The Unreliable Guide To… Being a Road Rager

By Nat Shepherd on May 26, 2016 in Other

According to a report in the ever-reliable Daily Telegraph (June 10, 2015), seven out of ten drivers have experienced road rage. YouTube and news programs abound with amateur videos of people losing the plot. If you’ve never felt road rage and are feeling left out, the Unreliable Guide is here to help you with some tips, tricks and tactics on how to turn impatience, bad driving and a borderline personality disorder into something really newsworthy…

Be a VIP
The road is all yours and no one else belongs on it. How dare all these people be in your way? Don’t they realise that you are a Very Important Person? Make good use of your horn to let them know they should clear the road. If that doesn’t work, just burn up the hard shoulder and push in at the last minute and give anyone who complains the finger. If you do this well, you could star in a real road rage situation like the two chaps on the M4 caught on camera last September trying to beat the stuffing out of each other.

Insist on Manners
Occasionally you may feel like allowing someone into your lane. It can create an enormous sense of well being, so long as they give a little wave to say thank you. That is essential. Without the wave, they’ve not acknowledged your generosity. They have, in fact, just pushed in. The only option is to follow them home, even if they live in Melbourne, and force them to say thank you… nicely.

Target Bicycles, Scooters and Motorbikes
These two-wheeled users of the road send some drivers into a blind fury. In England in 2013, 22-year-old Emma Way tweeted: “Definitely knocked a cyclist off his bike earlier. I have right of way – he doesn’t even pay road tax!” That’s the spirit Miss Right-of-Way; damn those cyclists, dawdling along in their little eco-bubble of smugness. Scooters and motorbikes might travel fast enough not to get in the way, but they cruise past traffic and get to park anywhere they fancy. This shouldn’t be allowed! The Unreliable Guide suggests pretending these upstarts are invisible; don’t encourage them by treating them like legitimate road users. Failing that, just follow Emma’s example and run them all off the road.

Despise Pedestrians
Unless you live in your car, you too will be a pedestrian occasionally, but when you get behind the wheel all that must be forgotten. Pedestrians are the enemy, always wandering out onto the road and you’re not even allowed to knock them down. Many road ragers rev their engines to try and speed up pedestrians crossing at the ‘green man’, but a driver in Rose Bay refined this technique. He wound down the window of his Range Rover and called out, “Can’t you walk any slower you c**ts?” Now that’s the spirit!

Finally, if you took any of the above seriously, please get the bus. You are not safe.