Drivers Going the Wrong Way

Last week before sunset, I was driving through the park when a car came toward me. The driver had decided that he didn't care for the appropriate path around the museum, so he took a shortcut into on-coming traffic. He was so penurious with his time that he was willing to enter a headlong collision to save a minute or two. The only rational aspect of his act, the only hedge on his reckless gamble, was that we were in a relatively tame 25 mph zone.

Last night, my friend Evelyn was driving north on the Garden State Parkway when a car sped toward her and oncoming traffic. She steered safely to the shoulder while the wrong-way driver shot by. Since no tragic update was reported on this morning's news, no shrill descriptions of a spectacular, senseless accident, I assumed that the wrong-way driver had somehow failed his audition as the angel of death.

In Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson a character named Windpeter Winters inexplicably drives his horses and carriage into an oncoming train, earning himself a posthumous reputation for mad and gratuitous courage.

Could a nascent cult of daredevilry be celebrating itself? Do its members deliberately drive the wrong way on small streets and superhighways in order to achieve suicidal exhilaration, conquer the ultimate fear, or prove their brazenness to friends?

This is a new sub-species to avoid, along with muggers, escaped convicts, and serial killers.