Is my road rage really warranted?

I’ve driven on some of the most congested streets, highways and freeways in the western portion of the United States so I have had my fair share of “road rage.”

I 405 through Fountain Valley in Orange County, Calif., bottlenecks and keeps cars hardly moving for 210 minutes, on average, each day and a study conducted by Caltrans says that four mile stretch of interstate causes a delay for motorists of about 530,300 hours per year. Traffic so deep it would have me cursing Mickey Mouse.

But you don’t have to go to a huge city to drum up a case of road rage, no sir. Anyone who had ever driven through Missoula’s mess known as “Malfunction Junction” back in the day has probably suffered from at least a tinge of road rage. That intersection was “fixed” years ago but traffic was just diverted to other parts of town making one think they are driving in the City that Never Sleeps at 5 p.m. rather than the Garden City.

Traffic is never really an issue here in Phillips County and when there is a “traffic jam” it is generally because someone is driving farm equipment, pulling a buggy with a horse or two or both directions of traffic are stopped because a dog is leisurely crossing the road. That is more charming than alarming. What has been a bit alarming to me of late is the lack of people using the blinkers around town.

This phenomenon certainly seems to be a new one. I don’t remember the lack of blinkers in Malta in years past (though I have only lived here for 122 weeks…and no, I am not counting down, I just know how many newspaper I have sent to press.) But in the last two weeks I have uttered the phrase “your blinker isn’t a decoration” or other, more vulgar expressions no less than a dozen times.

I just don’t get it. Do people who don’t use their blinkers want to cut me off because I have slighted them in press? Do they not have enough time to press the lever up or down? Do they think the blinker is just a suggestion and not a law? Come on, Man! Which way are you going? Here’s a driver’s education refresher course for anyone who may have forget:

1. Signal.

2. Brake.

3. Turn.

This drill, at first, might seem as hard as a woodpecker’s lips, but with a little practice, it will become a muscle-memory and easy as ABC.

Okay, I am done with my road rage on the page. Thanks for reading and aloha.