Armed Road Rage
As you have probably seen on
GoOnTheRoad.com, people experience road rage all the time—though to
varying degrees, of course. Some people simply breathe a loud sigh or roll their eyes when a driver cuts them off or forgets to turn on a turn signal. Other people may mutter in a low voice, perhaps using a curse word or two. And then there are the people who just can’t hold in their road rage.
These people sometimes shake their fists (or some other unkind gesture) at another driver when the other driver does something unexpected or undesirable. Some may yell, perhaps shouting expletives and curse words. Extreme cases may even stop their cars, jump out, and try to approach the other driver if an incident occurs at a stopped traffic light or stop sign.
As bad as road rage can get for some people, it could be worse. Just imagine if people were driving cars that were equipped like some of the ones that are in video games. Some people would certainly be in a world of trouble rather quickly…
In case you haven’t seen any of these games, here’s an example. The Twisted Metal series of games that have been out for several years involve vehicles that are equipped with machine guns, projectile missiles, guided missiles, napalm fire, flamethrowers, detonator bombs, and land mines that the player can lay as traps on the roads for unsuspecting rival drivers.
Now, just imagine if real vehicles had any of these. Chaos would immediately ensue throughout every city throughout the nation.
Think about it. If someone cut someone off on the road, the other driver might just pull out the flamethrower and blast a little heat onto the offending driver’s vehicle. Or, say someone caused a person to miss a green arrow turn at an intersection because he was in the wrong lane (a common occurrence, yet one that causes many people to get quite angry). The person who missed the turn might just wait until traffic gets moving again and then send a guided missile after the wrong lane car.
And then there are the road ragers who get angry at pedestrians who end up slowing them down—they would likely pull out the machine guns and just blast them all, don’t you think? Not to mention psychopathic individuals…these people could very well decide to plant a land mine at the end of a neighbor’s driveway just to be able to watch and see what happens.
Think none of this is likely? Perhaps not—but only because car manufacturers will never add weapons onto their vehicles like that…at least not for civilian use, anyway. But, this type of manic road rage behavior really isn’t too far from what some people have already experienced. This country has already seen people pull out handguns when other drivers anger them—people have even been killed over instances of road rage. So, although we may never see Twisted Metal weapons on our vehicles, we already see the effects of that type of road rage. Shocking as it may seem, real vehicles already do have weapons—the drivers.