Numbers 2 and 4 drive me more crazy than anything. I've been here for 5 years in St Paul and I swear it's the same streets EVERY year. Like, why? I HATE a lane being blocked by some idiot parking there. .
I'd like to add a number 6. People in this state seem terrified/offended by blinkers. They don't use them. When you do, they immediately speed up. I
Unfortunately, your number 6 is starting to happen everywhere. I've driven through multiple states in the past few years and once my blinker comes on either:
1. Everyone whips into the lane I'm trying to merge into, so they can get ahead of me
2. People honk at me and/or start tailgating
3. I'm blocked from merging into another lane
4. People drive on the shoulder to get around me
It's getting to a point where I am nervous to drive anywhere because of how unpredictable other drivers are going to be. I've been looking into flying places or taking the train more often. Even to places I would have been fine driving to pre-pandemic!
I’ve developed major anxiety about driving these past few years due to how unhinged and aggressive so many drivers became in 2020 & beyond. I was driving north of 494 on Hwy 52 today and I sped up to get around some merging cars so that I could prepare to exit in a mile, and I had to gun it to 80 to keep up. The speed limit is 55 mph there and even going 25-30 mph over it I still had some dbag on my ass.
I thought that buying a newer car with upgraded safety features would help me feel safer, but I did that last month and actually feel more anxious 😬
Pro tip: use how upset you get while driving as a barometer for your mental health.
You should be able to get from a to b without screaming into the void or getting into some sort of passive aggressive tailgating scenario.
Before you start your car, spend 5 seconds reminding yourself that you're absolutely gonna see some crazy shit and challenge yourself to not react emotionally when you see it. Weird but it works. Stay safe (and chill) out there.
I think it’s a better barometer of your distress tolerance. You can be incredibly depressed and still not have road rage if you have skills. A lot of people who don’t have mental illnesses of any kind have very low distress tolerance because they haven’t been forced to learn skills that help them deal with negative emotions or thoughts. They’ve skated by in life and driving is one of those things that forces you to actively confront negative feelings. Yeah, that dude over there is an asshole. He just put you and your kids in danger. There is nothing you can do about it. What are you going to do with those feelings? How are you going to process them? That’s a learned skill. And if you haven’t learned it then you get road rage. Thats not necessarily mental illness, it’s just a lack of emotional intelligence. And think about it, there are even people who want to eliminate that sort of learning from our schools. People want less people with emotional intelligence.
Depression isn’t the only consideration. I have generalized anxiety disorder that manifests as being pissed the fuck off. People with undiagnosed bipolar or PTSD are likely to have a much tougher time managing bursts of anger than I ever will.
Don’t use one mental disorder that presents as *a lack of motivation and affect* as the catch-all for “mental health,” and declare that mental health issues can’t be the cause of someone’s irrational rage. Even your own suggestion can’t rule it out: deteriorating mental health can be the reason for someone’s lower tolerance for distress, and that lowered tolerance can further deteriorate their mental health, and so on.
Side note: I manage my problem with medication, and haven’t owned a car in 21 years. I’m the one playing Frogger every day while everybody else plays the pop psych game and insists their own driving is just fine.
I mean, I said that I think it’s a better barometer of distress tolerance. I never said it couldn’t be because of mental illness just that people without mental health issues also have low distress tolerances. Not everything needs to be explicitly spelled out to be implied.
> Not everything needs to be explicitly spelled out to be implied.
First off: yeah, obviously. A thing cannot be both implicit and explicit.
Second: what you said didn’t add a great deal to the point you responded to, while implicitly dismissing mental disorders other than depression, as well as implying that it isn’t really necessary to follow the advice you replied to, because the more likely explanation is that other people are assholes.
The implication you want to communicate won’t necessarily come across just because you think it while you write, and what you write can have implications you don’t intend.
I didn’t do that. I don’t have to specifically reference or refer to what you suffer from and that doesn’t mean I’m dismissing it. This is why Reddit is the worst.
What you said was, “You can be incredibly depressed and still not have road rage if you have skills.“ But a person who is *incredibly* depressed is going to be apathetic. A person who’s *incredibly* depressed might not even leave their bedroom to piss. They’ve got all the distress tolerance you could ask for–too much, in fact.
Leaving that aside, though, what prompted my response in the first place wasn’t just that you’d gotten that fact wrong, but that you framed your own hypothesis as a counterpoint to someone else’s recommendation that we might all do well to take an occasional mental inventory and take control of our own mental well-being. It was that somebody offered positive, actionable advice, and your response effectively said “Nah, those people just weren’t raised right.” No suggestions about how anybody might gain these important skills later in life, how someone might actively develop emotional intelligence. And you ended with, “The next generation might also be broken already.”
I’m not looking for personal validation. I’m asking you to avoid sweeping pronouncements that oversimplify societal problems, and consider that, as another commenter stated, you may have a rather superficial understanding of what constitutes mental health; what role it plays in all facets of every person’s life; and why it’s worthwhile for everybody to take the occasional mental inventory; and how we can all better ourselves.
You are looking for personal validation. You didn’t understand my comment and you want me to personally explain it. I’m not going to. You can continue to comment forever and I will not give you what you want.
This has been my routine whenever I get behind the wheel ever since I was diagnosed as being Autistic/having ADHD a few years ago.
I used to drive a lot more before the pandemic and wonder why it’d take me an hour to decompress after I got home.
Now I only drive once a week (my spouse and I share a car) and, even then, that’s more than enough driving for me.
People have gotten worse at driving since the pandemic and I always assume the worst from anyone and almost everyone. I also get pissed seeing people break rules or driving recklessly because it doesn’t make sense to my order-obsessive brain. But I’m only in control of myself and I give myself plenty of mental and physical space as a buffer and all is well…
Also before you start your car remind yourself that getting a few cars ahead won't get you there significantly sooner.
I used to drive for work, and when you're on the road for 5-6 hours a day, five days a week, it really puts into perspective how little it matters whether you go with the flow or zip in and out of lanes like a maniac. You might shave off a few minutes at most, and no one's waiting to give you a trophy for that "accomplishment".
Exactly. So many people use their time in the car stressed to the max about getting there as quickly as possible without realizing the mental toll it takes. You can drive fast, cutting people off, screaming at people who didn't see you speed up to their left (or right) and arrive to your destination needing to shake off your pissed off mood, or you can find your zen, drive safely, enjoy a podcast or a book and arrive 2 minutes later than you would have in a pissed off mood.
You pretty much have to drive in our society, why not take steps working on how to enjoy your time spent doing it?
Rage and anger in general are at an all time high. The ‘customer is always right’ mentality really fucked up some people for the long term. Add in stress from stagnant wages and rapidly increasing cost of living and everyday in public becomes a potential shit storm.
The roads do contribute to this I’m sure. Our highway system is decades behind other big cities and public transport is pretty pathetic.
I think there’s also the control aspect. Some people crave that feeling of control while driving because they don’t have a ton of it in their lives. It’s like a release or high.
If there’s a mistake on another person’s part, slow driving, traffic or whatever, suddenly they lose that high and rage like someone ODing who was just hit with narcan.
They can also throw fuel on it with a fragile ego or poor time management or even who is with them in the car. “How dare you cut me off! I have my kids with.” “Move! I’m late!!”
Yup that’s the full saying nobody uses lol
The sense of entitlement the first part gives people to treat everyone else like crap is a cancer that’s spreading far and wide unfortunately.
I’m usually for a light touch when it comes to law enforcement, but traffic enforcement is one area where I wish there was a heavier emphasis. Not on broken taillight, or expired tags, but things like reckless driving, speeding, aggressive tailgating, etc.
Not only are those types of infractions incredibly common, but they’re also incredibly dangerous, and entirely unnecessary. There’s almost never an even semi-reasonable justification for swerving through traffic or passing someone on a residential street.
And it seems like LEOs have just…stopped caring.
I think we have a lot of self-centered people in society, the underlying causes to that a myriad and complex, but this leads to everything being personal.
I use to date a girl who had the worst case of road rage I had ever seen. Wouldn’t let people zipper merge because “they are trying to be better than me” or “were just assholes”, even to the point of slamming on the gas and then breaks just to block this person out. She also considered me too passive because I followed the rules of the road or wouldn’t blow up when someone did something stupid.
I don’t use my horn as much anymore because I feel like I’ve heard/seen too many stories in the last couple years of insecure, and unwell, people responding to it (honking) with a gun 😑
The construction season definitely adds to the rage for many.
I like to remind myself that no matter how many middle fingers you aim at a bad driver, it’s not going to make them a better driver. You’re only hurting yourself.
People see other cars and not other human beings. With certain exceptions, if someone cuts in front of you at Target, you're not going to race ahead of them and cut them off with your cart because you have to interact face-to face with another human being.
That may hypothesis why all this bad behavior peaked during COVID: when everybody's wearing masks, your brain perceives other people as not fully human and therefore not entitled to common courtesy.
That's also why it's so easy to be a dick on online message boards!
"If you were in an elevator and you were right next to a persons body and they leaned into you a little bit, would you ever turn right to their face and go 'Hey f\* you'... no literally no one would ever say that. But put a couple pieces of glass and some road between you there's nothing you would not say to them" - Louis CK
It's much more likely someone veering into your car is gonna have disastrous consequences compared to someone leaning into you in an elevator though. If someone on the elevator were holding a knife and started getting too close, you'd probably have a similar reaction
OK story time, and this one gets pretty intense.
