Encountering Impatient Drivers on Their Fast Cars

I live in the Netherlands, a country with an average of 1.3 bikes per person. Many things ease the cycling practice here, from the flatness of the land to the extensive network of bike lanes. Also, cyclists almost always have the right of way ("voorang" in Dutch) when encountering motorised vehicles.

So, I have become accustomed to feeling granted the right to roam on my bike here in the Netherlands. Something that is unlike my experience of riding bikes and scooters in Hanoi, where I grew up.

Such a feeling of certainty meant I was surprised at hearing a car horn as I left a roundabout near my house, pedalling my bike along the designated bike lane. It was in the middle of a cold, rainy Wednesday afternoon. The road was quiet as usual at such a time in my sleepy little town. So the honk must have aimed at me. But why the need for such aggressive noise?

I saw the car whizzed past just at the end of that questioning thought. The driver leaned far over to his right, probably for the benefit of me seeing him more clearly, and waved his arm frantically before driving even faster away. He must have needed to remind me that I had forgotten to signal when existing at the roundabout. That would have meant that he, having had to give me voorang, had his own exist delayed. Considering how fast he overtook me, the delay must be...a lengthy few seconds. (I was on my electric bike which normally takes me about a minute between entering and leaving that roundabout).

The loud car horn didn't startle me. I have spent the first 25 years of my life in Hanoi, so I have developed an immunisation to honking. Over there and back then, scooter drivers pressed their horns because they wanted other scooter drivers to move a tiny bit faster within the tiny limit of the always-packed traffic after everyone had (repeatedly) waited under either the beating sun or the torrential rainfall for what could be as long as three minutes for another red light to turn green.

So yeah, I am familliar to impatient honking. But the level of impatience in yesterday's BMW driver was rather extreme, it made me pay attention. A few second delays in the comfort of his very fancy looking car must be so very terrible.

It could be that he was in a life-or-death situation (and still felt the responsibility to signal to me the lethal consequence of my forgetfulness).

But it is much more likely that he was one of those people I would call "impatient drivers in their fast cars.”

A few months ago, while on the same bike, my husband faced another impatient driver in his fast car who tried to run my husband off the shared 30kph capped resident road leading to our son's school (kids onboard both vehicles).

Back to the roundabout, as the BMW sped off, I thought it must be the same driver. Then I remembered that the car my husband told me about was of a different colour. So, it was more likely that I had encountered yet another such impatient driver.

They seem to take presence in many corners as I look around and beyond my little Dutch town. They don't slow down to walk in the shoes of "others". If those others don't move as fast (and as recklessly), then those others don't belong. Those others need to be ridiculed or sent away.

When such drivers are at the helm of powerful nations or mega-corporations, their impatience is a looming danger. They seem to take it as their responsibility to alienate the "other half" rather than ever slowing down for empathy. And for that, they would not spare their limitless resources, whether political power, financial wealth, or both. Worse still, they endorse and imprint ever more the culture of impatience. While the instant gratification brought by technological advances and increased wealth makes many of us in the West increasingly impatient, normalising such behaviour could have a long-lasting societal impact.

(This author argued the collective impatience of the West was at the centre of their failure to control COVID-19, leading to devastating numbers of deaths.)

So one can see that encountering such impatient drivers in their fast cars could lead to mild irritation, a valid concern, or even outrage.

After the incident, my husband wanted a friendly chat with the car driver, as parents frequenting the same dropping-off path should do. Yet, he ended up almost on top of the car bonnet because its driver revved the engine instead of slowing down to resolve things with my husband. Still, my husband pushed on for face-to-face dialogue only to be ghosted at a mediated meeting.

It was unpleasant, frustrating, and mildly alarming through many school runs. After being ghosted, though, my husband had to let the affair be unresolved. Only so much one side of a dialogue could do if the other was unwilling.

Sometimes, the only solution is to let it be (and maybe avoid the car lanes for a while).

I used to find that “solution” depressing because of the passivity.

Yet, as I recently learned from the words and wisdom in Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals, we, as finite beings, simply can't fight all the battles. We are better off picking one that can make a difference within our limitations and give it our best self. (And that battle doesn’t have to be changing the impatient drivers for the safety of the others)

What we can definitely change, though, is our own tendency towards impatience.

We can remind ourselves to slow down. Walk a city, ride a bike to work, make clothes by hand, and grow vegetables from seeds. Better yet, teach those to our children so they know there's much more than that driving a car as fast as possible.