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| Road Violence |
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| Road Rage for Road Warriors |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, August 06, 1986. It must be a crisis: even columnists are covering it. It has - at first, heaving sob - all the pathos, false sentiment, hypocrisy, and pseudo-import so dear to the hearts of those inclined to suck up to The Great American Plantlife – or journalists, but I repeat myself. It has widows and orphans, opportunities for 'reactions' and reflections on Life, and simply screams for the rhetorical question which is the stigmata of the lousy reporter: 'Why? Of course you know, in the age of nuclear bombs, starvation, and war, to which Social Disease I refer. Violence in Traffic. Of course you were about to say that. We all were. Road Violence (that’s shorter and reminds people of the “Road Warrior” movies – point that out to Copy Editor) is on the increase, says dem dat know. It is best exemplified by two men, both of Colorado, who evidently engaged in a 95 MPH drag race through traffic. Then, Words Were Exchanged. They met as Champions of the Canard on the pull-off. One Man's Man made his intellectual point by knifing the other in the stomach. This brilliant sally so confused the punctured opponent that he could only unravel that Gordian knot of thought with a pistol. Alas, the knife victim lives yet. Fortunately, the pistol did the deed intended. There are innumerable tales of taunts leading to violence between drivers of cars these days. It is therefore assumed this is a crime category on the increase. I wonder. In any case, it is a positive trend, one that should be encouraged. I truly think the sane, well balanced creatures who take umbrage at the labored thoughts of others of their ilk should meet as often as possible on fields of mortal combat. May their honor be upheld, may their aim be true, may God welcome them to psycho-Valhalla. In years past, the drunk or chemically defective bullies rarely had to take out their lives’ failure upon each other. Speed limits were higher and there was no air conditioning in victim's cars. There was always a young couple (for the purposes of this article, a 'couple' shall refer to a male and a female. This, as opposed to the almost always exclusively male occupants of the aggressor's car) with the window down, subject to threats and taunts on a summer's evening. There was always some poor migrant worker in a 1934 Ford pickup to force off the road. There was always some elderly couple coming back from bridge games at the Center. But windows are up. Cable television makes staying home less a burden to the aged. There are fewer migrant workers, and the ones that remain are liable to object to being treated like cattle (on or off the road), and everyone has ‘friends.’ The loudmouthed lunch buckets have only each other. As entertaining as two sociopaths trying to insult each other are, the ensuing conflicts all too often fail to result in definite cadavers. There must be a way to circumvent this. One night a week - say, Friday – certain key roads should be closed to all drivers not drunk and armed with knives or a .38 pistol (knives must be 6" or longer). Police should simply let them go, and the following morning send out Eco-Cycle to throw body bags into the Rendering Truck. Survivors who still feel they haven’t mastered the finer points of Manhood should be encouraged by the Authorities to return the next week, because The Boys are saying Nasty Things about the survivors genealogy – which is to say, those who can trace their ancestry back to their father) and sexual proclivities as demonstrated by his car type. Authorities should imbue the prospective returnee with Life’s Facts. First, the speed of your car times the decibels of your exhaust equals one’s sexual appeal and worth as a human being. And Second, The Guys think your car is slow and quiet. This has been partially tried, evidently, on the Longmont Diagonal for the past 15 years. Driving between Boulder and its north-eastern sister city at 11:30 on a summer weekend's eve provides no evidence to the contrary. But the Knights of the Road cannot easily reach each other, separated as they are by the rest of us. And the traffic lights are too quick. I say: let the boys go, unhampered. Let them be able to work up detailed arguments over 15 minute red lights, followed by the 27 mile train wait at the crossing previous to a five mile straight away. Let them accuse each other of starting early. Let them accuse each other of packing, of drawing early. Let no one accuse them of shooting late. May their magazines be full and their fingers twitch. Because since the law cannot remove them from our lives, maybe it’s best they themselves should. |
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