#71 Road Skills

I believe that one of the many reasons for 21st century road rage is the essential dumbness of our cars and trucks. And by dumb I don’t mean stupid, I mean mute. The casual polite words that get us past people who are, say, blocking the aisle at a supermarket are largely impossible to use on the road. It’s really hard to swing around a slower driver and say: “Excuse me.” Or clear our throats meaningfully when the person ahead is not moving, even though the traffic light has changed. Worse, if we’ve committed some traffic transgression, it’s really tough to say, “Oops, sorry, I screwed up.” We’re pretty much limited to shrugging our shoulders, throwing our hands up in the air and mouthing the words I’m sorry as visibly as we can. When the guy we accidentally cut off comes up alongside us, honks his horn and makes threatening gestures with his cell phone the temptation is to use the first move we learned in Mime 101. You know the one I’m talking about—universal sign language—middle finger firmly extended. Of course, that’s when he presses another button on his cellphone, but instead of it unfolding into a camera it changes into a small Glock. So there we are again, road rage. All because we can’t communicate.
My suggestion is a simple one. And I’m hoping it won’t be long before some techo-preneur invents the damn thing and gets it on the market. I mean really, you’d think in the day of the aforementioned cell and camera phones, text messaging, Blackberrys and Onstar navigation, that someone could come up with an LED message strip for our cars. You know, kind of like the ad bars you see crawling around the buildings in big cites. Or like the casino and car dealer’s diamond vision billboards on the freeway. We need something like that for our cars. It could be on the rear end, a little higher than the bumpers, where we currently put our magnetic ribbons. Or even a complete wraparound strip so we could communicate from the side too. When the message is in the front, the computer could reverse the image so your target could read it in his rear-view mirror.
Yeah, great idea. A lot of messages could be pre-set for ordinary everyday road mess-ups. If you cut someone off accidentally, you could hit the “I’m sorry” button, and a big “I’m Sorry” with a pathetic-faced emoticon would flash over your rear bumper. If someone lets you in in a crowded merge lane, you could press the “Thank You” button and a big “Thank You” with exclamation points and smiley faces would pop up. You’d also have the capability to text message custom communiqués. Like “Way to go dufus, you made me spill my coffee.” or “Get off the phone and drive numbnuts!” or “Excuse me, are your turn signals broke or are you just a complete idiot!?” or “Slow down when you get on the off ramp, not while you’re still on the freeway you stupid fool!” or “Eat me!” or “Screw you, buddy!” or “Screw you too!” or “Your mother wears army boots!”
Wait a minute... I see a little potential for road rage coming back. Maybe it’s better that when it comes to communication, we should actually limit our road skills. Maybe fewer road skills will lead to fewer road kills.
America, ya gotta love it.