[Jeff Higgins]

Maybe it just now showed up on my RADAR, but it seems as though I've been seeing more and more reports of "road rage" incidents. Just in the last week we have had a couple of pretty serious assaults here locally, both attributed to this "road rage".

Puget Sound area traffic has done nothing but get steadily worse in the last, oh, couple of decades. Our idyllic little soggy corner of the country has finally caught up with what I imagine many of the rest of you have lived with your whole lives. In short, traffic around here sucks. Big time.

So, yeah, I can see where folks are impatient, stressed, and grumpier than ever. I get that, and in heavy traffic really try to drive with a "can't we all just get along" kind of an approach. Let folks merge in front of me, don't tailgate, don't hold people up, and all of that - we are all in this mess together.

Even at that, I have to say there are some very "challenging" or very "frustrating" drivers out there. Not so much the speeders, the ones weaving in and out, the aggressive drivers, the tailgaters - not those folks, but the apparently totally unaware. The folks doing 47 mph in the fast lane blocking traffic, the folks sitting through a green light while they are texting with horns blaring all around them, the ones who will not turn right on a red even though there is no one else on the road. Those kinds.

While I might stew and cuss a little, I would never consider actually lashing out at these folks. I'm guessing, however, that this kind is what sets off most road-ragers. Yet each and every story I have seen or read concerning "road rage", the victim has absolutely no idea why he or she was dragged out of their car and beaten senseless. "I was just driving along..." or "I was just sitting there..." And they are never pressed by the interviewer - "which lane were you in and how fast were you going?", or "how long was the light green and how many were honking at you, and how many intersections had you sat through a green light just prior to that?".

They seem to want to imply that the rage that led to the beating was totally unprovoked. Unjustified, I would agree, but there just had to be some action on the part of the victim that enraged their fellow motorist. Seems it might be a valuable public service to dig down to that and make it known. You know, something like "it looks like our victim had been camping in the passing lane at far below the speed limit for the last ten miles, not letting anyone pass, and ignoring the flashing high beams and horns. Our perp finally had enough, ran him off the road, and beat the hell out of him. Don't be either one of these guys..."