“Godless sociopaths the lot of them,” Jackie, a Tel-Aviv taxi driver for the past 18 years says of Israeli drivers. “They care about nobody but themselves. I used to carry around a baseball bat in the cab and I used to shout and scream at people, but now I’ve mellowed out. I’ve made the switch in my head. Every year I go to Holland for three months to visit my brother and its hard to come back to these streets, it gets worse every year, they’re Godless and they’re mad, and this is the real face of the nation. They rush for no reason; they want to get in front of you for no reason, just so that they can wait in line one place in front of you. I can’t explain it. I think Israelis drive like they do because life here is so shit, in every respect. The Israeli eats shit all day, and then gets into his car and takes out all his frustrations on the road,” the taxi driver says.
You know the type: The one that overtakes you on the highway like a mad person, cutting you off, putting you milliseconds from a crash for no reason you can understand; the one who drives so close to your tail that you can tell what he’s saying on the phone he’s holding in his hand by reading his lips; the same one that, at night, drives right up behind you and starts flashing his headlights for you to get out of the way, regardless of whether or not there is another vehicle on your right or left; the same one that suddenly moves across two lanes so as not to miss the exit, without looking, indicating or even putting the phone down; the one that doesn’t understand that safe distance between cars is not an extra space into which more cars can be squeezed; and the one that takes the parking spot you’ve waited patiently for, indicator lights and all.
