Monday, May 20, 2013

Breaking Rules Badly

Massachusetts is posting along her highways on portable electronic billboards a little known traffic rule long since forgotten by the driving public. Usually the portable billboards say something innocuous.

Until recently, they've been flashing "Drive with Caution". I've never been able to quite understand what the author means by that statement. The cautious drivers I see are hell-bent on driving in the middle lane at 55 m.p.h. in a posted sixty-five.

The latest command says "Left Lane Travel Permitted Only When Passing".

This is an example of one of the many unenforceable laws the Commonwealth has on the books. Similar laws are "Yield Right of Way" "No Texting While Driving" and "Illegal to Brake With Left Foot".

I confess right here I am guilty of breaking almost all the rules, and probably hundreds more besides. I have traveled in the left lane just for the sheer joy of passing all those slow pokes going to weddings and hair appointments. I no longer text while driving, but I see countless folks still doing it, including real police officers. I always yield right of way, except in New Bedford, where drivers don't understand the concept and literally make you take left turns in front of oncoming traffic.

But I always brake with my left foot, and will until I'm dead.

I'm bothered, though, about those among us who break the rules and seem to be clueless about it. Like folks that will pass a line of traffic at an exit then cut into the line at the last possible moment to cut in front on everyone else. I get angry at such behavior because the guy/girl didn't wait in line and pay his/her dues like the rest of us. They cheated to get ahead of everyone else.

I wrestle with these kinds of rule-breakers, because they flaunt their rule breaking badly. Uncaringly. In your face-stick-it-where-the-sun-don't-shine-get-ahead-of-everyone-else kind of selfish actions that breach the social contract we once had with each other as a Country.

Now it's every man for himself. Or so it seems.

According to a recent article in Science Daily, breaking rules gives the rule-breaker an illusion of power. The theory is that the powerful people in the world have fewer rules to live by than the rest of us, so breaking rules makes us feel more powerful.

In the August 2012 issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science researchers wrote of studies done with toddlers uncover the fact that as early as two and three years old kids understand the nature of the social glue that holds us all together. They know what is fair and unfair behavior. They know when rules are broken and are able to express outrage because the social construct, the agreement humans have with one another, has been violated.

This is why crimes like flying fully loaded aircraft into office towers and placing pressure-cooker bombs at the feet of unsuspecting children enrage us all. Such actions flaunt the unspoken social rule that innocent people not engaged in warfare are to be spared violent, unprovoked death.

It's also the very same motivation taken to a horrific degree that is the seeds of texting while driving. Or line jumping.

Or even braking with your left foot.

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