Includes Components of Aggressive Driving
To some degree, nearly every driver experiences rage and thoughts of retaliation. There is a growing official alarm about road rage. The U.S. government has named "aggressive drivers" as one of the most serious transportation challenges facing state legislatures today. The American Automobile Association (AAA) Foundation for Traffic Safety released data in 1996 showing that the average number of violent incidents reported between drivers in the U.S. has increased annually over the past eight years.
What causes aggressive driving and habitual road rage?
More cars --> more traffic --> more frustration --> more stress --> more anger -->more hostility -->more violence
Road rage is a habit acquired in childhood. Children are reared in a car culture that condones irate expressions as part of the normal wear and tear of driving. When they enter a car, children notice that the rules change: it's okay to get mad, upset, lose control and use bad language not ordinarily allowed. By the time they get their driver's license, adolescents have assimilated years of road rage.
Defensive driving courses teach constant wariness and to assume the worst and treat all drivers the same. Though defensive driving has prevented many accidents, it is essentially a negative driving tool. For aggressive drivers, defensive driving is a double-edged sword. If you feel provoked, wronged or impatient, your mellow defensive attitude can quickly turn offensive.
Because aggressive driving is a cultural trait, we need to apply social cultural techniques to alter the negative cultural norm of hostility and competition on highways.
The natural cycle of verbal road rage begins with an explosion of invectives and accusations, silent or out loud, reaching a rapid peak that lasts a few seconds, then lessens with a temporary feeling of relief from the pent-up pressure of frustration or fear. What happens next depends on conditions. In some minor but annoying events, conflicting exchanges die down after a few moments when the physiological symptoms of anger dissipate, receding into the subconscious, put to sleep, but ready to awaken at the next opportunity, maybe only a minute or two later. The cycle of anger can be rekindled just by seeing the other car, or it can die down if the target driver avoids eye contact, verbal replies and other forms of provocation.
But if the two drivers amplify and recycle their combative emotions, their verbal rage can transform itself into epic proportions. The further the cycle of hostility turns, the more intense it becomes, and the individuals are less inclined to back down. This is because the intensity of road rage is determined by rationalizations and justifications, and the more "rounds" the antagonists go with each other, the more reasons they will find for continuing and escalating the feud.
Understanding road rage requires the ability to analyze a road rage incident and see its natural steps of development or escalation. Each step allows the drivers a choice point: to continue the conflict or to back out of it.
For years I have supervised drivers in their driving personality makeover projects and discovered that a group context is a powerful method for social change. Small groups of drivers meet together regularly to discuss their driving situation, influence and learn from each other. All participants are encouraged to contribute their self-witnessing reports and tapes for common use and discussion. A generational library of self-witnessing reports include:
QDCs also may provide good vehicle for the courts who are always looking for driver re-education programs more effective than watching driving safety movies, or performing related community work.
QDCs are principally cultural motivators for a value change. They also are the best source of continuous data for tracking the level and intensity of aggressive driving. Trained volunteers tape record themselves in traffic and later analyze the data, using approved checklists for the presence or absence of certain emotions, and their in-tensity. These data measure the level of aggressiveness or stress drivers regularly experience on that stretch of road.
Traditional Driver's Ed remains inadequate as a means of teaching full competence and knowledge of safety, and only satisfies the bare minimum for getting driver's licenses into the hands of millions of young people. Even less attention is given to teaching emotional intelligence skills. The result is that most drivers are ill-prepared to manage their intense emotions behind the wheel. A new driver's ed model for emotional intelligence skills on the road should be taught in kindergarten through the 12th grade. Issues that should be covered include:
Since aggressive driving is a culturally transmitted and sanctioned habit, we need to start with children to avoid breeding another generation of aggressive and violent drivers and pedestrians. CARR is a newly pro-posed organization patterned after Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD). Its purpose is to form local organizations of children, supervised by adults, in which they learn to develop emotionally intelligent road be-haviors as pedestrians, cyclists, vehicle passengers and, later, as student drivers. CARR will be the first such organization specifically to protect children from road rage and aggressive driving.
Only a generational approach can reverse the culturally inherited and generationally transmitted patterns of violence.
1. Mentally condemning other drivers.
2. Verbally denigrating other drivers to a passenger in your vehicle.
3. Closing ranks to deny someone room entering your lane because you're frustrated or upset.
4. Giving another driver the "stink eye" to show your disapproval.
5. Speeding past another car or revving the engine as a sign of protest.
6. Preventing another driver from passing because you're mad.
7. Tailgating to pressure a driver to go faster or get out of the way.
8. Fantasizing physical violence against another driver.
9. Honking or yelling at someone through the window to indicate displeasure.
10. Making a visible obscene gesture at another driver.
11. Using your car to retaliate by making sudden, threatening maneuvers.
12. Pursuing another car in a chase because of a provocation or insult.
13. Getting out of the car and engaging in a verbal dispute, on a street or parking lot.
14. Carrying a weapon in the car in case you decide to use it in a driving incident.
15. Deliberately bumping or ramming another car in anger.
16. Trying to run another car off the road to punish the driver.
17. Getting out of the car and beating or battering someone as a result of a road exchange.
18. Trying to run someone down whose actions angered you.
19. Shooting at another car.
20. Killing someone.
The above components fall into the following five zones of aggressiveness:
The Unfriendly Zone: Items 1 to 3 -- mental and verbal acts of unkindness toward other drivers.
The Hostile Zone: Items 4 to 7 -- visibly communicating one's displeasure or resentment, with the desire to punish.
The Violent Zone: Items 8 to 11 -- carrying out an act of hostility, either in fantasy or deed.
The Lesser Mayhem Zone: Items 12 to 16 -- epic road rage contained within one's personal limits.
The Major Mayhem Zone: Items 17 to 20 -- uncontained epic road rage, the stuff of newspaper stories.
Leon James is a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii. For the past 15 years, he has been teaching courses in traffic psychology. He began research on driving behavior in 1977. Known as "Dr. Driving," he maintains an educational Internet site analyzine electronic discussion groups of drivers around the country. http://www.aloha.net/~dyc
