[JSR] The Sensitive Sense

As time goes on, meanings start to change for different people. With that being said, being sensitive does not necessarily mean that it is bad, but it all depends on the situation.

Esther Jung, Grade 11 Grover Cleveland Charter High School

For example, if there was a bad driver, others have the right to honk at them to let them know what they are doing is incorrect and putting others in danger. However, some may feel personally attacked by the person who honks and escalates it into a larger incident: a shooting.

In the past, there have been far too many shootings based on road rage. After searching road rage shootings on Google, over 39,800,000 results came up. That is a large number. This proves that people are not understanding the true meaning of the car horn: safety. Without the car horn, there may be far more accidents and many will struggle to prevent them since there is no easy way to communicate car-to-car.

On May 9, 2018, ABC7 released a report on a shooting that was caused by road rage in Pennsylvania. The shooting occurred when the victim honked his horn to urge the car to turn at the light and the driver and passenger got upset. The victim’s passenger door was shot at, but thankfully no one was injured. The victim, who wants to stay unnamed said, “You have to watch who you beep at anymore…Anything could happen on the road and that moment could be your last”, which is scary to think.

Similar but worse than this story, in Cleveland, Ohio, a four-year-old child was shot in the head after a road rage incident. The mother had honked her horn to pass another car from blocking the road when the car had followed her onto the freeway and fired shots. The boy suffered major injuries and had to undergo many surgeries to remove bullets.

These incidents come to show how important it is to address different things that can cause useless arguments to occur. With sensitive people on the road, it adds extra stress when drivers are supposed to be only focusing on the road. As well as this, it is impossible to determine who is sensitive about car horns, making it impossible to prevent what will happen.