A few years back I hurt my ankle quite badly and couldn’t run for a while. For me personally, running doesn’t just stop me becoming one of those people who have to be craned out of their house, it also keeps me my version of sane. Which, to be fair, is quite a long way off what most sane people would define as ‘sane’, but let’s just say running definitely helps.
At that point, with a few minor exceptions on holidays here and there, I hadn’t ridden a bike for the better part of what must have been 15 years. And holy fuck, did I get a rude shock out there on the roads when I did venture out there again on two wheels. I should clarify, I bought a mountain bike, not a road bike, because I was mostly interested in hitting the trails. And I never wore lycra. Ever. OK, I wore compression shorts from time to time, but always with a pair of courtesy shorts over the top. Yes, I understand lycra is functional. No, you won’t be seeing my fat arse in it any time soon. So I wasn’t a ‘MAMIL’ (Middle Aged Man In Lycra) – and before anyone even fucking thinks it, I wasn’t an old aged man in lycra either. There was no lycra, OK?
But back to the whole cycling thing. I discovered a funny thing that happens when you start riding a bike on roads with cars. People hate you. For no other reason than you ride a bike. Just read any article about the challenges we have with motorists and cyclists co-existing on the roads here in Australia, and there it is. Actual, unbridled hate.
I’m no stranger to the whole ‘road rage’ thing. I’ve been on the receiving end of it a few times, and there may have been that one time, where I gave someone a mouthful of my finest fuck words and flipped them the bird. So I’ve always been well aware that road rage exists. And if I’m not mistaken, it’s on the rise. Perhaps that’s because there’s just generally more motorists, and cyclists, and not just because there’s more assholey road ragers. Who knows? What I do know is it’s pretty fucked up.
And all these things got me thinking. Motorists hate other motorists. Motorists hate cyclists. Cyclists hate motorists. Hell, even pedestrians get into the act from time to time and hate cyclists. And are probably hated from time to time by motorists and cyclists. So. Much. Hate.
And this hate has a brand. ‘Road Rage’. And it’s a really good brand. I don’t mean ‘good’ as in ‘good’, but you know, it’s a solid, well recognised, well named, brand. It rolls off the tongue nicely. We all instantly know what it is. And most of us all instantly know how to do it. Like birds fly north for winter (or south, depending on where you are when you read this), ‘Road Rage’ seems to be encoded into our DNA and comes to us pretty naturally. Which is weird, because most of us can’t drive, ride a bike, or even walk when we’re born. Which leads me to believe it’s more likely something we learn along the way from other assholes.
Rather than just yell and be yelled at out there on the roads, this whole ‘road rage’ brand got me thinking: Why is there such a cool brand for being an asshole, and literally no brand at all for the opposite? Why do we put so much focus on giving these angry motherfuckers a name, defining them, and in doing so almost celebrating them, filming them on our smart phones when we can, and giving them a disproportionate amount of visibility and air time, when the people who are doing the right thing get sweet fuck all?
More importantly, it occurred to me the ‘road rage’ brand is so strong, that if you asked someone what it was all about and how to do it, people would instantly know how to be a road raging asshole. But maybe, just maybe, by doing that, we’d forgotten to teach people how to be, well, nice. Surely we shouldn’t have to teach people how not to be assholes, but maybe we do?
Another observation: We need to know the road rules to get our licenses, but as far as I can recall, there’s literally nothing about not being a cockslap in there. So we send people out there on the roads, with some vague memory of the road rules they crammed to get their licence who knows how many years ago, tell them to have fun, and hope for the best. And the only thing we ever promote from then on is… mother fucking road rage. We constantly remind people how to be angry, abusive, and sometimes even violent dickwits. And when you think of it like that, it’s probably little wonder there are so many of them learning, and doing, road rage as they go.
Now, me being me, (and trust me, that’s not something I’d wish on anyone), I started thinking about what the solution might be. Not the solution to dickwittery – like herpes, that can be largely incurable. But what if, we gave ‘not being an asshole on the roads’ its own name, its own brand? What if we highlighted and celebrated that? How good would it be if instead of just getting fined for doing the wrong thing, you got given $100 for doing the right thing? That’s apparently how they train dolphins, you know? (Not that we should ever use animals for our entertainment, that’s kind of fucked up.) There’s two ways to train animals – punish them for doing the wrong thing, and reward them for doing the right thing. And what are we but fancy, mostly hairless and furless, two legged, talking animals, right? So where’s our reward? Fucking nowhere, that’s where.
Not being completely delusional, it occurred to me the chances of having some sort of bizarro world alternative police force driving around handing out whatever the opposite to an infringement notice is, giving people $50 notes for letting people in to their lane of traffic, not mowing down a cyclist, not yelling abuse at someone who did something they don’t agree with and the like, was unlikely to happen any time soon. Or ever. I’m a bit crazy, but not that crazy.
It did occur to me, however, that there was room to at least give ‘road rage’ a bizarro world brand. We could at least give the opposite to ‘road rage’ a name. We could talk about it. Celebrate it. Promote it. Perhaps most importantly, we could explain and define it. Something that doesn’t get done that often. And maybe, just maybe, if enough people talked about what it meant to do the opposite of road rage, it would make a difference. Even if it was a tiny one.
