Romesh Ranganathan on the comedy in road rage

Do you ever have social situations where you cannot believe how a seemingly innocent scenario has escalated into something quite unpleasant or embarrassing? This happened to me recently at a post office. The queue was taking an inordinately long time, when a lady turned to me and said “This is taking a long time, isn’t it?”
She just wanted me to say “yes”. I am pretty sure this woman did not wish me to offer my genuine opinion on this. She wasn’t interested in whether our relative perspectives on time actually meant that I didn’t in fact think it was a long time at all. She just wanted me to agree. I duly obliged.

She then said: “This girl behind the counter is very slow, isn’t she?”. Again, I do not believe that this woman wished for me to assess this girl’s efficiency, or to discuss whether a division of labour system might be implemented in order to speed this up. She just wanted me to agree. Wishing to smooth the time that I had remaining of my social interaction with this woman, I again agreed.
Once this lady had been served, (I believe she was sending a novelty toilet brush to Guildford) and her transaction completed, she then said to the girl serving her: “He and I don’t think you should be working here!”

My service was less smooth to say the least.
A more extreme version of this occurred a few weeks previously: I was driving home in the middle of the afternoon when I stopped behind a van at a traffic light. The traffic light turned green, as is the normal procedure for these things, but the van did not move. I waited for a bit, and then realised that he must not have seen the light change. I gave him a toot on the horn. Not an aggressive toot, more a Herbie style “the light’s changed my good man”. He drives on; I have helped oil the wheels of society.

Until we arrived at the next set of traffic lights… I pulled up alongside the van, and the guy gestured to me to roll my window down. I did so. I have no idea why I did this. Maybe, after my helpful beep, I thought the man would thank me for highlighting the change of the light and enabling him to continue his journey that little bit quicker. He did not.

“I tooted my horn – not an aggressive toot, more a Herbie-style “the light’s changed my good man””

“Who the hell do you think you are beeping me mate? You ever beep me again and I will knock your head off, you understand me?”
This seemed unlikely. A number of things had to happen in order for this threat to contain any credibility. I would have to see him again, he would have to recognise me, he would have to arrive at a traffic light just before me and I would have to beep him. Highly unlikely, and with this calculation quickly completed I took this opportunity to engage in some fighting talk.

“Oh, don’t be a moron! I thought you hadn’t seen the light change!”
Pretty strong stuff, I think you’ll agree. He then responded with: “I had clearly stalled! You could tell by the way the vehicle struggled!”
At this point, I realised we were in the unfortunate situation of explaining our side of the argument logically while also maintaining our aggressive stance.

“I wasn’t aware you had stalled! The vehicle did not display signs of stalling, it just remained stationary you piece of s***.”
Job done? He decided to call my bluff, however: “Pull over up there and let’s sort this out.”
Now I’m assuming he wanted some sort of fight. Which would definitely sort it out. As he was caving my head in I would probably have admitted fault in this particular instance.
But this is, of course, an assumption on my part. For all I know, he wanted us to pull over so that he could show me how the vehicle had stalled, and signs to spot this in the future.
At this point the light turned green. He didn’t notice. I saw my chance. I pulled away quickly.
“Looks like you’ve stalled again, moron!”

Before you start emailing to tell me how I am a hero to the common man and a beacon of inspiration for the oppressed, frightened majority, please remember that I spent the next minutes of the journey nearly in tears at the thought of a light being red and the van catching me up again. It was like Speed, except, instead of a bomb going off if they slowed down, an overweight Asian man would be getting repeatedly slapped.