It's no wonder the roads are full of rage. The roads and the supermarkets, writes Mary Hannigan
I retired from driving many years ago, after a nasty experience on a bridge near Clonee. I'd been tricked into embarking on my first solo run, my instructor pressing the ejector button on his seat in Dunboyne and sending me on my way to do a lap of Co Meath.
If I could have found the brakes I'd have stood on them, but as I always mixed up my pedals I accelerated instead of declutching or braking. So I was on my way, the Amelia Earhart of my day, and I almost came to a similarly sticky end.
By then my first instructor, a family member, had resigned, objecting to my insistence that I needed another two years circling an empty supermarket car park at night before taking on the open roads. He told me I was a dork, I told him he'd want to learn some patience, and there we parted.
Instructor No 2 gamely picked up the reigns. He knew I loathed driving, but for him it was just behind breathing in the list of things one must do in life. And even if you were 57 he couldn't view you as a grown-up until you drove. So I gave it a go.
My hunting grounds were Co Kildare and Co Meath, because the traffic was light. I know: gas. He wasn't allowed to speak while I drove, and if a car appeared in my rear-view mirror I'd park at the side of the road until it was well over the horizon and out of view.
It took us an hour and a half one day to get from Leixlip to Maynooth. "Move up to third," he'd say as the engine begged for mercy. "Shut up! Dooooooon't speak to me," I'd reply. So it was going well enough.
I was still having difficulty starting smoothly; the movement of the car later inspired the inventors of Buckaroo. Inflated air bags were required when I tried to bring the car to a gentle halt, and, sometimes, when I was trying to reverse, the car moved mysteriously forwards.
The solo run brought an end to the whole unpleasant business. Having very nearly reached the summit of that bridge, temporary traffic lights appeared from nowhere and, naturally, turned red. When I stopped, the car was vertical, my feet at the same level as my nose. And when a car pulled up within a quarter of a centimetre of my boot, the music from the shower scene in Psycho filled the Co Meath air.
I'd prefer not to go into any great detail about what happened next, but to this day I am ashamed. He shouldn't have beeped, though. He really, really shouldn't. I was hardly the first driver he'd met who took 14 minutes to go from nought to 60 when the lights turned green.
I didn't hit him, although I wanted to. Him, that is, not his car. I did mouth obscenities in his direction, however, and my gestures told him that if he beeped again he'd need his exhaust pipe surgically removed from his bottom.
And then we had lift-off. Literally. Not even Cape Canaveral has seen a launch like this one, the car nigh on landing back in Dunboyne without touching the ground when I released the handbrake - which, after first searching the glove compartment, I found after checking the manual.
"*** ****** *** **** ***** ***," I said to my instructor when he asked if I'd had fun. So that was it. It's been taxis, buses and "any chance of a lift?" since.
I thought of the driver on that bridge near Clonee recently when I was embroiled in an ugly trolley-rage incident at my local supermarket, one that culminated in my shouldering a woman into a display of Liquorice Allsorts after she clipped my heels with her trolley at the salad bar while talking on her mobile phone.
It was then I realised that it's not just everyone else who is cranky and belligerent; it's me, too. And although I had always thought that not driving would ensure that I'd be a more serene person than those who spend their days spontaneously combusting with rage behind their wheels, I now realise we will always find a vehicle to vent our irritability, be it a car, shopping trolley or anything else.
I'm not entirely sure why, but these days we all seem to feel set upon, conned, screwed, cheated, patronised, bullied and harassed. Maybe it's because we are, but there's no doubt we're in desperate need of lightening up and calming down - especially because we habitually feel the need to take our crankiness out on people who probably mean no harm.
Except that woman in the supermarket. By God, did she mean harm, the witch. When she dug herself out of the Liquorice Allsorts and took her 11 items to the 10-items-or-less checkout you couldn't help but view her as a symbol for all that is wrong with the world, up there with war, famine and Mariah Carey.
Still, it's probably time for all of us to manage the anger, and it seems Dr Arnold P Nerenberg might have the answer. When he studied road rage in the US he found that 85 per cent of those involved in nasty incidents would have backed off if their foes had said sorry.
So he suggested that drivers make themselves signs that read "Sorry", to hold up for other drivers to see. "Practise using the sign in your driveway," he suggested. "This will help you determine whether using the sign in a particular situation will be more dangerous than not doing so."
I started practising in my driveway yesterday. Not in a car, because I don't drive one, but behind an imaginary shopping trolley. I visualised clipping someone's heels at the salad bar, then holding up my sign. Dr Nerenberg mightn't approve, but on the off chance that I get a negative response I have another sign prepared: "Back off, dog breath." An instruction that the driver on the bridge near Clonee will already be familiar with.