It all started innocently enough.

While driving on Hwy. 182 a week ago to a doctor’s appointment, I noticed in my rear view mirror that a white truck had for some time been getting closer and closer.

The driver was a young guy appearing to hold a cell phone.

I kept slightly below the speed limit but the truck tailgated me more and more.

I felt that at any moment if he kept coming, he would crash through the rear of my SUV and suddenly become an unwelcome passenger in my back seat.

The situation continued until I turned off on Darnall Road.

As the jerk sped off past me he gave me an obscene hand gesture while honking the horn.

Had I just experienced some minor road rage?

Most certainly, but from what I’ve been hearing and reading lately, incidents of this kind–and others far more serious — are becoming frequent in our country.

For example, Mike T., a friend of mine recently returned from Lubbock, Texas where he became an unexpected observer to a potentially fatal encounter between two irate drivers. He couldn’t wait to tell me about it.

According to Mike, he was filling up his gas tank at a convenience store when two trucks, one chasing the other, screeched to a halt in front of the entrance.

The two drivers, both brawny middle-aged men, got into a fist fight after a profanity-filled argument.

“I couldn’t hear everything that was being said,” Mike remarked, “…but the details that I picked up led me to believe that one of the guys had come too close to the other while both were exiting the freeway.”

My friend further explained that the brawl paused when one of the drivers knocked the other one to the pavement and ran to his vehicle to get a gun. He first pointed it at his opponent but after calming down he walked back to his truck.

“By that time someone had called the police and when they arrived, the armed driver surrendered.

It’s a miracle no one was killed,” Mike admitted.

After some internet research on road rage, I discovered that there have been other occurrences.

However, that didn’t end verywell for me.

In one 2019 incident in Phoenix, Arizona, a traffic dispute led a male driver to follow a family to their home where, in their driveway, he fired at them killing a young girl.

And that same year in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a woman was shot when she confronted another driver about damaging her car.

The victim had been giving her son a driving lesson.

Most experts conclude that fatigue or stress affecting a driver can cause this violence. Jake Nelson, a researcher for AAA wrote on what is road rage.

“It “road rage” can be caused by pressures of balancing work and family and sacrificing sleep in order to get things done,” Nelso said.

It’s obvious that there are no easy solutions to a complex situation. Personally, I wonder if we, as a society, can diminish some of this anger by concentrating more on civility and mutual respect?

What do you think?

O.J. GONZALEZ is a native and resident of Jeanerette. He graduated from USL in printmaking and photography and his photographs have appeared in publications in Louisiana, Alaska, Canada, New Zealand and England.