I used to believe the left lane was sacred ground.
Not “suggested.”
Not “when convenient.”
Sacred.
I was the self-appointed king of the freeway, the unhinged knight of the passing lane, silently prosecuting crimes against the rules of the road, decency, courtesy and sanity from behind my windshield. My steering wheel was my gavel. My horn? A hymn of righteousness.
Left lane campers were my white whale.
There they were—cruising at exactly the speed limit, oftentimes below it, face calm, soul unbothered, OBLIVIOUS—while a small Shakespearean tragedy unfolded inside my chest. I would stare at the empty road in front of them and think, You have chosen VIOLENCE today!!!!! I would imagine rolling down my window and delivering a TED Talk titled “This Lane Is Not a Vibe, It Is a Function.”
And oh, the injustices didn’t stop there.
There was the driver who merges onto the highway at 42 mph like they’re gently placing a baby into a crib, while the rest of us are already going 70 and praying.
The ones who hit the brakes before the exit ramp, as if preparing for reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
The blink-and-you-miss-it turn signal that activates precisely halfway through the lane change—less a warning, more a fun little surprise.
Then came the zipper merge.
Sweet. Merciful. Efficient zipper merge.
Or rather—what we’ve collectively decided to do instead.
Because instead of using both lanes like the traffic engineers, civil servants, and basic laws of physics intended, everyone lines up in one massive, obedient, unnecessarily long conga line a mile early. One lane sits empty. Mocking you. Whispering, You could be moving right now.
And if you dare to use that open lane? If you zipper merge correctly? Suddenly you’re the villain. People close gaps. They glare. They act like you’ve cut the line at the DMV, stolen their lunch money, and insulted their ancestors. I used to sit there vibrating with rage, thinking, This is not politeness. This is inefficiency with a superiority complex.
Don’t get me started on four-way stops. A place where rules go to die. Where someone waves you through, then goes anyway. Where politeness becomes violence. Where time itself collapses.
And then there were the phone zombies. Drifting. Pausing at green lights. Texting like the fate of the world depends on a thumbs-up emoji, while the rest of us age visibly behind them. Oblivious to the fact that they’re driving a 2 ton piece of metal that they’re responsible for not flattening someone with while letting Jesus take the wheel.
I took it all personally.
Every delay was an insult. Every mistake, a moral failure. I wasn’t just driving—I was keeping score. I arrived everywhere hot with judgment, vibrating with fury, rehearsing imaginary monologues I would never deliver to people who would never hear them and definitely didn’t care.
And one day, somewhere between my third deep sigh at a red light and my fifteenth internal curse of the morning, it hit me:
I was exhausted.
Not late. Not endangered. Just… tired of being mad.
Because here’s the inconvenient truth I didn’t want to admit back when I was high on indignation: most of those people weren’t villains. They were just humans. Distracted. Nervous. New to the city. Late for something important. Early for something scary. Driving their kid to school. Driving home after a brutal shift. White-knuckling it because highways still freak them out.
Some of them were probably having the worst day of their lives.
Some of them were probably me, on a different day.
So I retired my badge. I stepped down as traffic judge, jury, and executioner. I still notice the nonsense—don’t get me wrong—but I don’t let it colonize my nervous system anymore. I leave earlier. I breathe. I let one car in. Sometimes two. (Growth.) And I pretty much always go the speed limit now, especially knowing my brain doesn’t work quite as fast as it used to and I just need more time to respond.
The road is not a courtroom. It’s a shared, messy, human space.
So if you see someone camping in the left lane, hesitating at a merge, lining up a mile early out of fear, or just doing their best with limited information and too much caffeine—maybe give them a little grace. And if you feel the familiar flare of rage bubbling up, maybe give yourself some too.
But for those people who buy the most common type of car used as a police car (which in my area is the black Ford Explorer) and then wonder why everyone is driving cautiously around them, they can just go to hell. Kidding, of course.
I was called out about my road rage a couple times in college. Once I was giving someone a ride to class and as they stepped out of the car they said “Drive careful, lots of nutjobs out there!” I think they were calling me the nut job, I could in fact detect sarcasm. Another new friend, I think I scared the shit out of them, because things seem like they changed after that one ride. I was scaring people and it took me years to realize how bad it was.
We’re all just trying to get where we’re going.
Let’s not ruin the whole trip by being furious the entire way.