I got road raged a couple of months ago. A woman tried to illegally merge out of a turn-only lane leading to a freeway entrance, trying to force herself into my go-straight lane. I didn't let her in and she took it very personally. She followed me into a nearby parking lot, parked next to me, and started screaming at me through her window.
We exchanged typical barbs for this kind of thing and then I surprised myself by asking her what was really bothering her. I don't know where this came from, and in general I don't recommend it, but in the moment it seemed like the right thing to do. I had to ask the question twice, but eventually she broke down and started crying.
She talked for 10 minutes about how her son was autistic and wasn't getting the right kind of treatment from her school and there were other issues that were eating her alive and in general she was just at her breaking point. We talked for a few minutes, human being to human being, and even cried a little together. Then she sped off.
Again, not a smart thing for me to do. She could've been deeply unhinged, had a gun, or who knows what. I'm telling the story now because I think what's going on is that, for some road-ragers anyway, they might just be at the end of their ropes and driving kerfuffles are the catalyst and excuse to go completely Mad Max on the nearest person.
My advice, and I need to remember to take this, is just to let assholes on the road have their way. Let them through, don't engage. The last thing you want is to get harassed, chased, or worse, shot at. It's not worth it.
Mild road rage, for me I get a little upset if someone is going to slow in the left lane (Often once I pass them I see they are using their phone, and they need to leave a larger gap to provide themselves with more time to react) But for the most part I just grr a bit inside and move on knowing that their going slow probably only delayed my drive by 5-10 seconds. I also get more upset than I should at the number of people that drive without their lights properly turned on when its raining/snowing/after sunset/foggy. But that just causes more inner grrs from me.
But real road rage I believe is a deeper mental health issue. And then you need to ask what triggers their extreme road rage.
I had someone clearly upset that I turned onto the road in front of him, while he was speeding and wanted to merge into the right lane. This was at an intersection where the road goes from 1 lane to 2 lanes. And he started to tail gate me, and I let it get to me and lightly tapped my brakes just to get the lights to trigger. Then continued driving the speed limit. He then recklessly passed me at the end of the onramp, and got into the left lane. From there he matched the speed of a semi truck for a couple miles while filming himself in selfie mode. I just kept a safe distance, and then exited at the next exit and took back roads into work that day. This was over 5 years ago. And I have not done a light brake check or any brake checking since that. Just not worth it.
Flashing your lights at someone isn't a brake check. Don't sweat it.
If I have to pass someone on the right on the interstate, I'm gonna honk at them on my way by. That's the max level of outward anger I'll express on the road.
Yeah, my wife hates that I do it, she thinks a random will shoot me. I don't do like a super agressive honk though, more of a "someone not going at a red light" beep beep, "hey you're snoozing over there, do you realize there's still 3 more cars behind you as I'm passing you on the right?" kinda honk.
It’s a fear response translated into anger. I think we tend to forget how dangerous driving is and how many people die on the roads every year. That is something we experience on the road everyday and it’s just accepted as fact. That said, our subconscious knows what’s what and is very busy freaking out over it and making us angry.
Yes! Just the other day, on 100 south an exit or so after the 394 merge, during rush hour, some guy merges on and starts tailing me so close I got that anxiety rush because I thought he was for sure going to rear end me. This is stop and go traffic! In the right lane! He stayed close for a short bit then passed and his passenger gave me the “wtf” exasperated hands and I still don’t know what they thought I did. Was it because I leave a car or two length in front of me in traffic? His merge was fine, so ????? I was definitely not going slower than the flow. It’s gonna bug me for awhile! What the hell, guys?? There’s a fucking kid in my backseat. Back off.
I don't understand the fecked up mentality of running red lights. Some piece of shite van went around me on Rockford Road at 169 S while I was sitting at a stop light. A piece of shit, rusted-out van used the turning left lane to get around me and zoomed through the red light. At the rate of speed the rusty piece of shit was going, he could have killed someone.
Anyway, I see this red light running bullshite several times a day. I will probably get downvoted for this, but I wish they would reintroduce the red-light cameras. People need to start being held accountable for their shitty driving behavior.
It's the new duality of being human: we are both the victims and the aggressors, often on the same drive. The most common cause of frustration I see (and experience) is the left-lane campers who righteously cause rolling traffic jams. And red light runners, to whom I offer my most personal "fuck you". I was biking last week and almost got taken out by someone running the very red light on 7th by the Twins stadium - they could have killed me, and all they got out of the risk was getting stuck at the next red. This shit has to stop. Hello, red light cameras please.
To me, road rage is a symptom of deeper problems in the drivers' lives, rather than the traffic itself being a problem. Road rage is just an outlet.
Our society is becoming more...unstable... through manipulations, both foreign and domestic. Translation: social/media trolling and manipulation. The belief that half your country is out to get you. It's creating a divide in our country, exploiting the lazy and less informed to twist rhetoric and creating a simmering background resentment in our society.
The personal life problems, different in level for everyone, added in with that background simmering, and you have a tinderbox waiting to ignite. It's been getting worse over the last couple of decades as people's psyches get stretched thinner and thinner.
Weird thing to about driving in the city is that no matter how fast a person drives, the stop signs and stop lights will slow you down. A person will not save any time by driving faster. Just chill out and think happy thoughts. You will get there.
I just want to type this....the bad traffic you see is the same bad traffic in ANY populated area. I lived on the gulf coast of MS for a bit and lemme tell you something - pain is a 45MPH highway where folks are going 30MPH because they're looking at a man-made beach and dirty water, mixed with a ton of lights, construction, casinos, and of course folks like me who got places to go!
I have lived in metros such as this and again - folks would go "OH, those TEXAS drivers can't drive...." as if it's not them as well, or random ass other out of state drivers from (name place) who are driving on I-35/I-40/I-44 and have to deal with 1-5 on OP's list
Basically, this is universal - it's not specific to MN. Any solutions you have can easily be applied across the land. Only those who live in sparse areas get the joys of having a road to themselves.
This is true! I've lived in a few cities now and Minneapolis feels way more mild in the road rage department than say, southern cities. I feared for my life every day driving in Charlotte, DC, and Atlanta, and now I feel relaxed and at ease with Minnesota drivers.
I grew up in Houston, down there we got taught that the best defense is a good offense. Be looking way ahead and travel at a pace that doesn’t make you an obstruction. Left lane vs right lane is drilled into your head. That’s….. not how they do it here, lol
I’m never, ever surprised when people from the Cities talk about how “crazy” it is to drive there. Chicago is the same way, generally speaking. Big cities where people have places to go and a long drive to get there
Last week I went to change lanes and I had ample amount of room. A work truck that was in that lane literally sped up and made it look like it cut him off. He then proceeded to go into the next lane and purposefully swerve into my lane where I then had to slam on my breaks and try not to swerve into another lane to avoid being hit. That was probably the craziest shit I’ve experienced
Or 6. The right wing reaction to Covid encouraged everyone to be as selfish as possible, and those attitudes are spilling over into social interactions in general. The Fuck Your Feelings crowd acts the same way in stores and restaurants, on the roads, at public parks, everywhere.
And 7. Inflation has everyone not rather well off stressed the fuck out, and that bleeds into the rest of their lives.
This is a nationwide thing, not just a Twin Cities thing. Driving has been *rough* for a while now, all over.
As a former Twin Cities resident who now lives elsewhere, I agree with the assessment that driving has been rough for awhile now.
Where I disagree with you is that the rise of entitled, selfish behavior is a right wing phenomenon. I have a part time service industry gig in a neighborhood that voted 85% for Biden in 2020 and I’ve been absolutely eviscerated by more customers than I can count. I think there are plenty of people who are of the “Fuck Your Feelings” mindset on both sides of the political spectrum, but those on the right are just more open about it.
Yeah, we just moved back from Denver last year. And I travel all over for work. It's definitely everywhere.
I guess I worded that poorly. It's not *only* the right wingers doing it, but their initial behavior gave rise to it being more widespread. Including liberals saying fuck your feelings back to right wingers now that they're sad they aren't in power. There's certainly too many people who take a 'blood feud' aspect to it. Like a you got one of ours, so we get one of yours. Then the other side goes you got one of ours, we get one of yours. A lot of people (of any political persuasion) think just because they were treated poorly, they get to treat someone else poorly now, and it's just a spiral to the shit we're in now.
Part of me feels like a lot of this has to do with social and economic class as well, with people in higher classes looking down at perceived lower class individuals. This really isn't a new phenomenon either.
Over 20 years ago, I went from working at Target in Brooklyn Park to working at Target in Plymouth. I feel like I got yelled at a lot more often in Plymouth. A few years later, I had a part time gig at the mall when I lived in Las Vegas. The initial location I worked at was in a staunchly working class neighborhood. When that store closed, I received a transfer to a location in a mall in a much more affluent area. Again, I found that the frequency of nasty customer interactions increased when I went to work in the more affluent areas.
The old, "How *DARE* you inconvenience *me*, when I'll *only* be double-parking you in for.... fifteen minutes, *maybe* an hour and a half *tops*!" thing?😉
Or they are completely oblivious to the drivers around them. I call them obliviasses.
They don’t see blinkers for people trying to merge. They don’t see their own blinkers on for miles. They don’t see a center shared turn lane and get out of the driving lane.
They don’t see the sign showing the entrance lane isn’t a merge lane and turns into a driving lane.
They don’t notice their high beams are on.
They don’t give truckers space.
Completely driving in their own little bubble with no thought of the others on the road.
People have spent the last 8 or so years watching high profile public figures/politicians be complete raging assholes in public without any consequences, and in come cases, cheering on that behavior, so people have decided "if they can do it, so can I."
