Road rage is deadly serious, but that doesn’t mean it can’t bring a smile to your face. Take, for example, the story a friend of mine likes to tell about the day he won the lottery.

It wasn’t a huge win, not a life-changing one, anyway — although, from what I’ve heard, winning the lottery is practically a highway to misery. But it was still a sizable sum, let’s say two or three thousand dollars.

The amount wasn’t the point. My friend saw his winning ticket in metaphysical terms: the Universe had finally smiled on him, rewarding him for playing his number day in and day out, year after year, faithful to Lady Luck despite all the evidence in the world that she’d abandoned him.

In fact, he was the first to admit that he’d spent far more, over the years, on losing tickets than he’d won back with this one. But like I said, it wasn’t about the money. It was the principle of the thing, the idea that for one day at least, gosh darn it, he’d beaten the odds!

He took fanatical care of his winning ticket, as anyone would, and on the appointed day, he went to cash it in. On the way to the lottery office, as he was tapping his steering wheel to the rhythm of some happy song on the radio, he happened to notice two cars on the shoulder of the road. This was on a big highway, and he was driving at a good clip, but it was a straightaway, so there was plenty of time to see the drama that unfolded next.

The drivers of the two cars were in the middle of a dispute. One of the them was still strapped into his car, but leaning out the window and shaking his fist at the other. The other driver had kicked open his door and was climbing out.

There was shouting, and more fist-waving, and then the second driver reached back into his car and produced a handgun.

The way my friend tells it, the sight of that gun infuriated him. “I was offended!” he says. “You just don’t that, pull a gun on someone on the highway. It’s not civilized.”

(So this is actually a story of two road rages: a violent argument between two drivers; and the moral outrage of a witness to their dispute.)

Now this friend of mine is a good man, a peaceful man, the kind of fellow who wouldn’t think twice about his own safety if he thought he could calm a touchy situation. His instinct was to pull over and see what he could do to help.

But then it occurred to him: he’d just won the lottery! The ticket was practically burning a hole in his pocket! What was the point of winning the lottery if you didn’t live long enough to cash it in?

I was thinking about his dilemma the other day, driving down Interstate 83. I was bopping along in my truck when a minivan came zooming up beside me in the passing lane. I glanced over as it passed and saw that the driver was texting. His Blackberry was resting on the top of the steering wheel, and his thumbs were going gangbusters. Every few seconds, he’d look up, make a small steering correction, then shift his eyes back to that tiny screen.

I was going pretty fast, which meant that he was doing at least 80.

People who text while they’re driving are a pet peeve of mine. Probably because I’m a dinosaur, someone who has never sent a text, much less composed one at the wheel of a vehicle traveling at highway speed.

The very idea offends me. A car is potentially a deadly weapon. Is that text really more important than my safety, or my daughter’s safety? How these people think that they can split their attention like that…

You see? I just called them “these people.” The demonization of the “other” is a sure sign of incipient road rage.

Texting while driving is illegal, but that doesn’t account for my sense of moral outrage. Speeding is illegal, too, but I don’t tend to get in a lather about it.

For the record, I did what any sensible driver would do. I gave the minivan a wide berth; slowed down to create distance between our vehicles; and paid extra attention to my own driving, since I was aware that I was — shall we say — distracted.

That’s what my friend did, too, which is probably why he lived to cash that lottery ticket.

It’s easy to forget, when you’re buttoned up in your quiet, cozy car, that the road is a public place. Inside the car, it’s your music; your climate; your loose change in the plastic divot behind the gear shift; your tin of Altoids rattling around in the glove compartment — in short, your own little world.

When something offends you, it’s as if it’s happening in your living room. Thus the moral outrage, the sense that it’s you versus the barbarians.

The next time you see someone doing something stupid or insane on the road, I beg you: count to ten; pay attention to your own driving; and keep in mind that confronting the other driver — even if the law is on your side — just might be interpreted as a kind of home invasion.

These days, often as not, the barbarians are packing heat.

This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 22 November 2012

For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com