2. Stay in your league
One of my sergeants, raised in Tennessee, used to say, "Don't let your mouth write a check your fanny can't cash." (He didn't say fanny, but you get the picture.) Here's what he meant.
I've worked many car accidents that upgraded to fight calls because somebody shot their mouth off and received an immediate response. Most of those calls never really involved a fight. It usually involved a comment, a punch and a guy on the ground.
I saw a guy get hit so hard that his top lip split in half. He had three lips. His new BMW took a hit on the back bumper from an older pickup truck driven by a thirty-something good old boy complete with the foam-front ball cap.
The guy (with three lips) got out, walked back and saw the damage done to his new car. There really wasn't that much damage, but it was a new car and was understandably upset. Unfortunately, he proceeded to verbally dress down the driver of the truck. The pickup driver remained quiet right up to the point when he hit the other driver squarely under his nose. A witness said it sounded like a baseball hit with a wooden baseball bat. (A large class ring the pickup driver had bought at a pawn shop accounted for the intensity of the punch.)
The BMW driver desperately tried to tell me what had happened to him but I couldn't understand what he was saying because when you have three lips your pronunciation is hindered. He was bleeding all over his sweater and his hair was messed up. A bystander showed up with a towel and ice and we got the lips covered up.
The other driver offered up no excuse but calmly said, "He was tellin' me things that he had to answer to."
His mouth wrote a check.
I wrote the accident up, gave the driver a copy of charges for simple battery in addition to the traffic citation. When they appeared in court a couple of months later, the guy who once had three lips looked better. The judge decided he had incited, to a degree, the response from the other driver. There was a fine for the accident and I believe the simple battery was eventually dismissed by mutual consent.
The moral of the story is this: Traffic and traffic conditions are here to stay. Don't let it get the best of you. If you drive like a maniac, sooner or later the odds are going to catch up. Go to the impound lot and see what a 50 mph impact does to the car and its occupants.
For the rest of you, get in the car, put in a Jimmy Buffett CD and do some serious mellowing. You'll get there when you get there. As for those jerks driving like idiots? Sooner or later they'll be a sporting three lips.
