Letters

I am writing about driving conditions and the habitual, dangerous and deplorable behavior too many motorists are exhibiting, daily, on our streets and highways.

More specifically, the issue of road rage, which, unlike speeding, is a very close-up encounter, always involving anger and often violence.

Public service messages on television have regularly alerted motorists for decades about the hazards of not wearing safety belts, and the danger and penalties of drunk driving, and these messages are even dramatized on screen for effect. We’ve been seeing seat belt advisories since the 1960s — but the topic of road rage has been mute to this day.

The issue that incites motorists to anger, the most, is tailgating.

Tailgating is the most common irritant for most drivers, because it’s close and personal, and the intensity of the irritant increases with each mile. When you’re on the highway and someone zips past you going 90 mph, it’s alarming and dangerous, but, in a second, they’re gone. There’s no argument. But when you’re being tailgated, it’s someone on your ass and in your face at the same time, because the face of the vehicle’s grill and the grimaced face of the driver are in your mirror.

I urge the Highway Safety Council and AAA to make public service ads to publicly address the issue of motorists bringing their personal anger to the roads on which we’re entitled to drive safely.

Ed German

Flanders