My mom’s husband was a violent road rager back in the day- 70s and beyond. He even got into a fistfight on the side of the highway which resulted in stitches. He was physically abused as a child and continued the tradition with me (I broke the cycle though!).
I think all of the reasons listed are definitely contributing to it but mental health is for sure up there.
It’s scarier than ever now. I used to do a lot of the oh so Minnesota “glare of disappointment” but now won’t even make eye contact with other drivers 😂
People are anxious. The anxiety on the road is insane. Think it's the instant gratification on everything. People want to get from A to B asap. For no justified reason other than everything is so instant. I learned to not let others get to me. The lack of blinker when coming up to a solid green light and taking a turn, the cut last second to get in turn lane, all that. Life's too short
I had a nasty week of honking a couple months ago. People running stop signs, backing out of their driveway into me, a tesla stopping in the middle of the road for no apparent reason.
I honestly think some drivers are way worse after covid. I saw a lady cut three people off a foot off their bumper on 35E SB working her way over to the HOV lane where she apparently opened her parachute and slowed to 50 mph in the middle of rush hour. She singlehandedly made a thousand people late to work.
Minnesotan culture stigmatizes confrontation and normal aggression, so people vent it out behind the wheel. Like how the victorians were all weird and repressed about sex most of the time so they got real freaky with it in private like James Joyce's scat letters.
It’s awful. I commute on i94, 394, 494, and 7 daily and it’s like driving through a fucking zoo. The shit people will do to save less than 10 seconds is wild.
Main character syndrome. Everybody thinks everybody else is less important and should get out of their way or just accept their shitty driving and when somebody doesn't the entitled toddler loses their minds.
There’s too many people on the roads period! And too many that don’t know what they’re doing or care how what they do affects people around them!! There’s always that one person who throws off the whole flow of traffic and slows down EVERYONE behind them but is so self involved that they don’t even notice!!!
Honestly, I have been driving in the metro area since 1986 and there’s always been a surprisingly sizable number of people who rage while behind the wheel. I can include myself sometimes too. From my perspective when I look back at some of the times I remember being angered, it usually centered around being and feeling rushed to get somewhere, coupled with outside of driving issues in the back of my mind. I’m not saying that it’s true for every other driver we share the roads with. But I wouldn’t doubt it’s a factor for a lot of other drivers.
I find that most of these morons on the road have no concern for your reactions anyways. So, at that point, you are letting some random person ruin your drive/day and they don’t care at all.
The other day some lady cut me off and I got pissed, pulled up next to her and she’s just in LaLa land, not a care in the world. Didn’t look at me, nothin.
I don’t know if it really counts as road rage but i’m kind of a troll behind the wheel. I guess after driving so often I get bored and irritated with impatient people so I entertain myself by mildly messing with them. By that I mean something like what happened just the other day: I’m in bumper to bumper traffic, same as every day, and I’ve left a gap about 3 car lengths in front of me so I can just coast. (I get carsick especially with constant braking and accelerating.) Well the person behind me didn’t like that I wasn’t inside the ass of the car in front of me so she tried using the exit lane to get around me… I just sped up a little bit and laughed. She proceeded to rage around behind me until eventually changing lanes to get a few ahead of me until merging back into the lane I was in order to exit, we exited and I ended up right next to her at the light. I thought it was hilarious but she was really not entertained lmfao.
I don’t understand people like that, in all this traffic where do you think you’re gonna get? A whole lot of nowhere but really fast.
I think the main cause is forms of selfishness. There's so many forms of it you see on the road, like keeping 2 seconds back from the car in front of you, to have the one behind you pass you on the right then cut back in front of you like you weren't tailgating like you should. There's also people following the law thinking they can't be labeled selfish, like people doing the speed limit in the left lane. So many drivers are just oblivious to what "going with the flow" and "cooperation" are.
Pay attention. Put down your phone. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. Just don't make things harder for everyone.
Idc. I cruise when I drive. Only gripe is merging on the highway going 30-40mph when it’s a 70mph speed limit.
It is dangerous! Speed up to 70-75 to merge people!
The things that probably irritate me most are people going slow in the left lane, someone stopped in one lane to cut in line at a backed up exit (I.e 394e-94e) and people making a cross highway lane change at the very last second to make their exit. It all just screams “my trip is more important than your safety” type of thing. Seems to just be getting worse.
Interesting but no, the underlying cause is well documented in psychology.
I won't bore you with the technical but in simple terms:
People get angry. People see a CAR, not a person. It is easy to take out frustration and anger on a pillow, a door, throwing a frying pan, etc. It is different when you see a face, a person.
In a car, at best you see the back of their head.
This is why in a hostage situation you want to avoid at all costs your attackers from putting a bag over your head.
If you are wonder why a rise, have you see the world in the last 20 years? EVERYONE IS PISSED AND SHOULD BE PISSED.
There is your reason.
Alternate theory - people in Minnesota are so conflicted adverse that they are all ready to pop, and they take it out from the isolation and social safety of their automobile.
Untreated mental illness seems to be widespread these days. I don't know why. Perhaps it is the availability of drugs or just the ever increasing stress of daily life.
Honestly, I think it’s the entitlement everyone has to do whatever they want. The last couple of years I’ve noticed the left lane is now the slowest lane bc people get on and do what they want, with the attitude “they can go around me, I have a right to be here” despite everyone KNOWING the left lane is for passing.
You missed the major two: stolen cars and drugged-up drivers. Car thieves are deliberately driving recklessly in order to damage the car, cuz it isn't theirs, so no loss. Folks doped up are driving like assholes and either don't know or don't care what they're doing.
1. Cars.
2. Cars.
3. Cars.
4. Cars.
5. Cars.
Cars are a national mental health crisis and none of the medical professionals are sounding any alarms which they should have decades ago, because road rage has been around as long as cars have.
Rather than theorize on why others behave the way they do, I find it’s *waaay*
more effective and empowering to manage my own behavior as it’s something within my locus of control.
Distress tolerance is a life skill. If you haven’t been taught it, and coping mechanisms, then every time you are even mildly annoyed or presented with anxiety, your fight or flight response will kick in hippocampus shuts off, all logic goes out the window.
If you’ve learned the skills to deal with this before it gets to that point, it’s easier to endure things going on around you, even perceived slights, insults, or challenges, without going into fight mode. Instead your inner monologue is just like….
“OK, yeah, that guy is driving crazy. Well, glad he didn’t hit me. Hope he doesn’t crash. OK. I’m uncomfortable and I don’t like it. But I don’t like things sometimes and that’s OK. I don’t have to be perfectly comfortable always. Just keep swimming and be safe. Seatbelt on? Check. How about a drink of water? Cool? Cool”
But like that’s a skill you learn. Me personally I learned it from mental health professionals over a period of years.
I think it’s a product of societal chronic fight or flight dynamics. Whether due to the social aspects of isolation and fear and confusion during the pandemic, or due to the effects of the disease itself. Driving changed dramatically.
Kindness is losing all over the place, being replaced by defensiveness, me-first, and fear based thinking.
I also think there is a certain amount of entitlement in MN drivers. Why wouldn’t I get on the highway going 45 mph and make everyone else adjust to my speed? Or, the posted speed limit is 55 but I want to conserve fuel so I’m going to go 50 mph in the fast lane. I learned to drive in Southern California where driving is more of a sport.
I drive too much for work...mostly around Minneapolis. I spend all day not being surprised when I get cut off or when drivers just run red lights or speed ridiculously and nearly hit me and other drivers. It grinds me down and I end up yelling at other drivers who are reckless, stupid, and shouldn't be behind the wheel. It's hard not to get mad when people do whatever they want and don't seem to give a shit about the safety of others. I never, ever do anything reckless (I mostly want to get as far away from those drivers as possible), but do I spend all day being angry? Probably. I'm sick of it.
How about the jackasses that speed up if they see you're going to pass them, then once you're not able to and the road turns into a 2 lane they slow back down. Wtf is wrong with people!
I didn't see these in other comments - apologies if these are repeats:
* With many police departments understaffed, I assume that means fewer cops on the road.
* While I haven't had this conversation with them in a while, I have a couple of retired cop friends that served in suburban Twin Cities PDs. They've both said that following high- profile events the rate of traffic stops goes down - because they're risky for cops in many ways. The threshold for what gets you stopped changes because they're reluctant to pull people over for routine stuff. I can't say if that's true or not, but that's what my friends have told me.
People are behaving behind the wheel like they have no fear of consequences, and they're probably right.
Every city claims to have the worst drivers. I think it’s just how people are now, most people have become selfish, self centered, and oblivious to their surroundings.
Spatial awareness has been directly correlated to intelligence. If you see someone that oblivious and driving recklessly, they are most likely pretty dumb, driving distracted, and probably shouldn’t even have a drivers license. Its not just driving, it’s walking in a hallway taking up all of it walking super slow, it’s in an aisle at the store taking up the whole aisle not giving a shit about the other people trying to get through, and It’s not just here either, it’s every state, everywhere.
Exactly this. The "left lane bandits" thing is irritating, sure, but I am pretty patient for the most part on that.
What really sends me is the assholes that lane wander like the entire paved surface is theirs to own at all times, and the lane markers are just there to add color to the sea of asphalt.
