… when you see someone tearing down the road at unsafe speeds, or zooming through a stop sign, or breaking some other traffic law? And then you look a bit closer and it turns out the driver is a friend of yours, and it completely changes your perspective? Why is that?
probably because when you realize you know the person it puts a number of implicit constraints (whether reasonable or not) about what could possibly be going through the person’s mind… for example, if you know them then you have a pretty good idea if they’re likely to be driving drunk or not… more relevantly, you have a good idea if their behaviour is typical or out of character (and so probably triggered by some unknown circumstances which might make the behaviour seem more reasonable)…
I find life less stressful when I assume everyone driving like that has a good reason. The probability that each driver has a reasonable amount of distraction or need to run a red light or speed is probably low, but not low enough that I can’t make up a reasonable excuse for the person.
“Oh look at that jackass! *fist-shaking*” is a lot more frustrating than “Yikes, I hope she makes it to the hospital on time” or “He must be having a rough day after losing his job at as a TV show host and be mad as hell, I’d probably drive like that too”.
@Grant -
Too true. It is much easier for us to assign these types of excuses to friends than strangers. Thanks for bringing out that we should give strangers the benefit of the doubt as well.
Pete