We all do stupid things from time to time - things that we regret doing. My wife had just such a moment last night.
We were coming back from a school function and were getting ready to park the car. My wife put the car into reverse and started to back up to parallel park. About a second later, there was a loud honk behind us - she had started to back up and had not seen the car behind her. She hit the brakes and stopped. An accident was averted.
OK, no real harm done. Yes, it was her fault. Yes, she should have looked better. No one is looking to say otherwise.
However, as the driver of the other car pulled away, he turned to us and gave us the finger.
Now, I’m not faulting him for being somewhat upset. I get upset when I see people who cause accidents too. I can understand his anger. But was that really necessary? What ever happened to simply letting bygones be bygones – especially in situations where no harm was done? Is it really necessary to “utter” obscenties at someone just because you have the “upper moral hand” (so to speak)?
“there I was, innocently driving through a parking lot, searching for a space, having had the worst day of my life. When suddenly, I noticed that a car a few spaces ahead of me was backing up and about to hit me! thinking quickly, I laid on the horn, narrowly averting an accident. Damn, though, doesn’t everybody know enough to look where you’re going?!!!?!?!?!?!?!?!”
Actually, I agree w/you zev. we humans make mistakes, goof up, get distracted. And when you’ve got a situation where it was a “gee I almost had bad event A happen”, we often get focused on the bad event vs. the “almost” (as in didn’t).
Back when I’d read Ann Landers, there was a column (IIRC) where some one suggested that we need a universal “gosh, I screwed up here, sorry about that” sign, something as universal as the middle finger for “gosh you screwed up here, you should be sorry about that” sort of thing.
It’s a special circumstance due to the fact that the other person was in a car, and could drive away without having to deal with your no doubt negative reaction, no different from the way that posters to a message board often say things to each other they would never consider saying if they were face to face.
Ya freakin’ moron.*
*just what a female driver said to me, prefaced with “wrong way”, one day when I accidently turned down a poorly-marked one-way side street in Pottstown, PA. I had already realized my error and was about to turn at the next block when the other driver made her helpful comment. I don’t actually think you’re a freakin’ moron.
My favorite driving story was in my old neighborhood in Rochester, NY. There was a particular intersection, a “T” with a light, where the right turn ends in another light after about 50 feet. The way the lights are timed, a red light at the T is also a red light at the next light, so making a right turn on red, besides violating the “no right on red” sign, doesn’t buy you even a single second of time savings.
I’m at the light, waiting patiently for the green when a person behind me starts honking. Driver is just laying on the horn expecting me to make a right on red when it’s clearly illegal and won’t do a damn thing anyway.
So I wait for the green, then make my right, then the left at the next light, which is exactly what the car behind me does. The car then ducks to my right and passes me while the driver, a little old lady, flips me the bird! :eek:
I am also reminded of one of my own personal less-than-stellar driving moments. I’m on 42nd St, wading through horrid gridlock just coming up on Broadway. I’m about 100ft from the intersection when a guy coming the other way decides to stop and ask me directions. All he got outta me was a “Get Moving!” while I conveniently jerk my thumb the direction he’s pointed.
Usually, the severity of situations such as the OPs can be mitigated if some apologetic gesture is made. Did you wife wave or something to indicate that she realized she had made a boneheaded move?
Hello, zev. Hearing from you is always a good thing. I have a couple of thoughts.
First is that common civility has never been as common as most of us like to remember it. Selfishness and disrespect for others have always been with us. If the social conventions that once suppressed the worst of the behaviors we use to express our poorer natures have less force now, I think that’s a separate isssue. I don’t mean it isn’t important. I mean only that I don’t think we’re actually more hateful toward our planetary cohabitants than we ever were – we just are more willing to express it in immediate and personal terms. This is more a matter of fashion than biology, and I suspect that the trend is cyclical. Some day before we die I bet we’ll see civility make a comeback.
Second, the pressures to restrain the venom we all have within us are partly innate, partly a result of training, but also a calculated measure of probability: the “if I do/say this, how likely am I to get punched in the nose?” factor. Things that affect this are (physical or metaphorical) size, proximity, and anonymity. People tend to be more polite when they are dealing in person with people who know them and the balance of power is fairly equal, less so when this is not the case. Look at the behavior of members of this message board. Most of us are pseudonymous, none of us are physically present, and I think that often shows up in our willingness to be rude. Sealed in a car on one’s way out of a parking lot is also a way to feel safe enough to behave badly without fear of repercussions.
Third, we may have evolved from proto-apes, but not that far, and we’re still an imitative animal. When we see bad behavior, especially on the part of those with status and power, we tend to emulate it, and then we, by sheer force of numbers, reinforce the trend. Dick Cheney is almost certainly not much worse a person than, say, Spiro Agnew, but the Maryland Marauder never told anyone to go f### himself on the Senate floor, and never got caught agreeing with his boss in front of a live microphone that a New York Times reporter was a “major-league a######.” It’s a small thing in the vast cultural soup, but it counts.
I’ve been known to give the finger on more than one occasion while driving. But if someone in a car does a jackass thing and then gives me a wave or a look of apology, making clear that they know they are in the wrong and that they are sorry, then i always let it go.
I like to think i’m a pretty attentive driver and don’t make stupid mistakes very often, but when i do i also try to make clear to the other driver that i’m in the wrong, and that i apologise.
