the middle lane.

This morning I entered a traffic circle as three bicyclists approached from behind on the right. Nosing in, I left plenty of room between my car and the curb, shielding the bikes until they exited.

Two of the cyclists waved a thank you as they pedaled away.

Thirty minutes later I was saying a rapid goodbye to my pediatric oncologist-cancer researcher wife at a lab building. There is no drop-off next to the eight story structure. Drivers have to pick a spot, drop, and go. A year ago a shallow, half-hearted bicycle lane had been painted on the two-lane road.

The moment my wife opened the door, something slammed against the left side of the car. It dragged from back to front like a metal screech in a Transformers movie. I was certain we had been hit.

Scanning the road, I saw a cyclist slam their gloved hand into the next car ahead of me and the next.

As I pulled out and proceeded past the parked delivery trucks, I could read the bicyclist’s jersey. It sported a proud logo for the Family Care Center. A big blue heart showed how much they cared.

Screen capture by author. Video and headline from Fox23 News.

The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration reports that early 2021 saw the most accidents and deaths on American roadways since 2006.

“Despite safer roads, safer vehicles and stronger traffic safety laws on the books, the U.S. has witnessed more, not less death on our roadways even at a time when other nations saw dramatic drops,” — Jake Nelson, AAA’s director of traffic safety advocacy and research

Road rage shootings doubled from 2018 to 2021. A Nationwide insurance survey published in 2022 showed that most people think drivers have gotten worse since 2020.