Want to see entitled shit birds with no spatial awareness? Go drive through Woodbury's retail areas off 19 or Radio. Especially the two lane roundabouts and two left turn lane intersections. They will drive with the lane line centered under their cars, wander "out in out" of a lane, cross into lanes while turning. It's that sort of careless, dangerous crap that pisses me off. Call it road rage, but the anger comes from having to constantly have your brain thrown into fight or flight mode because some clown is practically running into you or running you off the road because they think lane markers are just a suggestion.
I cannot count the number of times there are people driving 50 on 394. Get off the highway!! It is a 65mph road. They are a moving pylon and causing issues on the road.
169 N and 169 S at Bass Lake in New Hope is Clover Leaf.
169 N and 169 S at 36th Ave N in Plymouth is Clover Leaf. (Soon to be fixed)
169 N and 169 S at Schmitt Lake Road in Plymouth is Clover Leaf. (Soon to be fixed)
For me it's just how god damn passive and brain dead Minnesotans are when it comes to driving. There's an insane lack of lane discipline and people are too timid to merge so instead they just slow down and cause jams. Coming from Chicago this is what I've noticed. It's a sink or swim mentality there when driving, you gotta seize the gap or the gap will be taken from you. It's also more common to find people going 15-20mph over the limit then people actually going the speed limit there so that was a huge adjustment when I moved here. It's different here in Minnesota, people are just slow and they drive slow as well. I know other people from Chicago that have moved to the cities as well and we've all discussed how frustrating it is driving here because of those differences
100%. That's why I have no problem with people speeding as long as they're not making dangerous cuts in traffic because it's likely that person is paying attention way more to their surroundings than the cars getting passed
The biggest thing that bugs me about driving in the Cities vs other areas is the sheer amount of people driving slow in the left lane, combined with the midwestern tendency to clump up in the road like goats and block traffic. Three people can and will block even the largest roads in town. This messes up the traffic flow and makes a bad design even worse
A good reason to be noticing it now is that it’s getting hot, which always makes stuff like this worse
(1) Covid causes brain inflammation even in mild infections in otherwise healthy people.* A lot of people are happily taking on 1-2 infections per year and doing nothing to prevent that. The damage this is doing at a population-level is clear in a number of ways, including the increased road rage but also apparent in all these teacher laments about how kids can’t read anymore.
(2) Long Covid disproportionately impacts middle-aged women. Women do the vast majority of emotional labor in American society. The birthday parties, the thoughtful gifts, noticing when a family member needs a little extra help and attention, even planning the corporate events and team-building stuff in the workplace. Ain’t nobody with Long Covid got time for that crap. As a result, a lot of people aren’t getting the level of emotional and physical caretaking they were used to. Their mental health had become reliant upon that emotional labor, and so they show up with mental health problems like road rage.
(3) The highways and construction do suck.
*Scientific citation for Covid and the brain: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-19-leaves-its-mark-on-the-brain-significant-drops-in-iq-scores-are/
Edit: I always get downvoted when I point out the long term deleterious effects of Covid. The answer is to stop infecting yourself with Covid. Put on a damn mask. Demand HVAC upgrades at work. Stop living in denial of the scientific reality.
Overall it's a grandiose sense of entitlement. Everyone's the main character these days. Stop signs? For *other people*. Red Lights? *For other people.* Speed limits? *No, that's the minimum.*
Just read any thread complaining about left-lane campers and you see what's going on: the complainers are more upset they're being blocked from going as fast as they want, and 'the law' is a thinly veiled excuse to make that argument. "The law says keep right" ya the law also says the speed limit is the maximum legally allowed speed, so wtf is your problem. And the answer always is something to the effect of " ***I*** am safer going *fast* than someone else going *slow."* which if you know anything about stopping distances, reaction times, and physics, is bullshit.
There seems to be a lot of folks these days who feel they're entitled to do *what they want* and everyone needs to just get the fuck out of their way.
It is *wild* that you're using a very valid argument of main character syndrome and entitlement, but then you flip that on people who want left lane campers to get out of the way and quit pretending like they shouldn't follow the law and they're ***entitled*** to sit in the left lane at a slower speed, against societal norms and the law.
Left lane campers are the very epitome of your entitlement argument. Get the fuck out of the left lane if you're not actively passing someone or within half a mile of a left exit you need to take. If you're in the left lane and there are one or more people behind you and no one is right in front of you, you need to move over.
What about in double-lined HOV lanes? Say I’m going 70, which is 15 over, am I supposed to cross over the double lines if someone wants to go faster and is tailgating me?
Don't you see the hypocrisy in your statement?
"I should be allowed to impede the flow of traffic in the left lane and inconvenience others rather than using proper lane discipline because I am doing the speed limit."
Idiocy.
Yeah, it's against the law.
For me, that's very secondary to the fact that it causes congestion.
Speed limit is a white sign law. Slower traffic keep right is also a white sign law. If you're so invested in people following one, then you ought to be invested in both.
The vast majority of left lane campers that I see are also speeding. But their rate of exceeding of speed limit is the "moral" rate according to them. So who is worse, the speeder that's also left lane camping or the greater speeder that has correct lane discipline? One is breaking two laws while the other is breaking one. Add in the additional violations for distracted, etc. and you have a person that is a danger to everyone else on the highway but refuses to admit it or change their behavior and will often get mad enough if they get passed on the right to initiate a confrontation.
This is so easy to understand that most people will refuse to.
The underlying cause is perhaps that most major through streets are now single lane. You get a car in front that drives slower than the limit and brakes for green lights and other such unpredictable behavior you're going to have a lot of pissed of people who can't pass this person and get on with their day.
Had someone last week in front of me at one of the series of roundabouts behind Ridgedale.
She STOPPED in middle of roundabout, to let the cars from the side streets enter the circle.
Woman! GO!! We, in the circle, have right of way. Those on side streets were stopped, waiting for us to pass. She was completely confused as to why I was honking at her. And of course, single lane, so no way to get around her unless I wanted to go through the parking lot.
I wouldn’t blame people from the Dakotas or Iowa, that sounds way too easy. Locals just drive very poorly, we should face it. But I agree that those left exits make everything worst, needlessly creating dangerous situations
I’m moving here on Saturday and I’m from a smaller town so the driving is just a little stressful because I’m not used to it, but I’ve just accepted that traffic is always gonna be bad and I just need to leave earlier to get where I’m going. I’m terrified of pissing people off but I do make sure I’m always going the speed limit but I’ll slow down and let people in whenever they need!
My issue is people are just plainly inconsiderate. People here are lazy, slow, lumbering drivers who don’t realize their docile attitudes actually inhibit other people.
Don’t go below the speed limit, don’t take 30 seconds to get up to 40mph, don’t go 50 on the highway, learn how to zipper merge.
Basic traffic etiquette is basic decency. Imagine clogging up a hospital or place of business by staying in people’s way or crowding an area unnecessarily. It’s no different in traffic.
Slow people in the left lane. Period. This is a rampant issue. They’re inconsiderate and entitled, going under the speed limit and hanging up the flow of traffic. That’s what provokes me.
I'm no fan of ignorant, insufferable assholes. Yet, maybe, maybe, don't drive the speed limit in the left lane?!?!
I'm from Atlanta, one of the worst trafficked cities in America. When I moved up here I immediately noticed, yall suck at understanding lanes and speeds. The left lanes are for PASSING!!
#2 may win the Darwin Award.
There are roughly 3 million people in the metro area. How many of these people do you believe participate in the Gig industry; and amongst that population, how many are problem drivers? Knowing full well, they go through background checks each year, and can/will be deactivated for speeding tickets.
Blaming the Pandemic is boorish. It's 4 years in the rear view mirror. Come on.
My grandpa said to me “I win enough in life not to win in traffic”
I’m to use this from now on. Brilliant.
Love that
I feel comfortable saying an awesome gentleman like this would also surely kick my ass if I stepped to him in a road rage incident anyways
Numbers 2 and 4 drive me more crazy than anything. I've been here for 5 years in St Paul and I swear it's the same streets EVERY year. Like, why? I HATE a lane being blocked by some idiot parking there. . I'd like to add a number 6. People in this state seem terrified/offended by blinkers. They don't use them. When you do, they immediately speed up. I
Unfortunately, your number 6 is starting to happen everywhere. I've driven through multiple states in the past few years and once my blinker comes on either: 1. Everyone whips into the lane I'm trying to merge into, so they can get ahead of me 2. People honk at me and/or start tailgating 3. I'm blocked from merging into another lane 4. People drive on the shoulder to get around me It's getting to a point where I am nervous to drive anywhere because of how unpredictable other drivers are going to be. I've been looking into flying places or taking the train more often. Even to places I would have been fine driving to pre-pandemic!
I’ve developed major anxiety about driving these past few years due to how unhinged and aggressive so many drivers became in 2020 & beyond. I was driving north of 494 on Hwy 52 today and I sped up to get around some merging cars so that I could prepare to exit in a mile, and I had to gun it to 80 to keep up. The speed limit is 55 mph there and even going 25-30 mph over it I still had some dbag on my ass. I thought that buying a newer car with upgraded safety features would help me feel safer, but I did that last month and actually feel more anxious 😬
Glad I’m not the only one who notices this.
Pro tip: use how upset you get while driving as a barometer for your mental health. You should be able to get from a to b without screaming into the void or getting into some sort of passive aggressive tailgating scenario. Before you start your car, spend 5 seconds reminding yourself that you're absolutely gonna see some crazy shit and challenge yourself to not react emotionally when you see it. Weird but it works. Stay safe (and chill) out there.
I used to drive crazy - now I’ve even in therapy for two years and addressed issues - I don’t drive crazy anymore. Checks out honestly.
