The Golden Rule of Driving The Golden Rule of Driving

The golden rule of driving

For anyone who’s ever yelled “Unbelievable!” at a stranger and then immediately missed their own exit.

“Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you and scorn in the one ahead.”

Mac McCleary

Every time I get in the car, I tell myself: This time will be different.
This time, I will not let a stranger’s inability to merge dictate my emotional health.
This time, I will be Zen.

And then someone forgets how turn signals work, and suddenly I’m composing full-blown monologues about justice, morality, and the collapse of civilization—out loud, to no one.

It’s amazing how fast driving turns reasonable people into philosophers with anger management issues.

I’ve never screamed at my kids like I’ve screamed at a 2006 Toyota Camry. I don’t even know the driver, but somehow they’ve become the villain in my life’s story. I can’t tell you their name, but I can tell you their entire personality type based solely on how they handle a four-way stop.

And yet—here’s the part that stings—I’m also the person other people are screaming about.
Because I, too, have drifted into the wrong lane while checking Google Maps.
I, too, have cut someone off while trying to figure out if that light was yellow or “spiritually red.”
I am not the hero of the highway. I’m just the guy trying to remember which side my gas tank is on.

The truth is, we’re all bad drivers sometimes. We all have moments when life bleeds through the windshield—a sick kid, a late meeting, a brain full of noise. And if everyone’s just a little bit off, the only way we survive is grace.

That’s the golden rule of driving:
Drive the way you wish other people would.
Let them merge. Forgive them for not knowing what a zipper merge is. Wave when someone lets you in. Don’t use your horn like it’s a form of punctuation.

Because we’re all just trying to get home.
And maybe—if we can resist the urge to assign moral failure to every slow left turn—we’ll actually get there in peace.