road rage

by Leon James and Diane Nahl, 2000

Perhaps no nation has embraced automobiles with as much enthusiasm as has the United States. Since the 1920s the United States has led the world in the rates of car ownership, miles of paved roads, and number of licensed drivers. The American passion for the automobile, however, has not come without costs. The number of fatal car accidents in the United States dwarfs that of other nations, and on average American drivers spend more time in traffic in a month than most people in other countries do in a year. In the 1990s a newly named phenomenon added yet another challenge to American drivers: road rage. As streets became more crowded, they also became more dangerous. Opinion polls have reported that road rage and aggressive driving are major daily concerns of the driving public. In their book Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare (2000), professors Leon James and Diane Nahl analyze the sources of road rage and recommend safe driving techniques. Excerpts from their book are reprinted below.

Driving in traffic routinely involves events and incidents. Events are normal sequential maneuvers such as stopping for lights, changing lanes, or braking. Incidents are frequent but abnormal events. Some of these are dangerous and frightening, such as near-misses or violent exchanges, while others are merely annoying or depressing, such as being insulted by a driver or forgetting to make a turn. Driving events and incidents are sources of psychological forces capable of producing powerful feelings and irrational thought sequences. Driving is a dramatic activity performed by millions on a daily basis. The drama stems from high risk, interactivity, and unpredictability. Predictability creates safety, security, and escape from disaster. Unpredictability creates danger, stress, and crashes.

For many, driving is linked to a value of freedom of locomotion. On one hand, we can get into our cars and drive where we please, the very symbol of freedom and independence. But on the other hand, we encounter restrictions and constrictions-regulations, congestion, and the unexpected actions of other motorists that prevent us from driving as we wish. The following list identifies fifteen conflicting aspects of driving that act as stressors. The list represents emotional challenges that are common occasions for expressing hostility and aggressiveness on highways and streets:

1. Immobility: Most of the body remains still and passive during driving, unlike walking, where the entire body exerts effort and remains continuously active. Tension tends to build up when the body is physically constricted.

2. Restriction: Motor vehicles are restricted to narrow bands of highway and street lanes. In congested traffic, progress will inevitably be continually blocked by numerous other cars. Being prevented from going forward when you expect to arouses frustration, and along with it anxiety and an intense desire to escape the restriction. This anxiety prompts drivers to perform risky or aggressive maneuvers to get away or get ahead.

3. Regulation: Driving is a highly regulated activity. Government agencies and law enforcement officers tell drivers how fast and where they may drive, but cars and trucks have powerful engines capable of going much faster than is allowed. Drivers are punished for violating regulations. This regulation, though lawful and obviously necessary, feels like an imposition and arouses a rebellious streak in many, which then prompts them to disregard whatever regulations seem to be wrong or inconvenient.

4. Lack of personal control: Traffic follows the objective laws that govern flow patterns, like those we see in rivers, pipes, blood vessels, and streaming molecules. In congested traffic the flow depends on the available spaces between the cars. When one car slows down, hundreds of other cars behind run out of space and drivers must tap their brakes to slow down, or stop altogether. No matter how we drive, it is impossible to beat these traffic waves, whose cause may start miles away. This lack of personal control over traffic events is frustrating and often leads to venting anger on whoever is around-usually another driver or a passenger.

5. Being put in danger: Drivers love their cars and car repairs are expensive. Even a scratch is aggravating because it reduces the car's value. Congested traffic filled with impatient and aggressive drivers can create hair-raising close calls and hostile incidents, sometimes within a few minutes of each other. This results in physiological stress, along with many negative emotions-fear, resentment, rage, a sense of helplessness, and a depressed mood.

6. Territoriality: The car is symbolically associated with individual freedom and self-esteem, promoting an attitude of defensiveness and territoriality. Our car is our castle and the space around the car is our territory. When other drivers invade our space and threaten our castle, we often respond with hostility, even with warlike postures and aggressive reactions to routine incidents. We often perceive such incidents as skirmishes and battles. For many motorists, driving has become a dreaded emotional roller coaster.