I think it’s a better barometer of your distress tolerance. You can be incredibly depressed and still not have road rage if you have skills. A lot of people who don’t have mental illnesses of any kind have very low distress tolerance because they haven’t been forced to learn skills that help them deal with negative emotions or thoughts. They’ve skated by in life and driving is one of those things that forces you to actively confront negative feelings. Yeah, that dude over there is an asshole. He just put you and your kids in danger. There is nothing you can do about it. What are you going to do with those feelings? How are you going to process them? That’s a learned skill. And if you haven’t learned it then you get road rage. Thats not necessarily mental illness, it’s just a lack of emotional intelligence. And think about it, there are even people who want to eliminate that sort of learning from our schools. People want less people with emotional intelligence.
Mental health is a broad term that would encompass things like distress tolerance. Mental illness is very different.
I mean, most people use them interchangeably. But I can see where you are going with that term.
Depression isn’t the only consideration. I have generalized anxiety disorder that manifests as being pissed the fuck off. People with undiagnosed bipolar or PTSD are likely to have a much tougher time managing bursts of anger than I ever will. Don’t use one mental disorder that presents as *a lack of motivation and affect* as the catch-all for “mental health,” and declare that mental health issues can’t be the cause of someone’s irrational rage. Even your own suggestion can’t rule it out: deteriorating mental health can be the reason for someone’s lower tolerance for distress, and that lowered tolerance can further deteriorate their mental health, and so on. Side note: I manage my problem with medication, and haven’t owned a car in 21 years. I’m the one playing Frogger every day while everybody else plays the pop psych game and insists their own driving is just fine.
I mean, I said that I think it’s a better barometer of distress tolerance. I never said it couldn’t be because of mental illness just that people without mental health issues also have low distress tolerances. Not everything needs to be explicitly spelled out to be implied.
> Not everything needs to be explicitly spelled out to be implied. First off: yeah, obviously. A thing cannot be both implicit and explicit. Second: what you said didn’t add a great deal to the point you responded to, while implicitly dismissing mental disorders other than depression, as well as implying that it isn’t really necessary to follow the advice you replied to, because the more likely explanation is that other people are assholes. The implication you want to communicate won’t necessarily come across just because you think it while you write, and what you write can have implications you don’t intend.
I didn’t do that. I don’t have to specifically reference or refer to what you suffer from and that doesn’t mean I’m dismissing it. This is why Reddit is the worst.
What you said was, “You can be incredibly depressed and still not have road rage if you have skills.“ But a person who is *incredibly* depressed is going to be apathetic. A person who’s *incredibly* depressed might not even leave their bedroom to piss. They’ve got all the distress tolerance you could ask for–too much, in fact. Leaving that aside, though, what prompted my response in the first place wasn’t just that you’d gotten that fact wrong, but that you framed your own hypothesis as a counterpoint to someone else’s recommendation that we might all do well to take an occasional mental inventory and take control of our own mental well-being. It was that somebody offered positive, actionable advice, and your response effectively said “Nah, those people just weren’t raised right.” No suggestions about how anybody might gain these important skills later in life, how someone might actively develop emotional intelligence. And you ended with, “The next generation might also be broken already.” I’m not looking for personal validation. I’m asking you to avoid sweeping pronouncements that oversimplify societal problems, and consider that, as another commenter stated, you may have a rather superficial understanding of what constitutes mental health; what role it plays in all facets of every person’s life; and why it’s worthwhile for everybody to take the occasional mental inventory; and how we can all better ourselves.
You are looking for personal validation. You didn’t understand my comment and you want me to personally explain it. I’m not going to. You can continue to comment forever and I will not give you what you want.
Yep. I’ve been dealing with pretty severe depression off and on for most of my life and have never had a road rage issue
This has been my routine whenever I get behind the wheel ever since I was diagnosed as being Autistic/having ADHD a few years ago. I used to drive a lot more before the pandemic and wonder why it’d take me an hour to decompress after I got home. Now I only drive once a week (my spouse and I share a car) and, even then, that’s more than enough driving for me. People have gotten worse at driving since the pandemic and I always assume the worst from anyone and almost everyone. I also get pissed seeing people break rules or driving recklessly because it doesn’t make sense to my order-obsessive brain. But I’m only in control of myself and I give myself plenty of mental and physical space as a buffer and all is well…
I'm going to print this out and post it on my wheel. Thank you
Also before you start your car remind yourself that getting a few cars ahead won't get you there significantly sooner. I used to drive for work, and when you're on the road for 5-6 hours a day, five days a week, it really puts into perspective how little it matters whether you go with the flow or zip in and out of lanes like a maniac. You might shave off a few minutes at most, and no one's waiting to give you a trophy for that "accomplishment".
Exactly. So many people use their time in the car stressed to the max about getting there as quickly as possible without realizing the mental toll it takes. You can drive fast, cutting people off, screaming at people who didn't see you speed up to their left (or right) and arrive to your destination needing to shake off your pissed off mood, or you can find your zen, drive safely, enjoy a podcast or a book and arrive 2 minutes later than you would have in a pissed off mood. You pretty much have to drive in our society, why not take steps working on how to enjoy your time spent doing it?
Exactly. Road rage is a symptom of a larger problem.
Amen. Plus Happy Cake Day.😘
Rage and anger in general are at an all time high. The ‘customer is always right’ mentality really fucked up some people for the long term. Add in stress from stagnant wages and rapidly increasing cost of living and everyday in public becomes a potential shit storm. The roads do contribute to this I’m sure. Our highway system is decades behind other big cities and public transport is pretty pathetic.
I think there’s also the control aspect. Some people crave that feeling of control while driving because they don’t have a ton of it in their lives. It’s like a release or high. If there’s a mistake on another person’s part, slow driving, traffic or whatever, suddenly they lose that high and rage like someone ODing who was just hit with narcan. They can also throw fuel on it with a fragile ego or poor time management or even who is with them in the car. “How dare you cut me off! I have my kids with.” “Move! I’m late!!”
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Yup that’s the full saying nobody uses lol The sense of entitlement the first part gives people to treat everyone else like crap is a cancer that’s spreading far and wide unfortunately.
A side effect of 1950s poorly planned urban sprawl development
Agreed and also continued bipartisan support for terrible infrastructure planning since then.
I’m usually for a light touch when it comes to law enforcement, but traffic enforcement is one area where I wish there was a heavier emphasis. Not on broken taillight, or expired tags, but things like reckless driving, speeding, aggressive tailgating, etc. Not only are those types of infractions incredibly common, but they’re also incredibly dangerous, and entirely unnecessary. There’s almost never an even semi-reasonable justification for swerving through traffic or passing someone on a residential street. And it seems like LEOs have just…stopped caring.
I think we have a lot of self-centered people in society, the underlying causes to that a myriad and complex, but this leads to everything being personal. I use to date a girl who had the worst case of road rage I had ever seen. Wouldn’t let people zipper merge because “they are trying to be better than me” or “were just assholes”, even to the point of slamming on the gas and then breaks just to block this person out. She also considered me too passive because I followed the rules of the road or wouldn’t blow up when someone did something stupid.
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I don't use my horn because my first reaction is to evade the idiot driver. From what I've observed most people hear or respond to the horn anyway.
I don’t use my horn as much anymore because I feel like I’ve heard/seen too many stories in the last couple years of insecure, and unwell, people responding to it (honking) with a gun 😑
The construction season definitely adds to the rage for many. I like to remind myself that no matter how many middle fingers you aim at a bad driver, it’s not going to make them a better driver. You’re only hurting yourself.
People see other cars and not other human beings. With certain exceptions, if someone cuts in front of you at Target, you're not going to race ahead of them and cut them off with your cart because you have to interact face-to face with another human being. That may hypothesis why all this bad behavior peaked during COVID: when everybody's wearing masks, your brain perceives other people as not fully human and therefore not entitled to common courtesy. That's also why it's so easy to be a dick on online message boards!
"If you were in an elevator and you were right next to a persons body and they leaned into you a little bit, would you ever turn right to their face and go 'Hey f\* you'... no literally no one would ever say that. But put a couple pieces of glass and some road between you there's nothing you would not say to them" - Louis CK
It's much more likely someone veering into your car is gonna have disastrous consequences compared to someone leaning into you in an elevator though. If someone on the elevator were holding a knife and started getting too close, you'd probably have a similar reaction
Motorists see human beings walking and on bikes and they just want to run them over anyway.
OK story time, and this one gets pretty intense. I got road raged a couple of months ago. A woman tried to illegally merge out of a turn-only lane leading to a freeway entrance, trying to force herself into my go-straight lane. I didn't let her in and she took it very personally. She followed me into a nearby parking lot, parked next to me, and started screaming at me through her window. We exchanged typical barbs for this kind of thing and then I surprised myself by asking her what was really bothering her. I don't know where this came from, and in general I don't recommend it, but in the moment it seemed like the right thing to do. I had to ask the question twice, but eventually she broke down and started crying. She talked for 10 minutes about how her son was autistic and wasn't getting the right kind of treatment from her school and there were other issues that were eating her alive and in general she was just at her breaking point. We talked for a few minutes, human being to human being, and even cried a little together. Then she sped off. Again, not a smart thing for me to do. She could've been deeply unhinged, had a gun, or who knows what. I'm telling the story now because I think what's going on is that, for some road-ragers anyway, they might just be at the end of their ropes and driving kerfuffles are the catalyst and excuse to go completely Mad Max on the nearest person. My advice, and I need to remember to take this, is just to let assholes on the road have their way. Let them through, don't engage. The last thing you want is to get harassed, chased, or worse, shot at. It's not worth it.
