Confidence can make even violations seem correct.

I’m driving up the West Side Highway, with the window open, and my arm resting on the door. My elbow is sticking maybe an inch out of the car.

A motorcyclist comes tearing along, doing what motorcyclists in the city often do: threading needles. He’s a white guy on a supersport motorbike – something Kawasaki Ninja-ish. He is driving between lanes, at high speed.

This is illegal, for all the reasons it should be.

It removes the time and space needed between vehicles to adapt if someone makes a mistake. And if that occurs, the person who will suffer most is the guy wearing cargo shorts instead of a car for protection. He will also be the person responsible for the damage.

But he pulls alongside me, and yells “put your arm in!”

I bypass all the things I think to say, and put my arm in.

He gives me the thumbs up with more than a hint of Condescension. Like good job, dummy. You figured it out.

And for a second, I’m reviewing everything I know about driving in NYC. Did I do something wrong? Is this another law that has recently changed, giving drivers another unaccountable party to look out for?

(Spoiler alert: it is not. The man is being a knucklehead. His reckless driving could get him killed.)

But while I’m still trying to figure that out, a Puerto Rican gentleman pulls up alongside me, rolls down his window, and asks, rhetorically: “Is this Motherf-er serious?”

He then pulls up again and says “I was behind you. If I had just driven normally, he would have been flat as a pancake!”

He seems genuinely disturbed. His vibe is like Ricky Ricardo uttering his string of Spanish protests when Lucy does something insane.

He pulls up again. He says, of the lunatic white guy on the bike, “Then he leaves and says 'peace!' What are you talking about about, man? There is no peace!”

And this was the part that stuck with me.

Because Motorcycle Man is not just engaged in vehicular aggression. He is committing psychological crimes.

How often do we use the language of peace while engaging in acts of war?

How often do we look for other people to compensate for our bad decisions?

How often do we chastise them when they don’t?

We have a number of choices we can make as adults forced to share the road and the world.

We can try to become more skilled drivers.

We can choose to make more generous choices.

Or we can become bigger bullies, and try to intimidate people into conceding to us, even when we are knowingly, fully wrong.

Sadly, too many of us just focus on the bullying part. I see a lot of this in customer service. I see it in businesses, and churches, and any number of organizations. One strategically placed bully upholds a systems errors by making the price of protest too high.

It may be a gruff manager. It may be a company lawyer. It may be somebody’s mom.

And it brings out the absolute worst in the people they protect. It cultivates employees who provide terrible service, and clients who keep breaking the law. The worst behaved children I see are the ones with grizzly bear moms who back them up no matter how wrong they are.

Sadly, that works until it doesn’t. Eventually you encounter a system you can’t just violate and coerce, at which point you must learn the social skills you never developed because your enforcer just helped you get your way.

And a conflict is a bad place to learn

On this particular occasion I am grateful that Motorcycle Man encountered Ricky Ricardo and me.

Because two other drivers might have matched his aggression with their own.

I pray that wherever you are driving today, you find a way to keep your peace.

I pray the people around you make good decisions.

I pray we all stay safe.

I have places to go, and so do you.