absolutum dominium

saturday was an eventful day. it marked our first encounter with a real road bully.

i suppose you do see road bullies on the road a fair bit; singapore does after all have a pretty real problem concerning road rage. i believe tt all drivers will definitely encounter their fair share of bullies - barring the fact tt they do not fall into tt category themselves.

nonetheless, i did not expect my first such encounter to be quite so soon.

i was with ben, cl and my; he was driving us from town towards the west via the aye for zhi cha dinner. at the point where he wanted to exit, he needed to filter out from the middle lane to the left lane to do so.

on his left lane somewhat behind him was this large new silver volkswagon passat; when ben signaled to filter left, as to be expected of singaporeans, the driver instead of slowing down, stepped on the gas and accelerated, thus forcing ben back into his lane.

nevertheless, ben tried to filter out again to the left and succeeded; this time he exited and unfortunately happened to end up to the right of said volkswagon passat. as you turn towards the right following the curve from the aye towards buona vista road, the car has a tendency to drift left; as cars do all over the road internationally. ordinarily, this is an acceptable thing because if you happen to be driving faster than the car to your left; you will just end up a little in front of said car. in any case, the car on the lane to your left will probably drift a little more towards his left.

tt is of course, if everyone is driving at a nice acceptable speed.

unfortunately, mr. volkswagon passat decided tt he would not drive at a nice acceptable speed. altho ben started out a little in front of his car when exiting the aye, mr. volkswagon passat accelerated once again, such tt as both cars were turning right following the curve ben started flitting a little into his lane, thus causing him to have to brake to avoid a collision.

hence, mr. volkswagon passat went mad. as in, seriously imh i-need-anger-management-courses type mad.

first, he started following the speed of our car, accelerating till he was in front of us. he wound down his window and started hurling an amazing amount of vulgarities at the top of his voice, all the while first flashing us the middle finger and pointing his index finger.

although i could not really hear what he was saying, i could see tt mr. volkswagon passat was a middle-aged man, possibly relatively well-heeled (and add tt to the fact tt his car was obviously relatively expensive too).

anyway dismissing him as feckless raving lunatic, cl and ben gave him 'what the fuck' type responses. but i suppose because he probably assumed tt just coz he was older than us, we had to bow down and kiss his feet, or do something to tt effect. *shrugs*

so obviously the 'what the fuck' responses didn't go down very well with him. coz there happened to be a traffic light tt turned red just after the exit and we all had to stop our cars (he in lane 3; us in lane 1), he opened his car door, got out of his car, and strode across the road to our car. ben flicked the autolock button on the car in time, because he was ready to open cl's door (cl was sitting on the passenger side next to ben); i can only speculate as maybe to hamtam him or to do something to tt degree.

here was this guy, wearing a polo shirt and shorts; reasonably prosperous, middle-aged, and possibly moneyed; and here he was behaving like a goddamn petulant 5-year-old kid.

but anyway when he realised tt he couldn't open the door, he vented his frustrations by slamming both his palms on the side car window in front of cl; effectively leaving his big palm prints on the glass for the rest of the night. the car shook a little with the force; but i suppose besides tt he was an otherwise toothless tiger. by this time a lorry had pulled up in lane 2 and he had no choice but to walk back to his car and accept the fact tt he now looked a bit like an idiot (probably because i and my were giving him these relatively nonchalent "crazy old man" type looks).

it was actually quite frightening at the instant when he was getting out of his car and walking to ours. i am actually grateful tt ben had the sense to lock the door and tt none of us got out; the bully was made to look helpless and foolish at the end of the day. oh, and we have his car plate number if we want to report him, even though we don't really see the point in taking tt kind of trouble.

but nonetheless, it's one of those things tt just confirm how... well, how uncivilised we can be. you can call it unhappy, too stressed, a total lack of social grace... i can understand tt this guy probably had a lot of reasons for why he was behaving tt way; maybe he was rushing off to somewhere, maybe he had a really bad saturday, maybe his wife just served him divorce papers and threatened to sue for half of his property including tt new volkswagon passat...

a million and one excuses... *cough*... i mean reasons we can dream up to explain road rage and the existence of road bullies like himself.

i mean, road rage is after all, little to do with things like wealth or educational status. you have rich well-heeled and possibly educated people acting like low-class brutes on the road. a large percentage of road bullies are actually middle-aged and reasonably well-heeled or educated. while my father might contend tt 'youngsters' nowadays are *insert operative word here*, he can't escape the fact tt a lot of people around his age group don't behave like they are of tt age group.

it makes you wonder what is wrong with our society.

i mean, road rage does exist in countries other than singapore; like for example the states. but for the most part... singapore has a reputation for having really bad drivers. not bad like made crazy drivers ala mexico, the philippines or even vietnam, but bad as in goddamn selfish to the core. drivers tt will knock pedestrians down so long as there is no zebra crossing (coz they will never stop for you), drivers tt will always accelerate whenever someone is trying to filter into their lane when the person flicks the signal, drivers tt never hesitate to press on the horn at every little incident or to flash amazingly vulgar signs and scream phrases insulting your person and your whole goddamn family in a single stroke.

and the best thing about this, is tt most drivers are like tt on the roads, whether they are in a legitimate rush or not.

if there is anything tt needs to be taught on the circuit by the tp, it isn't about safe driving per se. i think it should be about basic courtesy.

coz things like this and incidents like this make me downright embarassed to be a singaporean.