Exhibit B.

While sitting at my desk at work one day, conscientiously attending to the business of the day, I overheard a conversation taking place nearby between two colleagues.

The first related a harrowing experience he had on his way to work that morning. “I’m sitting at a red light, about to go straight through an intersection . . . the light turns green and I start to go, when this guy, going in the opposite direction, talking on his cell phone, radio blasting, makes a left hand turn right in front of me . . . I slam on my brakes and honk my horn, and I end up with coffee stains all over my pants because of that jerk. Meanwhile he’s on his merry way, completely oblivious to what he’s done.” The other colleague retorts, “You think that’s bad, I was on the interstate the other day, and I’m coming up to an exit . . . I’m in the outside lane and a truck starts to . . .” The rest of his story dissolves into background noise as I begin to contemplate the conversation that is taking place.

A thought dawns on me. I can’t ever remember hearing, or being involved in, a conversation where someone talked about themselves driving poorly, exercising poor judgment, or otherwise acting obnoxiously on the roadways. I’ve never said to my wife, “Hey, honey, I was driving to work today and I cut some guy off. You should have seen it! I could’ve merged in behind him easily enough, but I floored it and wedged onto the highway right in front of him, about twenty feet behind an 18-wheeler. I made him slam on his brakes and swerve into the other lane. It was great.” Perhaps you have heard such stories, but I haven’t. In any case, it is not the norm.

Now, I’m not for a second saying that my colleagues were making up or exaggerating their stories. And I’m not saying that all of us don’t have many stories we could tell about the bad, distracted drivers out there on the roads these days. We certainly do. My observation here, is this: These “driving anecdotes” that we hear all the time divide the driving population into two categories: good drivers (the person relating the anecdote), and bad drivers (the other guy). It seems to me that most people see themselves as part of the group of people in society who drive well, pay attention, obey all the traffic laws, etc., and see others as the bad drivers—the ones who are distracted by their cell phones, are overly aggressive, etc.

That is, most people correctly recognize the problem—that there are a lot of poor drivers on the roads these days—yet most people feel like they are not part of the problem, but rather among those who have it all together. Most people think of themselves as part of the group that drives safely, not too aggressively, uses common sense (not one of the “idiots” out there) . . . all those things that might go into defining what a good driver is.

Next episode: Exhibit C.