It happens to the best of us. Everybody has had at some stage in their life a mild or-in my case- a severe case of road rage overcoming them. Especially in summertime. People are hot and bothered in summertime. Things get untidy when people are hot and bothered.
And I admit- I’m guilty as hell. I bet you too. In the silence of your car- or perhaps out loud with lots of certain ‘finger activity’ and flickering headlights if you’re really over it- abusing our rental-car-road-users-from- abroad. It happens in every country, because as soon as humans go on holiday, they give their brains a brake a bit too literally.
So the rental car road users are the ones that do it. They are the ones that push all your wrong buttons and they are the ones that will make you run late for that career defining presentation. Not the local touring its own country-because he knows. And the fact that you left home 10 minutes too late has got nothing to do with it either- it’s THEM.
And please don’t get me wrong- all countries love their visitors and tourists dearly. They really do. But when you’re the local, they are the ones on holiday and they are the ones in a happy-people-relaxed-mode. We’re not. We’re already latent shitty when we walk out the door in the morning. Because the sun is shining and we’re going to be locked up in that office all day. We’re in the stressed-out-running-too-late-for-the-bloody-meeting-mode. And we all know that this mode does not mix well with a rental-road-user-from-abroad sitting in front of you doing 30.
So for the sake of national bloodpressure, the quality of the tourist’s holiday and the overall sanity in any country, signs will need to go up in the international arrival halls of airports.
And this is what they will read:
- Thou shall not drive 20 k’s per hour where you’re allowed 80.
- Thou shall not be indecisive and fiddle around on the road.
- Thou shall not suddenly stop in the middle of the road because you have seen a Kodak moment.
- Thou shall not drive painfully slow on curvy roads to then Nascar race the straights so you can’t be overtaken.
- Thou shall not attempt to parallel park your rental vehicle fifteen times in a row when it is painfully obvious to the ten waiting teeth-grinding other drivers it ‘ain’t gonna fit’.
- Thou shall not park your rental vehicle on the wrong side of the road or, whilst visiting cities, park on designated permit parkings.
- Thou shall not randomly camp overnight in your rental vehicle on the side of the road, beaches or my driveway for that matter.
- Thou shall not multitask in your rental vehicle whilst driving-you can’t drive, read a map, sing along with the radio and take photos at the same time.
- Thou SHALL pull over for faster road users to overtake you.
- Thou SHALL drive on the correct side of the road. Your campervan might seem huge to you, but they did take the size of average cars in account when they made the road so there’s no need to drive in the middle of it.
Follow these 10 commandments while renting a vehicle on holiday and the world will be a better place.
I’ve recently come back from a well needed stay at a Yoga retreat in Koh Samui, Thailand (Samahita Retreat) where we trained in Ashtanga Yoga twice a day. As you can imagine, the food was delicious, organic and highly nutritious. However with all that training, my craving for something sweet was almost overpowering (and there is only so much honey you can put in a herbal tea!).