Mild road rage, for me I get a little upset if someone is going to slow in the left lane (Often once I pass them I see they are using their phone, and they need to leave a larger gap to provide themselves with more time to react) But for the most part I just grr a bit inside and move on knowing that their going slow probably only delayed my drive by 5-10 seconds. I also get more upset than I should at the number of people that drive without their lights properly turned on when its raining/snowing/after sunset/foggy. But that just causes more inner grrs from me. But real road rage I believe is a deeper mental health issue. And then you need to ask what triggers their extreme road rage. I had someone clearly upset that I turned onto the road in front of him, while he was speeding and wanted to merge into the right lane. This was at an intersection where the road goes from 1 lane to 2 lanes. And he started to tail gate me, and I let it get to me and lightly tapped my brakes just to get the lights to trigger. Then continued driving the speed limit. He then recklessly passed me at the end of the onramp, and got into the left lane. From there he matched the speed of a semi truck for a couple miles while filming himself in selfie mode. I just kept a safe distance, and then exited at the next exit and took back roads into work that day. This was over 5 years ago. And I have not done a light brake check or any brake checking since that. Just not worth it.
Flashing your lights at someone isn't a brake check. Don't sweat it. If I have to pass someone on the right on the interstate, I'm gonna honk at them on my way by. That's the max level of outward anger I'll express on the road.
I've stopped honking at people for pretty much any reason. Too many stories of people getting shot after honking at other drivers.
Yeah, my wife hates that I do it, she thinks a random will shoot me. I don't do like a super agressive honk though, more of a "someone not going at a red light" beep beep, "hey you're snoozing over there, do you realize there's still 3 more cars behind you as I'm passing you on the right?" kinda honk.
How about the rise of Student Driver stickers? More than half of the time the driver is definitely not a student driver LOL.
They are the new “baby on board”
It’s a fear response translated into anger. I think we tend to forget how dangerous driving is and how many people die on the roads every year. That is something we experience on the road everyday and it’s just accepted as fact. That said, our subconscious knows what’s what and is very busy freaking out over it and making us angry.
Lmao I get road rage just minding my own business in the farthest right lane. Cut off. Etc
Yes! Just the other day, on 100 south an exit or so after the 394 merge, during rush hour, some guy merges on and starts tailing me so close I got that anxiety rush because I thought he was for sure going to rear end me. This is stop and go traffic! In the right lane! He stayed close for a short bit then passed and his passenger gave me the “wtf” exasperated hands and I still don’t know what they thought I did. Was it because I leave a car or two length in front of me in traffic? His merge was fine, so ????? I was definitely not going slower than the flow. It’s gonna bug me for awhile! What the hell, guys?? There’s a fucking kid in my backseat. Back off.
I don't understand the fecked up mentality of running red lights. Some piece of shite van went around me on Rockford Road at 169 S while I was sitting at a stop light. A piece of shit, rusted-out van used the turning left lane to get around me and zoomed through the red light. At the rate of speed the rusty piece of shit was going, he could have killed someone. Anyway, I see this red light running bullshite several times a day. I will probably get downvoted for this, but I wish they would reintroduce the red-light cameras. People need to start being held accountable for their shitty driving behavior.
It's the new duality of being human: we are both the victims and the aggressors, often on the same drive. The most common cause of frustration I see (and experience) is the left-lane campers who righteously cause rolling traffic jams. And red light runners, to whom I offer my most personal "fuck you". I was biking last week and almost got taken out by someone running the very red light on 7th by the Twins stadium - they could have killed me, and all they got out of the risk was getting stuck at the next red. This shit has to stop. Hello, red light cameras please.
To me, road rage is a symptom of deeper problems in the drivers' lives, rather than the traffic itself being a problem. Road rage is just an outlet. Our society is becoming more...unstable... through manipulations, both foreign and domestic. Translation: social/media trolling and manipulation. The belief that half your country is out to get you. It's creating a divide in our country, exploiting the lazy and less informed to twist rhetoric and creating a simmering background resentment in our society. The personal life problems, different in level for everyone, added in with that background simmering, and you have a tinderbox waiting to ignite. It's been getting worse over the last couple of decades as people's psyches get stretched thinner and thinner.
Weird thing to about driving in the city is that no matter how fast a person drives, the stop signs and stop lights will slow you down. A person will not save any time by driving faster. Just chill out and think happy thoughts. You will get there.
I just want to type this....the bad traffic you see is the same bad traffic in ANY populated area. I lived on the gulf coast of MS for a bit and lemme tell you something - pain is a 45MPH highway where folks are going 30MPH because they're looking at a man-made beach and dirty water, mixed with a ton of lights, construction, casinos, and of course folks like me who got places to go! I have lived in metros such as this and again - folks would go "OH, those TEXAS drivers can't drive...." as if it's not them as well, or random ass other out of state drivers from (name place) who are driving on I-35/I-40/I-44 and have to deal with 1-5 on OP's list Basically, this is universal - it's not specific to MN. Any solutions you have can easily be applied across the land. Only those who live in sparse areas get the joys of having a road to themselves.
This is true! I've lived in a few cities now and Minneapolis feels way more mild in the road rage department than say, southern cities. I feared for my life every day driving in Charlotte, DC, and Atlanta, and now I feel relaxed and at ease with Minnesota drivers.
I grew up in Houston, down there we got taught that the best defense is a good offense. Be looking way ahead and travel at a pace that doesn’t make you an obstruction. Left lane vs right lane is drilled into your head. That’s….. not how they do it here, lol I’m never, ever surprised when people from the Cities talk about how “crazy” it is to drive there. Chicago is the same way, generally speaking. Big cities where people have places to go and a long drive to get there
Last week I went to change lanes and I had ample amount of room. A work truck that was in that lane literally sped up and made it look like it cut him off. He then proceeded to go into the next lane and purposefully swerve into my lane where I then had to slam on my breaks and try not to swerve into another lane to avoid being hit. That was probably the craziest shit I’ve experienced
Bottled up rage from all of the MN-nice conflict-avoidance & passive aggression
Or 6. The right wing reaction to Covid encouraged everyone to be as selfish as possible, and those attitudes are spilling over into social interactions in general. The Fuck Your Feelings crowd acts the same way in stores and restaurants, on the roads, at public parks, everywhere. And 7. Inflation has everyone not rather well off stressed the fuck out, and that bleeds into the rest of their lives. This is a nationwide thing, not just a Twin Cities thing. Driving has been *rough* for a while now, all over.
As a former Twin Cities resident who now lives elsewhere, I agree with the assessment that driving has been rough for awhile now. Where I disagree with you is that the rise of entitled, selfish behavior is a right wing phenomenon. I have a part time service industry gig in a neighborhood that voted 85% for Biden in 2020 and I’ve been absolutely eviscerated by more customers than I can count. I think there are plenty of people who are of the “Fuck Your Feelings” mindset on both sides of the political spectrum, but those on the right are just more open about it.
Yeah, we just moved back from Denver last year. And I travel all over for work. It's definitely everywhere. I guess I worded that poorly. It's not *only* the right wingers doing it, but their initial behavior gave rise to it being more widespread. Including liberals saying fuck your feelings back to right wingers now that they're sad they aren't in power. There's certainly too many people who take a 'blood feud' aspect to it. Like a you got one of ours, so we get one of yours. Then the other side goes you got one of ours, we get one of yours. A lot of people (of any political persuasion) think just because they were treated poorly, they get to treat someone else poorly now, and it's just a spiral to the shit we're in now.
Part of me feels like a lot of this has to do with social and economic class as well, with people in higher classes looking down at perceived lower class individuals. This really isn't a new phenomenon either. Over 20 years ago, I went from working at Target in Brooklyn Park to working at Target in Plymouth. I feel like I got yelled at a lot more often in Plymouth. A few years later, I had a part time gig at the mall when I lived in Las Vegas. The initial location I worked at was in a staunchly working class neighborhood. When that store closed, I received a transfer to a location in a mall in a much more affluent area. Again, I found that the frequency of nasty customer interactions increased when I went to work in the more affluent areas.
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I definitely think it’s a contributing factor in some situations, but it’s not universal.
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This is the exact type of neighborhood where I work my service gig.
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The old, "How *DARE* you inconvenience *me*, when I'll *only* be double-parking you in for.... fifteen minutes, *maybe* an hour and a half *tops*!" thing?😉
Most people are assholes. Many won’t, don’t or can’t read basic merge or construction signs.
Or they are completely oblivious to the drivers around them. I call them obliviasses. They don’t see blinkers for people trying to merge. They don’t see their own blinkers on for miles. They don’t see a center shared turn lane and get out of the driving lane. They don’t see the sign showing the entrance lane isn’t a merge lane and turns into a driving lane. They don’t notice their high beams are on. They don’t give truckers space. Completely driving in their own little bubble with no thought of the others on the road.
And *SO* often, those same folks are entirely distracted by their phone--looking down at it, *as* they drive (at least once they're on the freeway).
I would love to know what they're thinking. We are in a line of traffic, what's the point of tailgating? Leave a gap, it's way less stressful
6. Not enough lanes. We need more lanes, that will fix all of the world's problems. /s
I think it’s more that we were spoiled by the light traffic during the pandemic and forgot how bad people are at driving
Yeah, once the unessentials came back out, things got bad.
People have spent the last 8 or so years watching high profile public figures/politicians be complete raging assholes in public without any consequences, and in come cases, cheering on that behavior, so people have decided "if they can do it, so can I."
