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road sage

Some call it a “Canadian Stand-off.” Two or more cars arrive at a four-way stop and no one claims the right of way. Instead, the drivers try to “out-nice” each other. In a series of physical gestures of ever-increasing urgency, they say:

“After you.”

“No, after you.”

“Why no, after you.”

“Well, how about him? How about after him?”

“After me? No. You were here first. After you.”

“No. Him.”

“You after you.”

“No.”

“But.”

“You were here first.”

“Who’s on first?”

By the time someone finally moves, everyone is ready to come to blows over how irritatingly polite the others have been. There is a word that describes drivers who exhibit this kind of behaviour – “niceholes.”

The term “niceholes” was coined in 2010 by the brilliant American comedian and actor Kristen Schaal, who tweeted “Let’s work on turning some of these ***holes into niceholes.” The word went into the vernacular and was picked up to describe drivers in Portland, Ore. “They constantly wave people in, instead of just driving,” wrote one Twitter user in 2018. “Or they’ll wave you thru a stop sign, even tho they’ve been sitting at the stop sign for 5 minutes waving people thru.” Niceholes were immortalized by the comedy series Portlandia. The name was back in the public forum in January, 2023, when niceholes were lambasted in a viral Reddit thread about driving frustrations.

Wrote one irate motorist, “In my city, people will stop at random intersections without any traffic signals\signs to let cars from side streets through. Another one is randomly stopping to let someone in oncoming traffic turning left in front of them. They think they are being nice, but not following the signage makes them unpredictable and super dangerous. We even have a name for it and refer to them niceholes.”

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Niceholes are not exclusive to the Pacific northwest. In fact, I’d argue that Canadians have elevated being aggressively polite to an Olympic event. It’s one of our nation-defining characteristics. Journalist and author Pierre Berton wrote, “A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe.” Perhaps. To me, a Canadian is someone who can turn the word “Hello” into an insult.

This goes double on the road. The Canadian Stand-off is just one example of Canadian drivers’ pathological urge to be virtuously courteous. I’ve seen drivers refuse to use an advance green and I’ve seen two drivers meet at the same parking space and each one refuse to claim it.

The problem with niceholes is that they turn every traffic interaction into a negotiation. The concept of right-of-way exists so we don’t have to get into a philosophical debate every time we meet at a four-way stop. Obeying your province’s Highway Traffic Act rather than Emily Post’s Etiquette makes life easier and safer.

Don’t confuse niceholes with drivers who practice common courtesy. You should helpful and kind to those whom you share the road. Let that car in front of you in. Watch out for cyclists and pedestrians. Yield when you are supposed to yield, just don’t make up your own rules and apply them to the rest of the world. This means, in Ontario, when you arrive “at an intersection without signs or lights, you must yield the right-of-way to a vehicle approaching the intersection before you, and if you arrive at the same time, the vehicle approaching from the right has the right-of-way.”

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Why are drivers, or at least many Canadians and Americans in the Pacific Northwest, niceholes? What’s underneath it all? Anger. Anger, my friends. It’s not that Canadians are nicer than everyone else. Our national sport is hockey. In most competitive sports fighting is severely penalized. In hockey, “fisticuffs” have been an accepted part of the professional game since 1917.

Nicehole behaviour on the road is a variation of hockey fisticuffs, but instead of dropping the gloves and raining down blows, drivers curve their lips into plastic smiles and coat other motorists with condescension. They say it’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. The nicehole says it’s better to live on your knees because from that vantage point it’s easier to see how vain, pompous and self-deluded everyone on their feet is.

The first words out of a nicehole’s mouth after they give the other driver the right-of-way are: “Can you believe that guy went after I told him to go? What kind of person does that?”

On the roads, it seems, no good deed goes unpunished.

Nice.

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