For all my cynicism, I’ve always been a ridiculous, hopeless, romantic optimist. I believe in the inherent good in people. Well, most people. I genuinely believe the reason some people aren’t nicer on the roads, or in life for that matter, is because they’ve never been shown how. The reason people no longer give you that little wave when you do something nice for them on the roads, like let them cut into your lane, isn’t because they are fucking evil assholes, (although it’s certainly entirely possible), but because no one ever said to them “hey, you know what’s cool? If someone does something nice for you, make sure you say ‘thanks’. And because it’s not really practical to pull over, get out of your car, jump into their passenger seat and say ‘thanks’ or give them a Hallmark card and a bunch of flowers, you can just give them a wave. Just hold your hand up quickly or if you’re really enthusiastic, wave it out the window. It’s not that hard and a little bit of reward for being nice, encourages people to do it again.” Because we all know if you do something nice and don’t get any acknowledgement, it doesn’t always bring out the best in us. I’m sure if Mother Teresa or The Pope were driving along and didn’t get an acknowledgement after doing someone a solid, they’d be completely fine. A picture of peace and understanding. But not this little black duck. I’m not at all proud to say I go from selfless, kind, not-at-all-road-ragey driver or cyclist, to the truck driver from Duel in about three milliseconds if I don’t get a bit of a thankyou wave. (If you’re under the age of 105 and can’t recall the masterpiece that was Spielberg’s directorial debut, just take my word for it, that motherfucker was angrier than Liam Neeson in all those Taken films combined.)
One of my favourite ever quotes is by Buckminster Fuller who said “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”. Which, I think you’ll agree, is a bit fucking fancy, but doesn’t make it any less awesome and insightful. Which brings us back to ‘road rage’ and what the opposite of that might be.
For the more astute reader, the title of this Manifesto was likely a spoiler alert of proportions something akin to Kanye’s ego. But please indulge me by allowing me to show not just my answer, but my progressive calculations, as is encouraged in grade seven maths.
My starting point was, somewhat obviously, to simply substitute the word ‘rage’ with ‘love’. But even for a hopeless romantic like my good self, promoting ‘Road Love’ seemed more like the title of a bad 70’s porno, than an easy sell to encourage better behaviour out on the roads. With ‘Road Love’ suitably pushed to the side of the road like my puss green Magna that time it inconveniently conked out at a busy intersection, the level of difficulty then escalated. Once you’ve ruled out the obvious, that obviously leaves just the not so obvious.
Thankfully, in a strange twist of fate, playing word games in my mind with the notion of ‘love’, I eventually stumbled on the idea of being ‘romantic’ on the roads. It still wasn’t quite right, as it was likely a little soft and red rosey for my liking and the task at hand, but from there it was really only only a hop, skip and jump to realise that tailgating the ‘ro’ in ‘romance’, was the word ‘road’. Could ‘roadmance’ be a thing I wondered? It’s kind of weird to say. A bit clumsy. And a more than slightly groany play on words that looked OK in print but made me sound like a complete fucking tosser every time I said it, but you know what, I thought it just might work. On the plus side, it wasn’t boring. It would get noticed. It was, with any luck, sort of instantly understandable as an idea. And importantly, it had multiple applications. There could be a ‘Roadmance Manifesto’ but verbally, you could also ‘Be Roadmantic’ as a call to action. And if there’s one thing I learned after all my years in marketing, it’s the importance of a call to action. And so The Roadmance Manifesto was born.
I’d like to say it was an idea whose time had come, but the truth is, I first came up with this at least five years ago. The truth is it’s time sort of came and went. Then came back again. And again. And again.
At the time, I was quite proud and excited at what it could become. Like a lot of ideas people, I thought about it a lot. But did absolutely nothing. Not without good reason. What the fuck do you do with something like that exactly? Start a one-man crusade to change how we behave on the roads. Pompous much? How about make money? Strike two. What then? I did toy with the idea of doing tongue in cheek instructional videos and even went so far as to stockpile some matchbox cars to create suitably low-tech videos about how to not be an asshole on the roads. But making videos is fucking hard work. Even low-tech ones take ages, and all the best ones are actually high-tech ones that look low-tech, because actual low-tech ones generally look high-shit.
I did consider writing a book, but who the fuck is going to buy a book about not being an asshole? Not assholes. Because most of them don’t even know they are assholes which is pretty much the problem. So for five long years I sat on this idea, pushing it back down like the saucepan lid when your hot water is starting to boil over. Until last year, after years of waiting for someone else to do do something better, or even just do something, I did a video on social media about being Roadmantic on Valentine’s Day. Then, again, I did nothing with it for another 12 months, assuming someone else would do something and I’d be off the hook.
Which brings us to now.
‘Imposter Syndrome’ is a bit of a fucker, that’s for sure. Feeling like someone better than you will do something better than you ever could, and thinking “who the fuck am I to take this to the world when there are all those other people who are infinitely more eloquent and capable and intelligent and handsome and all that other stuff that I’m not?” Well, I’ve decided to be one of those ‘other people’. Will The Roadmance Manifesto become a global phenomena? Fuck knows. Will I finally realise my dream of being asked to speak at a TED event? Stranger things have happened. Although not many. But if Trump can become president, surely I can at least be invited to speak at TED?
So this is me finally putting pen to paper, or finger to screen as the case may be, officially committing to making The Roadmance Manifesto a ‘thing’. Perhaps it will be another 12 months before I write the next part of it? Maybe I’ll dust off those matchbox cars and make a video? Or with any luck, in the meantime, maybe someone else will do something better and I’ll be off the hook as the self-appointed cupid of the roads. Until then, it all comes back to that age old question, or two: If not me, who? If not now, when?
Be Roadmantic. And awesome to each other.
Sputnik.
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