He of We lives between 5 and 6 miles north of city center of the major downtown He and She live near.  She of We lives 5 to 6 miles south of that same center of town.  Those ten to twelve miles get a lot of use out of Both of We’s tires.

Last night He of We was travelling those few miles on a dark and rainy night when a shot rang out.  Well, when a pickup truck pulled down an entrance ramp and shot out into traffic like it was a speeding bullet.  No emergency lights, no turn signal, no brake lights indicating he had intended to yield like the sign suggested.  Just shot out into traffic.  But it was ok because he was going about 10 miles an hour faster than the main line traffic which was going about 15 miles an hour faster than the posted speed limit signs suggested.

Every day we’re noticing a disturbing trend.  Nobody is obeying the law.  The traffic laws.  Even the littering laws are routinely broken.  Why do people feel justified to toss empty fast food bags and cups, worn gloves, or half-eaten chickens out their windows?  Is it a sense of entitlement?  Do they feel that since every mile of US highway has been “adopted” by some civic group, local business, or religious order that somebody has to give these volunteers something to do the third Saturday of every month?  (If you are secretly one of these, wait till you get to work to throw out the coffee cup and breakfast sandwich wrapper.  Nobody will think less of you if they spy you tossing trash from one of the billions of fast food drive throughs rather than the artisan bread and breakfast kiosk. That’s how there got to be billions of them.)

But we digress.  What is it about traffic laws that beg to be broken?  Stop and yield signs are there only for the local high school graduates to emblazon with their graduation year.  Speed limit signs are routinely run over but less routinely replaced.  One Way, No U-Turn, and No Left Turn signs are more outdoor art than even suggestions.   No Turn on Red signs might as well not be printed and mounted at all even though they appear at every intersection with a traffic light.

The problem with the traffic law breakers (besides breaking the law), is that they aim their rage when they are thwarted at law breaking by the occasional law abiding sign observer.  They tailgate, weave, and race their way down the road, taking time to turn and mouth obscenities at the ones who are going only 5 to 10 miles faster than the limit which lumps them with the slow moving vehicles.

Imagine if somebody suggested that breaking traffic laws is the gateway crime.  We’re not sure we agree with that.  We don’t believe that once you get over the thrill of turning on red it’s just a matter of time until you want to pull tags off mattresses or smoke in elevators.  We are sure that breaking the traffic laws doesn’t come without some penalty.  You don’t have to watch too many editions of the evening news before you hear of somebody who launched a car over a guiderail and into a grove of trees ejecting the driver and killing the passengers.     

Some people say it’s the boom of cell phones, GPS units, radios with multiple bands, MP3 players with thousands of songs, and other distractions that make people drive fast and recklessly.  Some believe it’s because Drivers’ Ed has disappeared from the high schools and is replaced by Moms and Dads who (sorry) are part of the problem themselves. 

Whether it’s distraction, knowledge deficit, the thrill of handling 2,000 pounds of anything, or enjoying that last morsel of sausage, egg, and cheese on a muffin before tossing the wrapper out of a vehicle moving faster than a last century’s high speed trains, breaking the law is breaking the law.  So slow down, read a bumper sticker, and arrive alive.  That’s a rage that’s all the rage that we can live with. 

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?