Aggressive driving has ethical implications.
Traffic is going nowhere fast, but the hotshot behind you just has to pass. The minute there's enough room he or she is next to you, and because you're a safe driver and allow a distance between yourself and the car ahead, there's just enough space for the hotshot to squeeze in ahead of you. Oh, sure; you get a blink of the turn indicator just as the car pulls in as a sop to propriety.
You're a reasonable person, but you stew as you watch the hotshot do it again to the car in front of you. Of course, when you get to the next light, the hotshot is just a couple of cars ahead, having risked an accident for a forty-foot advantage. And of course the hotshot's windows are down and the music is deafening even two car-lengths away.
I used to think it was the anonymity of being in a car that enabled some people to be as rude as they are on the road. I think that's still true, but it's been worsened by how it's now cool to drive aggressively. How can it not be, when all we get in TV commercials is attractive young people tearing around in SUVs as if there's no one else on the road?
Aggressive driving isn't just rude. The fundamental point of ethics is not to hurt others, and aggressive driving hurts others: rudeness on the road causes anger, and other drivers not only are hurt by being needlessly angered, they get aggressive in response. The whole thing feeds on itself, because then still other drivers are affected.
Ethical behavior isn't just about how you conduct yourself face to face. Being encased in three or four tons of metal doesn't remove you from the ethical sphere; not even if you're riding high in your supposedly super-safe SUV and imagining yourself the coolest driver around. You still owe others consideration.
Part of the trouble is that hurting others seems to have been rethought over the past decade. It used to be that upsetting people counted as hurting them. Now, even with our obsession about political correctness, it seems that in practice not hurting people is thought of as just not physically damaging them. Upsetting them has become purely a matter of legality and liability, something for the courts. That's not good enough, but I don't see things improving anytime soon.