7. Diversity: There are currently 177 million licensed drivers in the United States and they represent a breadth of experience, knowledge, ability, style, and purposes for being on the road. These social differences reduce predictability because drivers with different skills and purposes don't behave according to the expected norms. Motorists' confidence is shaken by unexpected events, and driving becomes more complex and more emotionally challenging.

8. Multitasking: The increase in dashboard complexity and other in-car activities like talking on the phone or checking e-mail challenge our ability to remain alert and focused behind the wheel. Moreover, we become more irritated at others-and they at us-when our attention as drivers is perceived to be lacking due to multitasking behind the wheel.

9. Denial: Typically, most driving is automatic, using unconscious habits learned and compiled over years. Drivers tend to exaggerate their own excellence, overlooking their many mistakes. When passengers complain or when other drivers are threatened by these errors, there is a strong tendency for the individual to deny such mistakes and to see complaints as exaggerated, hostile, or unwarranted. This denial causes us to feel indignant and self-righteous enough to wish to punish and retaliate.

10. Negativity: When learning to drive, we don't just learn to manipulate the vehicle; we also acquire an overly critical attitude toward other drivers. As children we're exposed to the judgmental behavior of our parents and other adults as they drive us around. It's also reinforced in movies portraying drivers behaving badly. This culture of mutual hostility among motorists promotes an active and negative emotional life behind the wheel.

11. Self-serving bias: Driving incidents are not neutral; someone is always considered to be at fault. The tendency to attribute fault to others is natural, but it influences our memory of what happened, and we easily lose objectivity and judgment in a dispute.

12. Venting: Our culture permits and even encourages venting anger. It's supposed to be healthy to "let it out" instead of keep it inside. But venting has its own logic, and vented anger tends to expand until it breaks out into overt hostility. Venting is felt as an energizing "rush." This seductive feeling is short-lived, and is accompanied by a stream of anger-inspiring thoughts that impair judgment and tempt us into rash and dangerous actions. Habitual venting can have serious physical consequences by weakening the immune system. But motivation and self-training can help drivers learn not to explode.

13. Unpredictability: Streets and highways create an environment of drama, danger, and uncertainty. Competition, hostility, and stress further intensify negative emotions. Even noise and smells aggravate feelings of frustration and resentment. The driving environment requires constant emotional adjustment to unexpected, tedious, brutish, and dangerous occurrences.

14. Isolation: Motorists cannot communicate. There is no easy way of saying, "Oops, I'm sorry!" as we can in a bank line. This leads to ambiguity and misunderstanding: "Did he just flip me off or was that an apology?" It would be helpful if vehicles were equipped with an electronic display allowing drivers to flash appropriate prerecorded messages that facilitate coordination and positive interaction in driving.

15. Emotional challenges: Traditionally, driver education teaches students some general principles of safety, with a few hours of supervised hands-on experience behind the wheel or on a driving simulator. Developing awareness of common and problematic driving behaviors and the application of sound judgment and emotional self-control have not been part of the training. Most nonprofessional drivers today are insufficiently trained in cognitive and affective skills. Cognitive skills are good habits of thinking and judgment in challenging situations. Affective skills are good habits of attitude and motivation in challenging situations. Drivers often lack the emotional intelligence coping skills essential for driving on today's roads, including how to:

• cool off when angered or frustrated;
• retain focus when multitasking;
• cooperate with the traffic flow and not hinder it;
• allocate sufficient time for the trip;
• feel responsible for obeying traffic regulations; and
• be a supportive, noncompetitive, compassionate driver.

The common element in all fifteen driving stressors is anger, possibly the most frequent of human emotions. Anger has always been closely linked to aggressive behavior. It is common to relate aggressiveness to social and environmental factors, in addition to individual personality factors. For instance, under certain critical conditions, congestion on highways and anonymity in cars interact with faulty attitudes and inadequate coping skills to produce aggressive traffic behavior. These apparent triggering conditions are unpredictable and hold symbolic meaning to the interactants, who may report having felt insulted or threatened.

