On-road Brutality

“Oh Excuse Me, I Forgot It Was Driving-Like-a-Twat Day”

And other supportive phrases you can use as a passenger to reassure a new driver

I’m off the road at the moment, and full of painkillers.

I spend much of my travel time in a mild-opioid-fueled haze. After a minor spine injury, I returned my works van, and am now chauffeured around by my recently driver-certified partner.

She’s a great driver, and is on her second car, a 20-year-old Audi that is as gutsy as it is is temperamental. She loves the vehicle, it loves her, and they have an infrastructure-synergy that any sweaty and unwashed trucker would be proud of.

Occasionally, however, someone will do something imbecilic, like cut her up, pull over too close in front of her, or otherwise flout the rules of the road to a level that I feel is beyond tolerable. At this point, it is my duty to step in and provide health and safety focused, highway-code drenched, experienced-driver commentary.

“Fucking stupid imbe-fool!” I can be heard to scrumble from my place at her side, gesturing in disbelief as the shiny BMW in front of us careens around like an unconcerned dream-fairy, ignoring the dividing lines between three lanes of traffic.

Incidentally, also, 2 inches from our bumper, they will react to this event like it is somehow the fault of the straight-line driving, rather predicable people doing everything perfectly correctly behind them.

This day, more than any other (perhaps I’d forgotten to take my pain meds, or perhaps Mercury was in retrograde) it seemed like the twat brigade was out in force on the roads. Other phrases I uttered including, but were not limited to:

• The titular “Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t realise it was ‘drive-like-a-twat’ day.”
• “If confusing and illegal maneuvers were music awards, you’d be Dolly Parton!”
• “Why don’t you try using your indicator next time instead of treating your commute like the international fuckwit tryouts?!

and the British classic:

• “Berk.”

Life on the road in the UK is as rewarding and enjoyable as it is complex and strange. You can never truly know what is going on in the mind of another driver, but if this day was anything to go by, I can confidently assert that it is usually somewhere on a scale between:

1. “I’ve just left the cult grounds after signing away my life savings to Jared Leto, and he’s told me I need to collect as many driving infractions as possible so that my soul is technically worth more money,”

and

2. Nothing.

We made a few journeys that day. One to the shops, where a large minivan swerved wildly around in front of us, spilling a flock of children onto the tarmac from a sliding side door, before skidding diagonally across two parking spaces and reversing into a wall; another to my house, where a delivery driver wanted use our end-of-cul-de-sac turning circle to practice his spirograph skills for a couple of hours;

And yet another, to my Dungeons and Dragons club in the centre of town, where, upon pulling safely and sensibly over, we were rolled up on by another driver who wanted to stop in the same spot.

Instead of realising we were there, dear reader, this keen-eyed motorist continued driving at full speed, looking in a different direction from the proposed route of travel, only stopping when some primeval part of her brain remembered how expensive her last five insurance claims were.

Needless to say, throughout each journey, like a diligent passenger should, I fairly and justly insulted the other road users to bolster and boost the driving confidence of my young lady.

Some advice I was once given, by my mother no less, as a young lad, was to treat every other driver on the road like they are actively trying to injure you, and themselves: If you do this, then nothing will surprise you.

However, I would like to append this sentiment with some extra wisdom:

Treat every other driver like they’re actively trying to:

1. Injure you and themselves.
2. Have their shoelaces tied together.
3. Are blindfolded.
4. Are hoping to be recruited as stunt drivers for the next batman movie.
5. Are applying makeup.
6. Are also singing.
7. Are learning and actively practicing sign language.

and

8. Have just spilt a melted McFlurry or Costa coffee on their crotch.

Meep Meep.