I almost died 15 minutes ago

incivility is going to actually kill people

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The headline is not an exaggeration. I am not doing rhetorical hyperbole. I mean that I actually almost died in a T-bone car wreck 15 minutes ago.

What’s more disturbing to me is how calm I am as I type this. This kind of incident has become so frequent that it doesn’t trigger my adrenaline anymore.

I’m going to describe to you what happened. As you read it, please keep this in mind:

This kind of thing happens to me at least four or five times a week. Has done for about three years now. It’s a complete change from what it was like to drive in New England four years ago. What you’re reading has become normal, not the exception. The only difference with this incident is how close the call was.

Imagine two roadways, a main thoroughfare, with side streets meeting it at right angles. Visualize me driving from “south” to “north” on a vertical line.

Then, visualize another car on the “east” or right-hand side of a line drawing.

With the prevailing traffic, I’m traveling between 25 and 30 mph (the speed limit is 25 mph).

From my right, from a side street, a woman in a full-sized SUV pulled out right in front of me. This required me slamming on full brakes. The kind of stop that, in the days before anti-lock brakes, would have made loud tire screeching noises.

I stopped for about two seconds, shaken, trying to collect myself.

The woman who pulled out in front of me slowed down, rolled down her window and began:

”YOU MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE YOU STUPID FUCK [I couldn’t make out the rest of what she was screaming.]”

That’s right. The woman who almost got us both killed, the woman who broke traffic laws and common sense, then slowed down to verbally abuse me and call me foul names. She blamed me for what she did.

What was her demographic? About 60. Morbidly obese. Frowsy gray hair. Bloated, red-faced alcoholic complexion. Those eyeglasses.

Readers, again, as a reminder: this is normal now. This behavior is not occasional, or the exception. I count. My count shows that 80 percent of the time something like this happens, the violator gives me the finger, or screams out the window.

I am not perfect, but I am a good driver. I am not at fault. I obey traffic rules. The only moving violation I’ve ever had was a speeding ticket when I was 17 (I’m 48 now).

Readers, this is what I mean when I say the abandonment of “small” etiquette scales up. Driving rules are an extrapolated and formalized kind of etiquette that focuses on preventing death. As people stopped being courteous when they walked by other shoppers in tight aisles, they began to be discourteous when piloting 2 tons of steel.

They’re now willing to risk their own death, and mine, simply to aggress.

Readers, help brainstorm a solution?

Please leave your ideas about how to tackle this problem in the comments, and thank you.

I have some ideas, but none of them are certain:

1. Get police to focus on traffic rule violations. Less sitting in the lazy speed traps, and more patrolling the streets in unmarked cars. Observe the behavior. Notice how many people are running red lights, looking at their phones.

2. Arrest these people and make publicity out of it. Don’t let them off with a warning.

3. Public service campaigns of some sort (don’t know what form, don’t know what media, am open to ideas) that emphasize road rules. Hammer home the idea that safe driving culture is not optional, it’s required.

Somehow, we have to change the cultural attitude. It’s not enough to punish individual wrongdoers after the fact. We have to have some kind of strong social censure/shaming to go along with it to deter reckless driving.

The police are already overburdened, and they can’t turn around without some citizen commission calling them racist for arresting a black criminal. It’s not the fault of the police, but we need their help for this. And that means they need our help (moral support, funding, and more) to do it.

What do you think?