Tailgating

There were traffic delays last night on the way home, caused by three out of four lanes being blocked by a multiple pile-up involving a truck and at least five cars. The damage didn't look that bad; the cars appeared to have been shortened rather than wrecked, so I had the luxury of being able to get angry without having to feel really sorry for anyone.

As some of you already know, tailgating is one of my pet hates. It's worse than purely aggressive driving, somehow, although I'm not all that keen on that kind of stuff either. It's the sheer bloody stupidity of it that gets to me. Sometimes I watch cars in the next lane travelling twenty feet apart at ninety and my scrotum takes on the texture of corduroy.

How can they drive so close, so fast, and yet be so relaxed? What goes through their heads, I wonder? (Apart from the tailgate of the car in front, potentially.) I need Libertybob's Mindiacs to get behind the prominent eyebrow-ridges of those pointed little skulls and let me know how they think, but in the meantime I can only guess:

(1) "I'm driving a BMW M3, and not only have I been blessed with great teeth and fairly large genitalia, I also have reflexes on a par with a cross between a striking cobra and Ralph Schumacher. And my car has great brakes. And if I drop back any further then another car will cut in front and I'll have to drop back even more which means that I'll actually be going backwards. Probably.

(2) "I'm driving a Volvo, which as everyone knows is not constructed out of Coke cans flattened out like ordinary cars, but rather from the stuff they use to make flight recorders in aeroplanes, and therefore capable of withstanding an impact equivalent to hitting the ground at six hundred miles an hour, so rear-ending a Fiat Uno at eighty is no big deal. For me, at least."

(3) "I'm driving a Range Rover, which means that I'm an imbecilic thirty-year-old blonde with nice tits and the ability to suck the chrome off a trailer-hitch, which is why my husband has rewarded me with this huge vehicle. As it's twice as high and three times as heavy as anything I'm likely to hit I'll probably be safe. So far this year I've already been involved in four serious accidents all of which were my fault, but due to my husband's immense wealth I'm immune to prosecution."

Anyway, these people are obviously far too stupid to work out that they're driving dangerously without help. Obviously if I had my way then ideally I'd like to have them killed, because let's face it, nobody's going to miss them. However, I'm all too aware that, due to my childhood being spent in Belfast, many of my views are seen as inhumane, so I'd compromise and settle for a forward-facing speed-sensitive distance sensor which makes an irritating noise when you're driving too close for the speed you're doing. (Some people might argue that many cars are already equipped with such a device, but not everyone has a wife or girlfriend.)

Oh, hi Soozie. Ow.