Driven to Vent on the Info Superhighway

Dutifully, you have crawled along in the exit lane at rush hour, one set of winking taillights in a river that arches toward the San Gabriels. Then some guy on a car phone, in a Lexus, having just sped along the shoulder for 1 1/2 miles, cuts you off as he zips into the exit lane, thence merrily on his way. Where are the police? The Skycams? The wrath of God? Where oh where is freeway justice?

Just a few keystrokes away, as it happens.

A whole parallel universe of road rage, driver diatribes and general vehicular viciousness broods and boils on the far-flung strands of the Web.

On the Database of Unsafe Drivers (accessible through the search field at https://www.Yahoo.com), the motto is “Don’t get mad, get even.” Victims of bad drivers are urged to “Let the world know what a jerk he or she is. Put a license number up for the world to see. Register the dangerous driver as a D.U.D.” Scores of drivers from all over the world have followed the incendiary instructions, posting specific plate numbers and passionate screeds describing the heinous behavior and obvious character defects of driving doofuses. Needless to say, California has one of the larger and more verbose lists of tales; in fact, it is second only to the Canadian province of Ontario where, if these testimonials are to be believed, automotive anarchy reigns.

Many of the dozen or so bad drivers’ sites are regionally specific. Atlanta Roadways Digest (“real life unedited photos of Atlantans at their driving worst”) (https://www.tardsite.com) is a veritable panoply of motoring mistakes, the dubiously titled “‘Tard of the Month,” the “Rubberneckers Gallery” and the “Park Much or Just Read About It?” collection.

Silicon Valley commuters Richard Beal and Robert Swain have inspired a cult following with their soon-to-end Highway 17 Page of Shame. The two whiled away their gridlocked hours photographing and passing Old Testament-style judgment on road crews, fellow motorists, indeed any obstacle in their path. Their “Jerque du Jour” feature is credited as the inspiration for other similar Web sites.

The phenomenon of road rage has its own dozen or so sites. Topics range from psychological mollifications and explanations--Dr. Driving’s Page of Random Acts of Kindness (https://www.aloha.net)--to grass-roots organizing. The Knoxville Road Rage Page, (accessible by searching for road rage on https://www.geocities.com), for example, was born when its author discovered that police did not respond to just-missed acts of aggression. It calls for details on readers’ experiences with demonic drivers.

Surprisingly, neither Los Angeles nor California has a specific bad-drivers or road-rage site. There is, however, Driving in California (https://www.caldrive.com), a multipart diatribe by one Hamish Reid, an Aussie transplant, on the peculiarities of traversing the Golden State. Aimed at fellow expats, his site offers a kind of “America 101” (it’s a hood, not a bonnet; gas, not petrol; passing, not overtaking, and so on).

He also manages to inject more than a few scathing-but-true generalizations into the mix, including our tendency to not use turn signals, to exit at the last minute across several lanes of traffic, and to ignore red lights. There also appears to be a size issue. While he admits that not everyone here drives an SUV or a “Yank Tank,” he advises visitors to “Remember, this is a country where a full-size Honda Accord is categorized as small.”

Oh, and there’s a problem with that?