Monsoon Martin’s Open Letter of Grievance to the Drivers of Baltimore - Part Three
My exercise in road rage catharsis continues…
The Inconsiderate Parker. This is the narcissistic dick who patks athwart two (or even three! or four!!) spaces. Some Brits call them Parking Wankers (there’s even a hilarious Instagram page devoted to shaming such transgressors).
The People-Pleasing Courtesy Hound. Something between a doorman and a doormat. This is the driver who lets car after car go ahead of them in bumper-to-bumper traffic, presuming that all the drivers behind them are glad to cede the road. Sometimes they are almost aggressive in insisting after you. Disrupts the flow of traffic and doesn’t feel like kindness. Prepare to feel the wrath of my huffy, protracted horn.
Stupid-Assed Cyber Trucks. Self-explanatory, really. Every time I see one, I make a face as though I have unexpectedly eaten a mushroom. I have, out of decency, refrained from making you look at a picture of one.
The Turn Signal Disuse and Misuse Corps - aka The Misdirection Squad. This is a proud and ceaselessly creative group, comprising:
Drivers who seem to have forgotten that the turn signal is there
Drivers who give the turn signal a perfunctory flip just as they’re beginning their turn, helping no one
Drivers who inexplicably deploy the turn signal as they are about to commit an infraction noted elsewhere (e.g., the weaver, the zipper merge jagoff, and the middle-lane abusing shitbird)
The Bicyclist on a Rural Road, where hills and bends make it difficult for a driver to pass them. (In fact, I just learned that the typical hobby bicyclist is called a MAMIL—middle-aged man in Lycra—and I am here for the dismissiveness and incisiveness of this term.) Even worse: a pack of these grinding tryhards taking up an entire lane. (Yes, I know that bicyclists have a right to be on the road, blah blah blah, but they fill me with rage. I—with no hyperbole or histrionics—hate them.)
The “I Will Kill Us All to Avoid Missing My Exit!” Tom-Fool. This highway menace realizes at the last moment that they are in the wrong lane, so they cut across (however many it takes) lanes to make it.
Corollary: The Forking Idiot. This is when someone thinks they may have missed their exit, but they’re not sure, so they stop right at the crotch of the exit ramp. In extreme cases, this person will pass the exit by 200+ yards and then reverse on the highway or careen down the grassy knoll to take the proper exit.