Who Do You Flip Off When No One is Driving?
By Aisha Rashid
April 3, 2026
Someone just cut you off. Your friends in the backseat are ready to watch you unleash your road rage — their favorite form of entertainment. But as you speed up and overtake a few cars just to catch up to that driver and offer them a mean glare, you’re met with an empty front seat. There’s nobody to flip off and immediately regret it. The car glides past you once again, indifferent.
The rise of Waymos has made transportation easier than ever, but it’s also never felt more impersonal. When a Waymo merges too close or brakes too suddenly, the moment is over almost instantaneously. Without eye contact or a quick apologetic wave, there is no one to blame and no one to forgive. The interaction dissolves before it can even form. Road rage, for better or for worse, has always been a shared human experience. An exchange of ego, emotion, and chaos. A connection. But where do these feelings go when there is nobody to receive them?
These driverless cars reflect a broader shift in the direction our society is heading. More and more of our daily life is now automated, diminishing the presence of strangers. Groceries are scanned at self-checkout kiosks. Brown paper bags overflowing with fast food appear at our doorstep without any conversation. Customer service takes place with scheduled messages and chatbots.
Automation may remove some inconveniences from daily life, but inconvenience was often where emotion lived. Negotiating with a driver over the best route to take, requesting a cashier to double-check a coupon’s validity, asking a server what they would recommend on the menu — these tiny exchanges may have seemed insignificant in the moment, but they reminded us that our days unfolded alongside the days of others. They granted us opportunities to learn about others’ experiences, make someone’s day with something as simple as a smile, and potentially even form new relationships.
With this shift, it isn't our loved ones we find ourselves missing, but those we effortlessly encountered. Strangers filled the quiet spaces between the more meaningful parts of our lives. Whether it was a barista who remembered your usual order or the Uber driver who told you they were making their daughter’s favorite dinner that night, each of these interactions made an impact on you. They could last a minute or even less, they could be forgotten in an hour, but together, they formed a steady background of human acknowledgement. They reminded us of the vast diversity of perspectives and experiences in this world that we share.
Even the less pleasant encounters had their place. A biker who wouldn’t stop merging into the car lanes, or someone holding up the line at the register because they’re paying with coins — these incidents were all small frictions that forced us to notice others. They made our routines less predictable, maybe less convenient, but also more alive. They gave us a silly story to tell to our families during dinner, and without realizing it, we relied on these brief encounters to ground ourselves, develop patience, and take things in stride.
With the growth in technology, it has become easier for us to exist in a bubble where others are invisible unless we deliberately seek them out. Our days become smoother and quieter, yet more mundane, stripped of the small emotional exchanges we once experienced everywhere. Our feelings have fewer places to land. Irritation fades before it develops. Gratitude goes unspoken. Curiosity has no outlet. This loss of sometimes awkward, forgettable, or disruptive run-ins with strangers may be an introvert’s dream, but without them, our emotions are seldom expressed.
Traffic has always been chaotic and unpredictable, but it used to be shaped by human moods and human mistakes. Now, when a Waymo passes by, the moment ends before it can expand into anything else. There’s no shared acknowledgement, no silent negotiation, no story to retell later. The experience dissolves into nothing more than a brief adjustment in speed. There’s nobody to flip off, and somehow, that feels lonelier than traffic ever did. ■
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