Why I hate self-centeredness

At the end of each day, when I am thoroughly exhausted and fed-up, I must face them on the road: Those self-centered motorists drifting along the freeways and byways, apparently without the slightest awareness of other motorists and displaying a spectacular ability to cause utter frustration in all with at least a modicum of interest in driving.

This feeble phenomenon comes in batches, starting with the mindless pull-away into the traffic without the slightest sense of upstream consternation only to proceed at a snail's pace, usually towards an upcoming traffic light that happens to be green at that moment. Said traffic light will be crossed on dark orange, cutting off at least five trailing cars that would have made it through otherwise.

The next, several batches of automotive egocentrics are to be encountered along the freeway, where an astonishing array of ambivalence towards driving awaits anyone with any driving sense. The first to prime the mind for worse to come is the spastic freeway merge, where the supposedly careful driver ahead would attempt to join a stream of metal by traveling at half the speed. That is not a merge. Rather, that is throwing the proverbial spanner into the works. But it gets worse. The safest of safe mergers would actually come to almost a halt on the on-ramp and then attempt to accelerate into the stream on the remaining stretch of on-ramp, again with not a whisker of awareness for the consequent consternation upstream on both on-ramp and near lane. I have seen on-ramp collisions caused that way.

Almost inevitable for its regularity is the lane change cut-off, performed with menace by those vying for top seed in egocentric. The favourite lane for this maneuver is either the fast lane, i.e. nominally the leftmost lane in left-hand-drive regions, or the second slowest lane, being nominally the second rightmost lane in the same regions. The fast lane menace will accelerate to cut-off any attempt to join that lane, only to slow down and obstruct any attempt to travel fast in the fast lane. The variation on that theme happens when the menace is aiming to move to the slow lane but cannot face the prospect of a joining motorist from the slow lane accelerating ahead into the near left lane. Instead, the menace must accelerate to cut off the motorist to the right and then attempt to cut in front into the slow lane only to decelerate, again causing consternation behind.

However, all of the foregoing turn topsy turvy normal notions of fast and slow lanes - normal being in the international sense - with no particular speed grading from left lane inwards. Passing rules are sent off via the same exit. "Keep right, pass left" is a foreign concept, saved to torture descendents of the wicked Nazis and other repressive regimes; joiners and socialists.

Finally, top spot goes to the epitome of self-centeredness that parks on any surface accessible to cars regardless of current traffic flow, be it roadways, private or public; entrances; access roads; emergency lanes where there is no emergency at hand, or no-parking zones. Whether the purpose is to drop off or pick-up, have a casual chat, buy a snack or take a pee, it does not matter what comes or goes: Any place will do. That is, as long as it is a place within 10 paces of the destination.

All of the above beg the question: If not born that way, how does one become like that?