Sigmund Freud held a Darwinian theory of human aggression, still popular today, that views anger as a biological instinct. Aggression and violence are ultimately forces of self-destructiveness in the innate struggle between life and death. Aggressiveness and assertiveness are clearly different in intention, but sometimes they are difficult to distinguish behaviorally. In our society, competition and disagreement are often used as mechanisms for establishing identity, as in athletics and the marketplace. Biological theories of aggressiveness have also been used to rationalize aggressive driving. According to a U.K. study, an increase in road rage incidents occurred throughout the various layers of society: young and old, men and women, the public and law enforcement alike. Furthermore, road rage behavior could not be predicted on the basis of personality or reputation, so that those committing violent roadway behavior do so uncharacteristically. . . .

The anger we feel behind the wheel may have either (or both) of two sources: another driver's behavior or some earlier event unrelated to driving. Displaced anger is a common defense mechanism used in many situations. On the road, displaced anger seems to be triggered by a driving incident, and the other driver becomes the enemy target. Some drivers seek medical help after a scary driving incident, even when not obviously injured. These symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder can last for months, even years, according to Dr. Arnold Nerenberg, a noted road rage psychotherapist. There are few self-referrals at the Harborview Anger Management clinic, according to Dr. Maiuro:

People exhibiting road rage often do not seek help because of their limited self-awareness and a tendency to see the "other guy" (perceived as provocative and deserving of retaliation) as the problem. Consequently, self-referral to programs such as ours is rare, and an afflicted driver usually arrives for help at the request of a traffic court judge, lawyer, or family member concerned about the person's own safety and the risk to others.

Our research in Hawaii shows that aggressive drivers resist change primarily because they deny that they have a driving problem. Our three-step program for recovery from aggressive driving begins with the most difficult step, "I acknowledge that I need to retrain myself as a driver." The hallmark of today's driving culture is denying aggressiveness or calling it assertive, efficient, or progressive instead.

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (January 2008)

The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (August 2008)

For other uses, see Road Rage (disambiguation).

Some transportation experts argue that traffic congestion may be a contributing factor to driver frustration and road rage.

Road rage is aggressive or angry behavior by a driver of an automobile or other motor vehicle. Such behavior might include rude gestures, verbal insults, deliberately driving in an unsafe or threatening manner, or making threats. Road rage can lead to altercations, assaults, and collisions which result in injuries and even deaths. It can be thought of as an extreme case of aggressive driving.

The term supposedly originated in the USA during the 1980s. ^[1]

Contents 1 Manifestation 2 Legal status 3 Road rage as a medical condition 4 Penalties 5 U.S. rankings 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links

Manifestation

Clogged streets in Bangkok

The following are common manifestations of road rage:

• Generally aggressive driving, including sudden acceleration, braking, and close tailgating.
• Cutting others off in a lane, or deliberately preventing someone from merging.
• Sounding the vehicle's horn or flashing lights excessively.
• Driving at high speeds in the median of a highway to terrify drivers in both lanes
• Rude gestures (such as "the finger").
• Shouting verbal abuse or threats.
• Intentionally causing a collision between vehicles.
• Exiting the car to attempt to start a confrontation, including striking someone else's vehicle with an object.
• Threatening to use or using a firearm or other deadly weapon.
• Throwing projectiles from a moving vehicle with the intent of damaging other vehicles.
• Spitting

In the U.S., more than 300 cases of road rage annually have ended with serious injuries or even fatalities^{[citation needed]} – 1200 incidents per year, according to the AAA Foundation study, and rising yearly throughout the six years of the study that examined police records nationally.^{[citation needed]}

Legal status

A traffic jam in Poland.

