My pet peeve - Road rage!

A while back (after a few incidents I'm not going to mention) I decided to "try" to not let road rage affect me.

If I made sure I left home a bit earlier, the slow traffic, learner drivers and oldies wouldn't bug me anymore.
So far it’s working ok-ish. I put on my chilled lounge house, pull out a smoke and enjoy a slow casual drive home... I still have difficulty with "bully drivers". Those are the people who drive up your rear, flash lights at you, cut you off, push in line.... but I'm trying to understand that perhaps that man that pushed in front of me and caused major heart palpitations and that dreaded female hot flush, had just received terrible news about his family or had an urgent work emergency with a mean boss... Sometimes it is hard... but I'm trying.

The problem is to now convince my partner that the need for road rage is unnecessary. Love the man, but men driving can be compared to how dogs are when someone walks past "their" property.

Goodness. If someone overtakes them, cuts them off, they feel the need to "reprimand" that person by a few options:

Number One: Drive up behind them with a distance of 1cm
Number Two: Flash lights, show fingers, call them every dirty name in the book
Number Three: Speed up and deliberately overtake them, pushing right in front of them (usually during this time their ability to hear, speak or take notice of you completely disappears).

The aftermath usually consists of an upset female, with the man protesting, "but didn't you see how he cut me off".. um ya. Sure. He definitely had it coming - oh wait. you just did the same thing to someone else. "Buts that different, I didn't mean to".

My personal worst, is when a car flies by, going almost double the speed limit and suddenly your anticipation of a quiet romantic drive home (us woman and our silly expectations) suddenly turns into a speed chase that could compete with a traffic cop in a GTI chasing an Audie R8... I wonder what it is that causes men to become like this...

The scary part is when you make a mistake on the road and even though you apologise, sometimes people follow you, drive up right behind you, flash you, zap you, etc. There is nothing more difficult than remaining calm. Our human body automatically clicks into safety mode - which means anger/protection (aka - ego out in full force). How dare you cut me off, poor little me, I did nothing... sure.

But hey, with some chilled house, a smoke (and a car with a maximum speed of 80km/ph) who am I to judge...it’s not like I'd be able to catch up to them anyway!!!!)  ;-)