Living in Israel: The "Kick me!" sign

A little while ago my brother mentioned to me that he had recently noticed that driving in Israel - never the most relaxing sport - had gotten worse. It seemed that every few minutes behind the wheel another driver would cut him off, fail to yield the right of way, flash his brights, honk, etc. He couldn't figure out what the problem was. Was it possible that there really had been a fundamental shift in Israeli driving etiquette? Or maybe he was just getting old and driving a bit more timidly than in the past.

It took him a few weeks but he finally figured out what was going on: it was the "Kick me!" sign on his rear window. Other drivers saw the "Kick me!" sign and instictively began to kick him.

It wasn't his fault, of course. It wasn't his idea to hang the sign there, the law mandated that he do so. Or rather that his daughter do so. For as you have likely already figured out, the "Kick me!" sign is that orange sign that you hang in the back of your car to proudly proclaim that a new driver is at the wheel. My niece had recently received her license and instead of putting the sign up and taking it down every time she drove, they just left it up. Big mistake. Everyone who drove the car got kicked, not just the newbie.

That of course is not the stated purpose of the orange sign; it's supposed to let others around you know that it'd be a good idea to cut you some slack. Good luck with that.

If they'd asked me before passing the sign law I could have told them what would happen. I remember my first car pool driving from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and back every day close to 20 years ago. Every day as we descended the crowded LaGuardia on-ramp, one of the guys in the pool would always say the same thing: "look for a naheget chadasha to cut in front of." The logic was clear - no one else would let us in, whereas the new driver wouldn't be able to stop us.

And why davka naheget instead of nahag? For the answer to that question you have to think back 15-20 years. Before the law was inacted, when did you ever see a nahag chadash sign? A true gever would never point out that he needed a break.