Confessions of a New York Taxi Driver (The Confessions Series) by Eugene Salomon

Author:Eugene Salomon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-04-04T04:00:00+00:00

10

Road Rage

As irritating as pedestrians may be to a cabbie, they are mere inconveniences when compared to the real conflict that is always in progress on the streets of New York: the endless struggle between taxi driver and every other vehicle on the road for possession of space. Trying to make the light before it turns red? There’s a minivan from New Jersey in front of you going ten miles per hour. Want to pull into your favorite taxi stand so you can get a coffee and enjoy a civilized piss? Sorry, police cars have decided the stand now belongs to them. Think you can get to that woman who’s trying to hail a cab up on the next block? No, a rental truck with Colorado plates blocks your way and another taxi gets to her first.

You are entering here a world of desire, greed, speed, sloth, idiocy, misunderstood intentions, arrogance, ignorance, blind spots and obscene hand gestures. It’s the world of road rage and it’s nasty.

You would probably think at first glance that the madhouse streets of New York would almost automatically make for a situation of perpetual road rage for anyone who had to be out there all the time making a living in it. Most passengers who ask me what it is that drives me the craziest about driving a cab think it’s the traffic, but it’s not. Actually, after about six months a taxi driver builds up a tolerance to traffic, kind of like an immunity. It slides off your back. I call this the ‘hump’. If a cabbie can’t get over the hump, he’d better find himself a new occupation, for he will surely go mad.

Nevertheless, even with this tolerance in place, road rage incidents do occur. But it takes something special, something so particularly outrageous that the impulse to react is irresistible. After long years of observation, I have concluded that these incidents can be placed into two general categories: a) road rage with ‘civilians’ and b) road rage with professionals.

By ‘civilians’ I mean drivers who aren’t doing it for a living. Professionals include not only taxi drivers, but bus drivers, truck drivers, those pedicab guys and even the drivers of horse-drawn carriages. Not included in this category are the drivers of police cars, ambulances and fire trucks because there is no such thing as a road rage incident with them. When it comes to the roads, they are the elite. They’ve got sirens and flashing lights and it is understood by one and all that you just get out of their way. Of course.

Of the two categories, civilians are the more delicate particle. You’ve got to be careful with these guys. Road rage incidents may flare up suddenly and unexpectedly with civilians because they may not be used to the assertive style of driving that is normal in New York City. You cut off some guy in a souped-up Camaro who thinks he’s the king of the road and you may see that Camaro speed up and attempt to run you off of that road.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.