Jun 25, 2026 | Personal
Well folks, it finally happened. After 10 years of driving, I made a mistake.
I cut someone off, and they honked at me. All is fair in traffic and war. I deserved to get honked at, this time.
But this shouldn’t distract us from the multitude of times I’ve been honked at unjustly.
Yes, one time I drove 15 under the speed limit on the highway. But my cat was on his way home from the vet, and he had a full psychological collapse any time we went above 30 mph.
Another time, I didn’t realize a turn-only lane was turn-only until I was, regrettably, turning. But it was my first time taking that street home.
These were extenuating circumstances or simple mistakes. We can’t honk over those, right?
I am a mistake machine. If blundering were an Olympic sport, I’d have a Wheaties box, a doping scandal, and a tearful redemption arc.
Driving is no exception. So why should I honk at someone for making a mistake?
If I have obvious, real excuses for my driving, it’s fair to apply the same understanding to others.
The SUV that cuts you off might have a kid in the back with a 103° fever. The guy who didn’t signal might’ve been laid off twenty minutes ago and is currently dissociating at 45 mph.
I once had a friend who took approximately 5 minutes to pull away from every stop sign. He had been in three car wrecks and wasn’t going to take another chance.
Let’s be clear, plenty of bad drivers do stupid things for no reason. But I’ll rarely know when that’s the case. So which is better? Honking at every error or assuming the best of every miscue?
Well, what does honking do for me? It doesn’t get my time back. It doesn’t remove my anger. It certainly doesn’t, from experience, make people understand they’re yielding when they have a dedicated lane ahead. At best, it’s petty revenge against a stranger who may or may not have tried to wrong me.
So if assuming the worst in this scenario gives me nothing, I think I should err in the other direction. I can use it as an opportunity to practice grace.
In the words of David Foster Wallace, you get to choose what story you tell yourself, and the generous story usually costs nothing more than the cruel one. Usually less.[1]
Yes, sometimes I have to honk for a legitimate safety concern.[2] And maybe if we all took this approach, bad drivers would get worse. But I don’t think I have to worry about the general population all suddenly becoming gracious to everyone else on the road.
When it feels hard for me to take this approach, it’s usually because I’m adding too much value to the situation.
When I was a little kid, I helped my aunt decorate her house for Christmas. In the middle of setting up a miniature nativity scene in the bathroom, I accidentally knocked a figurine off the counter. It shattered.
The three wise men were down to two. Jesus would have to go without myrrh this holiday season.
There was no good reason why I broke that piece. I wasn’t careful. It could have been avoided.
But when I sheepishly walked into the other room to tell my aunt what happened, she didn’t get angry or judgmental or even annoyed.
“It’s ok. It’s just a decoration.”
My aunt was immediately able to place this event in the correct hierarchy of importance in her life.
That’s what I can forget in traffic. It’s just a couple of seconds. Or a few feet of inconvenience.
If I let it go, its negative effect on my life is drastically reduced. The greatest cost is usually incurred when I add value to an incident that is simply not very important at all.
This morning, I was driving down a neighborhood road when a car turned out of a driveway at 5 mph in front of me. I hit the brakes, scowled, and honked.
I shouldn’t have done that.
Later, I passed the car and saw it was an 80-year-old woman who had clearly lost the Speed Racer ways of her youth.
One day, I hope to be an 80-year-old man turning out of his extremely high-value neighborhood outside downtown Austin. I’ll probably misjudge how fast the cars are coming and slow everyone behind me.
It will be a simple mistake, and I hope I don’t get honked at. So until then, I’ll try to refrain from honking at the same thing.
The golden rule is obviously more useful when applied to things that actually matter. But road rage is supposed to be the easy level. If I can’t manage grace at 35 mph over a couple of lost seconds, I have no business pretending I’ll find it when I’m truly wronged.
Everything’s a scrimmage for the big leagues. Even a commute.
Hold your horn for me,[3]
Alex
Please read his entire speech if you haven’t before. Could be life-changing. ↩︎
For example, I blasted my horn (while screaming at the top of my lungs) for 10 seconds while a great-grandma slowly backed into my car in the Chipotle parking lot. I feel justified. And don’t regret it. ↩︎
Unless a great-grandma is slowly backing into your car in the Chipotle parking lot. ↩︎
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