I think much of it has to do with being in cars. People don’t relate to others in cars as if they were people, they relate to them as if they were machines, and people are able to step back and put the machine in front of them, too, so they see it as two machines relating, and machines don’t need to be nice or poilite or courteous to each other.
An interesting phenomenon my wife and I have noticed recently: While driving on the highway, we will need to merge into an adjacient lane. We will turn on the blinker, and many, I would say most, people will either ignore us, and not allow the merge, or actively discourage it, by closing the gap with the car in front of them.
However, we drive a convertible, and if one of us turns and makes eye contact with the driver, they will IMMEDIATELY back off and make room. I really do think there’s something about being able to face someone fairly directly, without the intervening metal and glass, that shocks people back into realizing that everyone else out on the roads is a person, not just a machine.
I think an apologetic gesture does the same thing. It gives us feedback so that we have to stop and humanize the other driver.
IMHO part of the problem is that we don’t have a standard “apologetic gesture” for automotive use. Nobody in the other car can hear you squeal “Oh shit! Sorry, my bad!” We have the little “thank you” wave, but what’s the “sorry, my bad” gesture?
It needs to be something clearly visible and not so expressive that it further endangers everybody’s safety. The Car Talk guys considered the issue:
Hmm, I’ve never seen the “raised open palm with your head slightly bowed” thing: is that generally recognized as a “sorry, my bad”? What I do, when and if the situation comes up, is to hit myself a few times (gently) on the side of the head with the heel of my open hand. Does that look like a “sorry, my bad” to you? Is there a way we can get everyone to use it? Is there a better signal that, as Tom suggests, just uses the signaling mechanisms of the car and doesn’t require the other driver to be actually looking at the apologizing driver?
For a “Sorry, my bad” I throw a peace sign and a smile. If the person is completely over-reacting and still looks pissed off, I ignore them or just smile and wave again. No sense in agrivating the situation. If somebody is unstable enough to get angry about something that didn’t happen, no sense in provoking them into anything more serious.
When I accidently cut someone off, or make some other doofusy traffic offense: I put up my hands, kind of like in surrender, and as the offendee goes past, I wave, shrug and smile. It works amazingly well. This does not happen often, but, friends of mine have started doing the same. What I really want is one of those light-up digital signs on the back of my car that I can program to say: “Oops, sorry” :smack:
I think most people get angry because they think you did it on purpose, or they’re really, really having a bad day. (On the other hand maybe they’re assholes :dubious: )
Whatever happened to fair dealing
And pure ethics
And nice manners?
Why is it everyone now is a pain in the Ass?
Whatever happened to class?
Class.
Whatever happened to Please may I
And Yes thank you
And How charming?
Now every son of a bitch
Is a snake in the grass
Whatever happened to class?
Class.
Oh, there ain’t no gentelmen to open up the doors,
There ain’t no ladies now there’s only pigs and whores
And even kids’ll knock you down so’s they can pass
Nobody’s got no class!!!
(with acknowledgment to Kander and Ebb)
I always say there’s a Broadway song for every occasion…
I used to be a real up-tight driver. Then a little over a decade ago, I had an emergency. As in, need to get to the hospital RIGHT NOW emergency. I drove within the law… Barely. I was an ass of a driver.
Ever since then, whenever I see someone do something boneheaded, dangerous, or rude in traffic, I calm down a bit, thinking that maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason for it. I know it’s not always the case, but it helps me be more civil.
One morning recently, I almost did a very boneheaded thing: pulling out of the street my house is on (which has very little traffic), I suddenly remembered I’d forgotten something.
So I shifted into reverse, just before looking into the rearview mirror and seeing a pickup truck right behind me.
I shifted back into drive and pulled off to the side, reflexively giving the Richard Lewis one-handed “Oy, I’m a Dummy” gesture, slapping my forehead with the palm of my left hand.
My window was down, so as the truck driver passed, he also heard me say, “Sorry!” as I gave a pseudo salute with my head slightly bowed. He was a gentleman, waving and yelling, “No problem!”
In answer to the OP, we as a nation are of two minds about manners – we want there to be civilization, but we’re scared stiff of appearing weak:
George Will once wrote a column in which he decried the lack of civility in “Dennis Rodman’s America” as he called it.
It would have been more convincing, had he not recently approvingly quoted John Wayne in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon: “Never apologize…, it’s a sign of weakness.”
My favorite is when someone starts walking across the street in a crosswalk in front of your car, then the light turns green in your favor, but the asswipe continues to lollygag in front of you and won’t make any effort to speed up to get across the street and out of your way.
Sitting at a red traffic light; I in my Chevy S10 and the another driver to my left in his Ford F150.
Pedestrian in front of us, crossing in violation of the bright DON’T WALK sign …moving sloooo-oooowly.
Light turns green and pedestrian (moving right-to-left) has almost cleared my front bumper and is preparing to step in front of the Ford.
And, as if telepathically summoned, both the driver of the Ford and I give a quick goose to the accelerator and scoot forward about a foot.
Pedestrian jumps straight into the air like a scared rabbit and zips across the street.
I turn to look at the other driver just as he turns to look at me…
Hrm. In Korea we flash our emergency lights for a few seconds to say thank you and/or sorry while we’re driving. I’m assuming this is not universal.
My girlfriends and I have learned to keep our feelings to ourselves when driving in Seoul. Male drivers will actually stop and get out of the car to verbally harass female drivers who express any kind of discontent towards them - especially if said female is younger than them. Now we simply smile radiantly at them while muttering “fuck you, douchebag” under our breath.