In some jurisdictions there may be a legal difference between "road rage" and "aggressive driving." In the U.S., only a few states have enacted special aggressive driving laws, where road rage cases — about 1,200 a year — are normally processed as assault and battery (with or without a vehicle), or "vehicular manslaughter" (if someone is killed).

Road rage as a medical condition

As early as 1997, therapists in the United States were working to certify road rage as a medical condition. It is already an official mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.^{[citation needed]} According to an article published by the Associated Press in June 2006, the behaviors typically associated with road rage are the result of intermittent explosive disorder.^{[citation needed]} This conclusion was drawn from surveys of some 9,200 adults in the United States between 2001 and 2003 and was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The cause of intermittent explosive disorder has not been described to date. There are differing views on whether or not "road rage" is a mental issue. Regardless of whether it is or not, there are alternative solutions for overcoming this handicap.

Penalties

Road rage is a relatively serious act: It may be seen as an endangerment of public safety. It is, however, not always possible to judge intent by external observation, so "road ragers" who are stopped by police may be charged only with relatively minor offences such as careless or reckless driving.^{[citation needed]}

It is likely that those causing serious injury or death during "road rage" incidents will suffer more serious penalties than those applicable to similar outcomes from simple negligence. In April 2007, a Colorado driver was convicted of first-degree murder for causing the deaths of two motorists in November 2005.^[2][3] He will serve a mandatory sentence of two consecutive life terms.

Only 14 U.S. states have passed laws against aggressive driving. Only one state, California, has turned "road rage" into a legal term of art by giving it a particular meaning.^[4]

U.S. rankings

A 2007 study of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas concluded that the cities with the least courteous drivers (most road rage) are Miami, Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles, and Boston. The cities with the most courteous drivers (least road rage) are Minneapolis, Nashville, St. Louis, Seattle, and Atlanta.^[5] In 2009, New York, Dallas/Fort Worth, Detroit, Atlanta and Minneapolis/St. Paul were rated the top five "Road Rage Capitals" of the United States.^[6]

See also

• Air rage
• Bike rage
• Computer rage
• Wrap rage
• Roid Rage

References

1. ^ "Road rage" meaning and origin, Phrases.org.uk
2. ^ The Denver Post - Road-rage killer unrepentant
3. ^ Road-rage driver offers blame at sentencing: Local News: The Rocky Mountain News
4. ^ V.C. Section 13210 - Court-Ordered Suspension: Road Rage
5. ^ Road Rage Survey Reveals Best, Worst Cities
6. ^ New York Finally Named City with Worst Road Rage

• Controlling Road Rage: A Literature Review and Pilot Study Prepared for The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety By Daniel B. Rathbone, Ph.D. Jorg C. Huckabee, MSCE June 9, 1999
• Road Rage: Causes and Dangers of Aggressive Driving (transcript of a portion of the official hearing record of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure – 1997)
• Summary Table on Aggressive Driving Laws, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Safer driving through reflective thinking - Redshaw, Sarah (2001), Drivers.com
• Survey of the States - Speeding, Governors Highway Safety Association
• Aggressive Driving Prevention, United States Army Victory Corps
• Senior Citizen Driving: Warning Signs and Helping an Unsafe Driver to Stop Driving, HelpGuide.org
• Whitlock, F.A., 1971, Death on the Road: A Study in Social Violence, London: Tavistock.

Further reading

• Eberle, Paul (2006). Terror on the Highway. Buffalo: Prometheus Books. ISBN 9781591023791. 
• Larson, John (1997). Steering Clear of Highway Madness. Wilsonville: Bookpartners. ISBN 188522138X. 

External links

• Extensive data regarding road rage and driving behavior can be found at the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) website.
• Tips and information on Driving Safely TODDS
• Forum Discussion regarding Road Rage Road Rage Guys
• Mobility without Mayhem: Safety, Cars, and Citizenship, by Jeremy Packer. This book contains a chapter about road rage.

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