Editorial Columns Archive

What happened to courtesy?
T. Scott Boatright, Reporter
03-09-2010

It never ceases to amaze me.

Living in Ruston, like the rest of you, I spend much of my driving time on Interstate-20. And on a daily basis, I find myself amazed at how many people just don’t get it. Do a little interstate traveling around here, and it won’t take you long to find some discourteous driver taking up the roadway.

I’ve been known to get a speeding ticket or two in my lifetime, but I’m proud to say I’ve always been a courteous driver.

I had a comedy album by the comedian Gallagher in the late 1970s that I loved, and he proposed a great idea. He came up with the idea of an “idiot gun” — a rubber-tipped dart gun that shoots a dart with a flag that says “Stupid” on it onto a car.

When a driver sees someone else driving in bad fashion, they shoot one of these darts onto the offending car. When a police officer sees a car with a few of these flags stuck to it, they could then pull the car over and give the driver a ticket for being a jerk (those weren’t Gallagher’s exact words, but you get the picture).

As I took the eastbound off-ramp off of the Louisiana Tech I-20 exit, there was no car in the far left and only one slow moving car in the right lane to which I was trying to merge.
But apparently the fact I had my blinker on and the fact she could see me right next to her did nothing to deter the driver of the car from hogging that right lane. She refused to move into the left lane and even slowed down as if to impede my ability to merge into the lane even more, nearly forcing me to come to a complete stop as the entrance lane ended.

I could have used one of those idiot guns about then.

What about drivers who insist on remaining in the left (passing) lane of an interstate while driving no more than 60 miles per hour? It’s even better when two of those drivers meet and insist on driving side-by-side, oblivious to the fact that dozens of cars wishing to travel at the speed limit are trapped behind.

Sometimes it seems the courteous driver is a dying breed.

Driving to Monroe last week, I could see a fast-approaching car in my rear-view mirror. Seeing it zigging and zagging between lanes, I found a spot in the right lane and kept glancing in my rearview mirror and it kept getting closer and closer.

As it pulled beside me and then slightly ahead of me, it suddenly shifted over to my lane right in front of me, without even considering using a turn signal and forcing me to forcibly tap my brakes to keep from hitting him.

I couldn’t help but notice the face of a laughing teenage boy looking back at me in his side mirror before he darted back to the left lane, nearly running another driver off the road.

And don’t get me started about people who don’t understand when two lanes merge into one and don’t let anyone from the other lane merge in.

The key to courteous driving is fairly simple — be courteous.

Pay attention to what’s going on around and realize that other drivers have a right to the road, too. That way, everyone can remain safe.

But I still think an idiot gun could become a pretty good deterrent to some of the outlandish driving I’ve seen recently.