Drivers, both male and female, pull in front of me as if I am invisible. They often increase their speed to alarming proportions to pass and cut across two or sometimes three lanes of traffic on the freeway to get to an exit, apparently unaware that it's there until they are almost past it.

And they do all this as if they were the only person on the highway. Most of the time they don't even notice me. Now and then they manage a signal, although signaling to change lanes is by no means universal. Their discourtesy is not overt. It's just there. It's always there.

While I don't get an obscene gesture from many of them, I have on occasion.

Once while driving one of my granddaughters to the airport, a carload of young men pulled in front of me and then kept putting on their brakes, trying to outchicken me, laughing all the while, as if it were a joke instead of a violation of my right of way and safety.

I've spent a lot of time speculating about this. Most of these people are just ordinary citizens getting to and from work or to and from the store. They are not basically mean or crazy.

But in an automobile they become somehow changed persons. It's as if the metal walls of the car are somewhat like the steel walls of a tank protecting them from the world outside. At the same time, they are suddenly shut off from the world. Modern cars are pretty quiet inside (unless their stereos are set to full volume, another pet peeve of mine).

The driver tends to believe he or she is alone in the world and all those cars beside or in front of his or her vehicle are silent, part of a kind of transportation dream (or maybe nightmare, depending on the traffic).

The driver also is (so he or she thinks) in complete control of a powerful machine, a machine that its makers want us to believe is invulnerable. This seems to work some kind of psychological change in the driver.

"Don't mess with me," many of them seem to be saying. "I'm in command of this vehicle, and I own this stretch of road."

At the same time there's the anonymity of the freeway. Thousands of cars travel it each day and hardly a single driver knows any of those traveling beside them. It's certainly not the day of the horse and buggy, when one could exchange conversation with fellow travelers. The motto these days is "Get there!"

Which leads me to speed. On almost all freeways, given the chance, almost all drivers are driving at speeds in excess of the legal limit. I travel Interstate 280 a lot, and my estimate is that almost everyone is going at least 70 when they can, a good many are going 80 or 85, and a few may be going even faster than this.

The legal speed limit on 280 and most freeways actually is what's reasonable and proper, but not to exceed 65. Obviously, a lot of drivers are breaking the law. Yet there is almost no way to force them to go slower. A California Highway Patrol officer could issue citations for speeding any day of the week on 280, but in issuing one, he would miss half a hundred more violators.

I'm not sure what prompts the speeding. Is it because most drivers want to be Indianapolis 500 drivers? Or is it just that, given an open stretch of road, most drivers eat it up as fast as their vehicles will take them?

My question is why. Why are they in such a hurry? Most speeding doesn't result in arriving at one's destination much sooner than sticking to the speed limit. It is all mindless and incomprehensible.

Whatever the cause of speeding and highway discourtesy, it is epidemic in the Bay Area. I consider myself fortunate not to have to drive most days at rush hour in heavy traffic. I once knew someone who did. He drove to work in Alameda and back every day on 680. He died after a series of heart attacks at an age far too young. I always thought his commute was a contributing factor.

And each morning radio stations report with monotonous regularity at least a half-dozen crashes in the Bay Area somewhere. The carnage on the highway is, as it has been for a half-century, as severe as the casualties from a war. One wonders what the unacceptable toll from this destruction of human life and this injury to automobile and driver will be. Whatever it is, we have not yet reached it.

So speeding, discourtesy and mayhem goes on. Where it will stop, no one knows—or seems to care much. The freeway (a word that's a real joke) also is a jungle and we all, alas, are caught in it.

Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Willow Glen Resident. He can be reached at feodorh@juno.com.