Driven Mad
Getting from A to B is about 50% of my job. It also accounts for about 90% of the stress associated with the job. Since the tail end of the pandemic, driving standards, in general, seem to have plummeted along with the deterioration of tolerance and civilized behaviour. People seem to be angrier, more selfish, and liable to act aggressively due to frustration. It manifests itself in schools, shops, and general social interactions. My wife works in a local secondary school as a pastoral support worker, and her daily life has become intolerable due to the awful behaviour of a small hard core of children devoid of respect or empathy - a consequence of poor parenting and the social isolation brought about by the Covid lockdown phenomenon during a vital time of their development. The misogynistic and violent attitude of some of the boys has to be witnessed to be believable, and the levels of anxiety leading to non-attendance are out of control. My wife has quickly become an in-school police officer - dealing with drugs, violence, and absolute disrespect for anybody else - while not being able to deal with disgusting behaviour appropriately because the welfare of the child has to come first.
When those angry people get in a moving metal box and join the network of other metal boxes with people inside them, it brings out the territorial instinct of primeval humans. The UK road network is becoming a dangerous place to make a mistake of any sort because the seasoned road rager will have no hesitation in losing all self-control in order to get revenge on someone who stalls at traffic lights or dares to drive at the speed limit.
My car has a dashcam fitted to the front windscreen which is continuously filming the front-facing scene, and if there’s some sort of incident I always press the yellow triangle to save a section of the recording. Over the years I’ve amassed a collection of amusing and sometimes amazing feats of ridiculousness performed by fucking idiots in motor vehicles. The acts of dangerous overtaking and speeding have become so commonplace that I just don’t bother recording them anymore. Due to storage constraints on my Squarespace account I can’t post loads of videos so here’s one that sort of typifies the stuff I see.