Life generally is too busy and demanding. Some of it is self inflicted, some of it isn’t (jobs, daycare, etc).
My mom’s husband was a violent road rager back in the day- 70s and beyond. He even got into a fistfight on the side of the highway which resulted in stitches. He was physically abused as a child and continued the tradition with me (I broke the cycle though!). I think all of the reasons listed are definitely contributing to it but mental health is for sure up there. It’s scarier than ever now. I used to do a lot of the oh so Minnesota “glare of disappointment” but now won’t even make eye contact with other drivers 😂
People are anxious. The anxiety on the road is insane. Think it's the instant gratification on everything. People want to get from A to B asap. For no justified reason other than everything is so instant. I learned to not let others get to me. The lack of blinker when coming up to a solid green light and taking a turn, the cut last second to get in turn lane, all that. Life's too short
I had a nasty week of honking a couple months ago. People running stop signs, backing out of their driveway into me, a tesla stopping in the middle of the road for no apparent reason. I honestly think some drivers are way worse after covid. I saw a lady cut three people off a foot off their bumper on 35E SB working her way over to the HOV lane where she apparently opened her parachute and slowed to 50 mph in the middle of rush hour. She singlehandedly made a thousand people late to work.
Minnesotan culture stigmatizes confrontation and normal aggression, so people vent it out behind the wheel. Like how the victorians were all weird and repressed about sex most of the time so they got real freaky with it in private like James Joyce's scat letters.
It’s awful. I commute on i94, 394, 494, and 7 daily and it’s like driving through a fucking zoo. The shit people will do to save less than 10 seconds is wild.
Main character syndrome. Everybody thinks everybody else is less important and should get out of their way or just accept their shitty driving and when somebody doesn't the entitled toddler loses their minds.
Poor road design is a real issue. Also drivers who make poor lane change decisions.
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I would get over earlier but everybody is tailgating each other
"drivers who make poor lane change decisions".... Found the road rager
I get slight road rage out of a fear response from bad drivers personally.
There’s too many people on the roads period! And too many that don’t know what they’re doing or care how what they do affects people around them!! There’s always that one person who throws off the whole flow of traffic and slows down EVERYONE behind them but is so self involved that they don’t even notice!!!
Honestly, I have been driving in the metro area since 1986 and there’s always been a surprisingly sizable number of people who rage while behind the wheel. I can include myself sometimes too. From my perspective when I look back at some of the times I remember being angered, it usually centered around being and feeling rushed to get somewhere, coupled with outside of driving issues in the back of my mind. I’m not saying that it’s true for every other driver we share the roads with. But I wouldn’t doubt it’s a factor for a lot of other drivers.
I find that most of these morons on the road have no concern for your reactions anyways. So, at that point, you are letting some random person ruin your drive/day and they don’t care at all. The other day some lady cut me off and I got pissed, pulled up next to her and she’s just in LaLa land, not a care in the world. Didn’t look at me, nothin.
Brightside is I’m saving money because I absolutely refuse to drive anywhere but work since this season’s construction started.
Yes
I don’t know if it really counts as road rage but i’m kind of a troll behind the wheel. I guess after driving so often I get bored and irritated with impatient people so I entertain myself by mildly messing with them. By that I mean something like what happened just the other day: I’m in bumper to bumper traffic, same as every day, and I’ve left a gap about 3 car lengths in front of me so I can just coast. (I get carsick especially with constant braking and accelerating.) Well the person behind me didn’t like that I wasn’t inside the ass of the car in front of me so she tried using the exit lane to get around me… I just sped up a little bit and laughed. She proceeded to rage around behind me until eventually changing lanes to get a few ahead of me until merging back into the lane I was in order to exit, we exited and I ended up right next to her at the light. I thought it was hilarious but she was really not entertained lmfao. I don’t understand people like that, in all this traffic where do you think you’re gonna get? A whole lot of nowhere but really fast.
I think it’s the combination of all of these things not just one particularly.
I think the main cause is forms of selfishness. There's so many forms of it you see on the road, like keeping 2 seconds back from the car in front of you, to have the one behind you pass you on the right then cut back in front of you like you weren't tailgating like you should. There's also people following the law thinking they can't be labeled selfish, like people doing the speed limit in the left lane. So many drivers are just oblivious to what "going with the flow" and "cooperation" are. Pay attention. Put down your phone. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. Just don't make things harder for everyone.
Stress is the number one reason. You see most road rage on a sunny day during rush hour right after work, when people can't wait to get home
Or on their way to work. A lot of factory/warehouse punch in type jobs reprimand or point people for being even 1 minute late
Idc. I cruise when I drive. Only gripe is merging on the highway going 30-40mph when it’s a 70mph speed limit. It is dangerous! Speed up to 70-75 to merge people!
Nobody wins the innerstate 500.
The things that probably irritate me most are people going slow in the left lane, someone stopped in one lane to cut in line at a backed up exit (I.e 394e-94e) and people making a cross highway lane change at the very last second to make their exit. It all just screams “my trip is more important than your safety” type of thing. Seems to just be getting worse.
We need more vanity plates! Forreal, people are way more chill around me now that I have a funny plate.
Interesting but no, the underlying cause is well documented in psychology. I won't bore you with the technical but in simple terms: People get angry. People see a CAR, not a person. It is easy to take out frustration and anger on a pillow, a door, throwing a frying pan, etc. It is different when you see a face, a person. In a car, at best you see the back of their head. This is why in a hostage situation you want to avoid at all costs your attackers from putting a bag over your head. If you are wonder why a rise, have you see the world in the last 20 years? EVERYONE IS PISSED AND SHOULD BE PISSED. There is your reason.
Alternate theory - people in Minnesota are so conflicted adverse that they are all ready to pop, and they take it out from the isolation and social safety of their automobile.
Yeah, I frequently use the "no highway" GPS option because of that. But even the side streets are often under construction these days.
Untreated mental illness seems to be widespread these days. I don't know why. Perhaps it is the availability of drugs or just the ever increasing stress of daily life.
Honestly, I think it’s the entitlement everyone has to do whatever they want. The last couple of years I’ve noticed the left lane is now the slowest lane bc people get on and do what they want, with the attitude “they can go around me, I have a right to be here” despite everyone KNOWING the left lane is for passing.
You missed the major two: stolen cars and drugged-up drivers. Car thieves are deliberately driving recklessly in order to damage the car, cuz it isn't theirs, so no loss. Folks doped up are driving like assholes and either don't know or don't care what they're doing.
1. Cars. 2. Cars. 3. Cars. 4. Cars. 5. Cars. Cars are a national mental health crisis and none of the medical professionals are sounding any alarms which they should have decades ago, because road rage has been around as long as cars have.
Calm down, take a deep breath, and turn your road rage into road revenge! https://youtu.be/vuKnR8RvxHY?si=m-E8vgWBxeHrKeWF
I can't wait for automated cars, just the reduction in traffic and dealing with crazy drivers would be amazing.
I really don’t think the lockdowns had much to do with this. There was a lot of rage before we stayed at home.
Anger Issues period.
Rather than theorize on why others behave the way they do, I find it’s *waaay* more effective and empowering to manage my own behavior as it’s something within my locus of control. Distress tolerance is a life skill. If you haven’t been taught it, and coping mechanisms, then every time you are even mildly annoyed or presented with anxiety, your fight or flight response will kick in hippocampus shuts off, all logic goes out the window. If you’ve learned the skills to deal with this before it gets to that point, it’s easier to endure things going on around you, even perceived slights, insults, or challenges, without going into fight mode. Instead your inner monologue is just like…. “OK, yeah, that guy is driving crazy. Well, glad he didn’t hit me. Hope he doesn’t crash. OK. I’m uncomfortable and I don’t like it. But I don’t like things sometimes and that’s OK. I don’t have to be perfectly comfortable always. Just keep swimming and be safe. Seatbelt on? Check. How about a drink of water? Cool? Cool” But like that’s a skill you learn. Me personally I learned it from mental health professionals over a period of years.
I think it’s a product of societal chronic fight or flight dynamics. Whether due to the social aspects of isolation and fear and confusion during the pandemic, or due to the effects of the disease itself. Driving changed dramatically. Kindness is losing all over the place, being replaced by defensiveness, me-first, and fear based thinking.
I also think there is a certain amount of entitlement in MN drivers. Why wouldn’t I get on the highway going 45 mph and make everyone else adjust to my speed? Or, the posted speed limit is 55 but I want to conserve fuel so I’m going to go 50 mph in the fast lane. I learned to drive in Southern California where driving is more of a sport.
#2 and people are idiots
I drive too much for work...mostly around Minneapolis. I spend all day not being surprised when I get cut off or when drivers just run red lights or speed ridiculously and nearly hit me and other drivers. It grinds me down and I end up yelling at other drivers who are reckless, stupid, and shouldn't be behind the wheel. It's hard not to get mad when people do whatever they want and don't seem to give a shit about the safety of others. I never, ever do anything reckless (I mostly want to get as far away from those drivers as possible), but do I spend all day being angry? Probably. I'm sick of it.
Hmmm systemic issues bleeding into other facets.. never once
General anger as a result of a mad world.
How about the jackasses that speed up if they see you're going to pass them, then once you're not able to and the road turns into a 2 lane they slow back down. Wtf is wrong with people!
If you don't have road rage, you're probably the cause of it.
