Sep
15th
2020
Equestrian Road Rage · 1:57pm Sep 15th, 2020
Yesterday, I saw this video, and if Equestria ever gets cars, this is pretty much exactly what pony road rage would look like.
And then I thought: what would current Equestrian road rage look like if it was actually rage-y?
I realize that, given that all Equestrian road travel is done on hoof, this is a pretty stupid thing to speculate about. But what's the point in well-detailed worlds if you can't speculate about the stupidest things? I once came up with a genetic reason for how the Cakes, as earth ponies, could have a unicorn and pegasus for kids. Pointless speculation is the best kind of speculation!
- I'm going to qualify this by saying road rage has to happen between ponies pulling carriages or carts. Otherwise, it's just two jerks yelling at each other or beating each other up, unless it's one jerk yelling at a pony who was minding their own business.
- A pegasus who gets involved is either going to just fly away or be incredibly full of themselves. However, flying away does absolutely nothing to keep them from coming back later and buzzing/divebombing whoever annoyed them.
- At first I thought unicorns would stay back to zap the other pony with magic, but if they're that far away, they're probably not road raging in the first place. Still, it gives them an advantage if they can get away from a rage in progress.
- Earth ponies probably have the biggest advantage with their strength. I can imagine one destroying a slow cart in front of them with a headbutt or just backing up and rolling their own cart over someone behind them.
- I can't help but wonder what sort of hooffight would take place if it came to that. They'd probably have to unhitch themselves from the cart, which gives me a mental image a heated confrontation getting put on hold for ten to fifteen seconds as each pony struggles to undo all the straps, buckles, and what have you on their hitch (although I also have an image of an earth pony using themselves as a pivot to swing their cart around like a flail and it's hilariously stupid).
- Given that it would mostly occur with cart-pullers, there'd probably be a perception of it as something that can only happen in certain occupations.
- Ponies galloping with carts is rare (less so with rickshaw taxis, true, but rarer with carts), so nine times out of ten it'd be among the slowest road rage in history.
What do you think?
I do love the idea of earth ponies walking through slow traffic rather than tailgating, to say nothing of weaponizing their carts. As for unicorns, I can only imagine what Trixie's been through. She doesn't trust wheels for a reason.
Meanwhile, pegasi normally have it easy, but the three-dimensional traffic around cloud cities has to be seen to be believed.
It gets more complicated when other species are part of it since they don't behave in the way ponies do and griffons might just choose aggression over leaving.
Oedipus did a road rage when he killed his dad.
The more likely form of "road rage" would probably be brawls or at least arguments between groups of travelers over who has to move their carts off a narrow road so the other groups carts can pass. For pegasi, they might fight over air currents. Particularly if you had a faster pegasus coming up behind a slower one and the slower one refuses to move out of the way. Although if a pegasus did get into it with a ground based pony, you could have a Duel type stituation with the pegasus stalking the earth pony for miles.
In general, given Equestria's primitive infrastructure, road rage probably would involve slow, but almost inevitable situations. Like the two groups of carts approaching from opposite directions on the narrow road, they might see each other hours before they meet, but unless one group takes the initiative to get all their stuff off the road and let the other pass, the fight when they meet is unavoidable.
Well, they did the tycpal newyorker "I'm walking here" thing he the went to manehatton. althoug that the only place we ever saw rikshaws and stuff.