Malaysia was recently shocked when the video of a young lady showing #rage to an old man who accidentally knocked her car. In the video, the young lady nick named #Kiki literally brought out her car steering lock and started to smash the old man's car while walking about shouting and yelling at him for hitting her car. Unfortunately for her, someone took a video of her actions, posted it on FB and ta-da, she instantly became a #roadrage superstar, literally (the days following her action would justify this).
This incident has drawn the attention of the entire nation and some radio stations decided to ride on her "#accidental fame" for marketing by inviting her for interviews. So many questions of morality and humanity were raised from the incident. Common thread among most people was - seriously, why would you make a road bully famous? TO promote the action? So the story goes that she was slapped with a fine of RM5,000 and 240 hours of public service AND a private political group has decided to support her and started raising funds to help her pay the fund. Since this incident took place in a small state in Malaysia, that state has become more famous since.
Now, let me enlighten you with a small piece of FACT that might or might not shock you - Kiki is not the ONLY road bully driving wild on our roads. She was caught, as the saying goes - wrong time, wrong day. IF she wasn't caught on video, she'd have gone free, and justified her anger. Repeating the same when it happens again in the future. I have personally been a victim of road bully before. Let me share this story here.
So I was driving with a girl friend on a Friday, heading towards Ampang. Jalan Ampang is famous for it's traffic jam and merging roads from many small lorongs, left and right. So we took to the main road from one of these lorongs. And i overtook this other car driven by a young man, let's call him Mat. He was clearly unhappy that I "masuk" in front of his car so he started to drive super close to my car. It was a super hot Friday noon, cars were literally inching away as there was a traffic light ahead of us. So, Mat is already frustrated and suddenly this woman overtakes his car, goes ahead his car and now she is one car ahead of him. Even if he did move ahead, he still would not have reached his destination but that didn't matter because at that point of time, he was just focussed on being over taken by another car. So the saga to revenge begins. As the cars inch on, we move on to the next lane , Mat remains in his lane and he does a sudden sharp turn in front of my car. Thankfully my reaction is super fast as i break in time, just any second late and i'd have hit his car and he'll be able to come out and get me out of the car too.
So, anger builds up as Mat doesn't achieve his aim, whatever it may be - get me out of the car to scold/ to prove a point, whatever. So we move on, realising that he was looking for trouble, I started to devise an escape route. Since it was a two lane road and cars were slowly starting to move, we move in between cars and end up at least 5 cars ahead of him. Mat doesn't give up and he now gets out of his car, walks to my car and starts smashing at my window, shouting at me to come out. He was a big sized Mat & he was hitting my car window with all his might, his face and body actions showed it. No one stopped to ask or stop him and he continued hitting. My friend next to me was all shivers, and my phone was nowhere in sight. I did not show any signs of giving up, kept a straight face and stared back at him. (While wondering of the million what-if's that could happen if he manages to break my window after all). Finally friend located my phone on the car floor and passes it to me. I took it up and started to pretend taking his picture (Actually the battery was already dead). And after that, i just said police to him, showed my phone and started to dial the 3 digits (911! LOL. We had a good laugh after that because our SOS number is 999 not 911!).
When he noticed me doing this, he stopped and walked back to his car. Hurling bad angry words at me still. So, moving ahead, i quickly took another road and a few other roads, and ended up at the police station to report Mat. Unfortunately I did not capture his car plate number even! Anyway, i just submitted the report and went home, hoping not to bump into Mat again.
Incident 2 for me happened just yesterday while i was driving along Jalan Sultan Ismail. I was driving at about 100kmph and suddenly this cabbie was trying to turn in to my late, literally few seconds ahead of me. I just honked to alert cab uncle. If my honk could speak, it would have said this: "watch out uncle, i'm coming on too fast, don't cut now". Unfortunately since that technology isn't invented yet, uncle must have taken that honk to mean "move away" or "stop, idiot" or even a "hello" because he honked back. He continued to follow my car all the way till i reached my building, as I was turning in to enter the car park, he let out another loud honk and drove on. Seriously, that was almost 5 minutes from when I last honked at him and he kept that grudge all the way and let it out with a honk. Bet it made his day, for not allowing himself to be bullied (in his little mind).
So, there you go, these 2 are only small stories from our daily travels. There are sooo many cases out there where road bullies are free and getting their way. I think honks are taken as threat when used in Malaysia because it seems to trigger an anger wire in most drivers here. Another thought that came to my mind was that most people are very angry these days. Be it on the road, in malls, homes, offices, restaurants, everywhere. And the smallest event pulls off their trigger and there's an anger outburst!
People are moving too fast, failing to stop and breathe. But most importantly, they are running the rat wheel with fear that they might need to stop breathing as the oxygen is getting too expensive to be afforded. In that process, values arer compromised, life becomes mechanical. Sigh... The changing times is leading us to a dim, lifeless future. Perhaps robots are better off living on earth.