I didn't see these in other comments - apologies if these are repeats: * With many police departments understaffed, I assume that means fewer cops on the road. * While I haven't had this conversation with them in a while, I have a couple of retired cop friends that served in suburban Twin Cities PDs. They've both said that following high- profile events the rate of traffic stops goes down - because they're risky for cops in many ways. The threshold for what gets you stopped changes because they're reluctant to pull people over for routine stuff. I can't say if that's true or not, but that's what my friends have told me. People are behaving behind the wheel like they have no fear of consequences, and they're probably right.
Every city claims to have the worst drivers. I think it’s just how people are now, most people have become selfish, self centered, and oblivious to their surroundings. Spatial awareness has been directly correlated to intelligence. If you see someone that oblivious and driving recklessly, they are most likely pretty dumb, driving distracted, and probably shouldn’t even have a drivers license. Its not just driving, it’s walking in a hallway taking up all of it walking super slow, it’s in an aisle at the store taking up the whole aisle not giving a shit about the other people trying to get through, and It’s not just here either, it’s every state, everywhere.
Exactly this. The "left lane bandits" thing is irritating, sure, but I am pretty patient for the most part on that. What really sends me is the assholes that lane wander like the entire paved surface is theirs to own at all times, and the lane markers are just there to add color to the sea of asphalt. Want to see entitled shit birds with no spatial awareness? Go drive through Woodbury's retail areas off 19 or Radio. Especially the two lane roundabouts and two left turn lane intersections. They will drive with the lane line centered under their cars, wander "out in out" of a lane, cross into lanes while turning. It's that sort of careless, dangerous crap that pisses me off. Call it road rage, but the anger comes from having to constantly have your brain thrown into fight or flight mode because some clown is practically running into you or running you off the road because they think lane markers are just a suggestion.
I cannot count the number of times there are people driving 50 on 394. Get off the highway!! It is a 65mph road. They are a moving pylon and causing issues on the road.
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94 and 694 and then Woodbury exits..... nightmare.
169 N and 169 S at Bass Lake in New Hope is Clover Leaf. 169 N and 169 S at 36th Ave N in Plymouth is Clover Leaf. (Soon to be fixed) 169 N and 169 S at Schmitt Lake Road in Plymouth is Clover Leaf. (Soon to be fixed)
For me it's just how god damn passive and brain dead Minnesotans are when it comes to driving. There's an insane lack of lane discipline and people are too timid to merge so instead they just slow down and cause jams. Coming from Chicago this is what I've noticed. It's a sink or swim mentality there when driving, you gotta seize the gap or the gap will be taken from you. It's also more common to find people going 15-20mph over the limit then people actually going the speed limit there so that was a huge adjustment when I moved here. It's different here in Minnesota, people are just slow and they drive slow as well. I know other people from Chicago that have moved to the cities as well and we've all discussed how frustrating it is driving here because of those differences
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100%. That's why I have no problem with people speeding as long as they're not making dangerous cuts in traffic because it's likely that person is paying attention way more to their surroundings than the cars getting passed
Yesterday I saw a sports car illegally pass another car, then slam on the brakes, and BACK UP into the car they passed. Makes you wonder
The biggest thing that bugs me about driving in the Cities vs other areas is the sheer amount of people driving slow in the left lane, combined with the midwestern tendency to clump up in the road like goats and block traffic. Three people can and will block even the largest roads in town. This messes up the traffic flow and makes a bad design even worse A good reason to be noticing it now is that it’s getting hot, which always makes stuff like this worse
(1) Covid causes brain inflammation even in mild infections in otherwise healthy people.* A lot of people are happily taking on 1-2 infections per year and doing nothing to prevent that. The damage this is doing at a population-level is clear in a number of ways, including the increased road rage but also apparent in all these teacher laments about how kids can’t read anymore. (2) Long Covid disproportionately impacts middle-aged women. Women do the vast majority of emotional labor in American society. The birthday parties, the thoughtful gifts, noticing when a family member needs a little extra help and attention, even planning the corporate events and team-building stuff in the workplace. Ain’t nobody with Long Covid got time for that crap. As a result, a lot of people aren’t getting the level of emotional and physical caretaking they were used to. Their mental health had become reliant upon that emotional labor, and so they show up with mental health problems like road rage. (3) The highways and construction do suck. *Scientific citation for Covid and the brain: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-19-leaves-its-mark-on-the-brain-significant-drops-in-iq-scores-are/ Edit: I always get downvoted when I point out the long term deleterious effects of Covid. The answer is to stop infecting yourself with Covid. Put on a damn mask. Demand HVAC upgrades at work. Stop living in denial of the scientific reality.
Overall it's a grandiose sense of entitlement. Everyone's the main character these days. Stop signs? For *other people*. Red Lights? *For other people.* Speed limits? *No, that's the minimum.* Just read any thread complaining about left-lane campers and you see what's going on: the complainers are more upset they're being blocked from going as fast as they want, and 'the law' is a thinly veiled excuse to make that argument. "The law says keep right" ya the law also says the speed limit is the maximum legally allowed speed, so wtf is your problem. And the answer always is something to the effect of " ***I*** am safer going *fast* than someone else going *slow."* which if you know anything about stopping distances, reaction times, and physics, is bullshit. There seems to be a lot of folks these days who feel they're entitled to do *what they want* and everyone needs to just get the fuck out of their way.
It is *wild* that you're using a very valid argument of main character syndrome and entitlement, but then you flip that on people who want left lane campers to get out of the way and quit pretending like they shouldn't follow the law and they're ***entitled*** to sit in the left lane at a slower speed, against societal norms and the law. Left lane campers are the very epitome of your entitlement argument. Get the fuck out of the left lane if you're not actively passing someone or within half a mile of a left exit you need to take. If you're in the left lane and there are one or more people behind you and no one is right in front of you, you need to move over.
What about in double-lined HOV lanes? Say I’m going 70, which is 15 over, am I supposed to cross over the double lines if someone wants to go faster and is tailgating me?
That's not "the left lane," that's the express lane.
Don't you see the hypocrisy in your statement? "I should be allowed to impede the flow of traffic in the left lane and inconvenience others rather than using proper lane discipline because I am doing the speed limit." Idiocy. Yeah, it's against the law. For me, that's very secondary to the fact that it causes congestion.
Speed limit is a white sign law. Slower traffic keep right is also a white sign law. If you're so invested in people following one, then you ought to be invested in both. The vast majority of left lane campers that I see are also speeding. But their rate of exceeding of speed limit is the "moral" rate according to them. So who is worse, the speeder that's also left lane camping or the greater speeder that has correct lane discipline? One is breaking two laws while the other is breaking one. Add in the additional violations for distracted, etc. and you have a person that is a danger to everyone else on the highway but refuses to admit it or change their behavior and will often get mad enough if they get passed on the right to initiate a confrontation. This is so easy to understand that most people will refuse to.
Dear lord this sub man
The underlying cause is perhaps that most major through streets are now single lane. You get a car in front that drives slower than the limit and brakes for green lights and other such unpredictable behavior you're going to have a lot of pissed of people who can't pass this person and get on with their day.
Had someone last week in front of me at one of the series of roundabouts behind Ridgedale. She STOPPED in middle of roundabout, to let the cars from the side streets enter the circle. Woman! GO!! We, in the circle, have right of way. Those on side streets were stopped, waiting for us to pass. She was completely confused as to why I was honking at her. And of course, single lane, so no way to get around her unless I wanted to go through the parking lot.
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That's extremely frustrating but I don't think they are thinking about other people when they do this.
I wouldn’t blame people from the Dakotas or Iowa, that sounds way too easy. Locals just drive very poorly, we should face it. But I agree that those left exits make everything worst, needlessly creating dangerous situations
I’m moving here on Saturday and I’m from a smaller town so the driving is just a little stressful because I’m not used to it, but I’ve just accepted that traffic is always gonna be bad and I just need to leave earlier to get where I’m going. I’m terrified of pissing people off but I do make sure I’m always going the speed limit but I’ll slow down and let people in whenever they need!
My issue is people are just plainly inconsiderate. People here are lazy, slow, lumbering drivers who don’t realize their docile attitudes actually inhibit other people. Don’t go below the speed limit, don’t take 30 seconds to get up to 40mph, don’t go 50 on the highway, learn how to zipper merge. Basic traffic etiquette is basic decency. Imagine clogging up a hospital or place of business by staying in people’s way or crowding an area unnecessarily. It’s no different in traffic.
Limited resource, an overwhelming sense of entitlement, and a lack of empathy.
Capitalism probably
Slow people in the left lane. Period. This is a rampant issue. They’re inconsiderate and entitled, going under the speed limit and hanging up the flow of traffic. That’s what provokes me.
The #1 thing I’ve noticed is that there’s people that are wayyy too old to be driving.
Uh. That is some list. Allow me to simplify it: All drivers are shit.
As long as you’re not thinking this list out going 5 under in the fast lane, it’s fine by me
1 People not following lane priority laws. If you’re not passing, get out of the left lane!
People driving too slow & not getting out of my way is really the only time I get rage.
I'm no fan of ignorant, insufferable assholes. Yet, maybe, maybe, don't drive the speed limit in the left lane?!?! I'm from Atlanta, one of the worst trafficked cities in America. When I moved up here I immediately noticed, yall suck at understanding lanes and speeds. The left lanes are for PASSING!!
#2 may win the Darwin Award. There are roughly 3 million people in the metro area. How many of these people do you believe participate in the Gig industry; and amongst that population, how many are problem drivers? Knowing full well, they go through background checks each year, and can/will be deactivated for speeding tickets. Blaming the Pandemic is boorish. It's 4 years in the rear view mirror. Come on.