A recent study conducted at Colorado State University found that people whose car sports bumper stickers are more likely to engage in road rage. This was just wrong.
It’s Lexus and BMW drivers who cut me off in traffic. And when I experienced an infertility problem several years ago women driving minivans sporting “Baby on Board” bumper stickers would weave erratically at an alarming rate.
Okay, I’m going to come clean here. As a young woman, I used to have a problem with road rage. If someone cut me off in traffic, I’d ride up on their bumper. If someone honked at me in the turn lane I’d throw the car into reverse. I’ve even swerved at people who were passing me.
During all that time, I never had a bumper sticker on my car.
Partly, this is because of something a friend once told me. Dariush said he wouldn’t put a Christian bumper sticker on his car because he drove too fast and didn’t want to be a bad witness for Jesus.
Dariush drove me everywhere. If he drove fast, I never noticed. I suspect his dislike for bumper stickers had the same origin as his dislike for pork. Raised as a Jew in Iran, Dariush harbored no preconceived notion others would accept his religion.
Several years ago, my stepson bought a used car that had one of those fish symbols on the back. Though he’s not a Christian, and as far as I know a good driver, people flipped Ian off in traffic for no reason he could think of.
I always attributed this to the fish symbol. Used as a code by persecuted Christians in the Roman Empire, the Ixtheus is perceived in America less as a symbol of faith than of elitism. Even Christians use the term “bumper sticker faith” to deride faith so shallow it can be summed up in slogans.
I trace my road rage association with expensive cars to an experience growing up in Boulder in the sixties. While driving our Jeep Wagoneer, which was badly in need of an engine overhaul, into Boulder after a camping trip, a man in a Porsche drove up beside us and pointed out our car was belching out black exhaust. Then he said, “America. Love it or leave it,” flipped off my dad and sped off.
A chemist at Rocky Flats, Dad calmly observed the particulate pollution our Jeep was putting out was less damaging to the environment than the jackrabbit start the Porsche driver just made. To this day, if I get cut off by a Lexus, it’s not that the driver is late for work, distracted, or a poor driver. It’s class warfare. The driver’s sense of entitlement means he should be ahead of me. Or that he can insult my father.
My stepdaughters got annoyed with the bumper sticker: “Ask first before hunting and fishing on private land.” But my father was a lifelong NRA member who hunted--with permission--prairie dogs for front range ranchers. Let someone with a political bumper sticker I disagree with sit through a green turn arrow, and watch my impatience turn into cultural warfare.
An infertility problem as a young woman left me with the feeling I was undeserving of motherhood. When I’d get cut off by a minivan with a “Baby on Board” bumper sticker, I was incensed that a woman who endangered her child’s life was more deserving than me.
We don’t drive in a vacuum. I overcame my road rage by enjoying the music on the radio and inventing stories about other drivers. His mother was diagnosed with cancer. She’s picking up a sick child from daycare. He just got a pink slip.
Whether or not drivers with bumper stickers exhibit more road rage, we’re more likely to notice them when they do. Both road rage and bumper stickers are in the eyes of the beholder.
It’s Lexus and BMW drivers who cut me off in traffic. And when I experienced an infertility problem several years ago women driving minivans sporting “Baby on Board” bumper stickers would weave erratically at an alarming rate.
Okay, I’m going to come clean here. As a young woman, I used to have a problem with road rage. If someone cut me off in traffic, I’d ride up on their bumper. If someone honked at me in the turn lane I’d throw the car into reverse. I’ve even swerved at people who were passing me.
During all that time, I never had a bumper sticker on my car.
Partly, this is because of something a friend once told me. Dariush said he wouldn’t put a Christian bumper sticker on his car because he drove too fast and didn’t want to be a bad witness for Jesus.
Dariush drove me everywhere. If he drove fast, I never noticed. I suspect his dislike for bumper stickers had the same origin as his dislike for pork. Raised as a Jew in Iran, Dariush harbored no preconceived notion others would accept his religion.
Several years ago, my stepson bought a used car that had one of those fish symbols on the back. Though he’s not a Christian, and as far as I know a good driver, people flipped Ian off in traffic for no reason he could think of.
I always attributed this to the fish symbol. Used as a code by persecuted Christians in the Roman Empire, the Ixtheus is perceived in America less as a symbol of faith than of elitism. Even Christians use the term “bumper sticker faith” to deride faith so shallow it can be summed up in slogans.
I trace my road rage association with expensive cars to an experience growing up in Boulder in the sixties. While driving our Jeep Wagoneer, which was badly in need of an engine overhaul, into Boulder after a camping trip, a man in a Porsche drove up beside us and pointed out our car was belching out black exhaust. Then he said, “America. Love it or leave it,” flipped off my dad and sped off.
A chemist at Rocky Flats, Dad calmly observed the particulate pollution our Jeep was putting out was less damaging to the environment than the jackrabbit start the Porsche driver just made. To this day, if I get cut off by a Lexus, it’s not that the driver is late for work, distracted, or a poor driver. It’s class warfare. The driver’s sense of entitlement means he should be ahead of me. Or that he can insult my father.
My stepdaughters got annoyed with the bumper sticker: “Ask first before hunting and fishing on private land.” But my father was a lifelong NRA member who hunted--with permission--prairie dogs for front range ranchers. Let someone with a political bumper sticker I disagree with sit through a green turn arrow, and watch my impatience turn into cultural warfare.
An infertility problem as a young woman left me with the feeling I was undeserving of motherhood. When I’d get cut off by a minivan with a “Baby on Board” bumper sticker, I was incensed that a woman who endangered her child’s life was more deserving than me.
We don’t drive in a vacuum. I overcame my road rage by enjoying the music on the radio and inventing stories about other drivers. His mother was diagnosed with cancer. She’s picking up a sick child from daycare. He just got a pink slip.
Whether or not drivers with bumper stickers exhibit more road rage, we’re more likely to notice them when they do. Both road rage and bumper stickers are in the eyes of the beholder.
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