We feel a sense of anger whenever we are cut off or mistreated on the road. Sometimes we let it slide, other times, we try to hunt down the ‘blatant dumbasses’ down the road, even risking our own safety and probably breaking several traffic laws simultaneously.
Why does it happen so often on the road? With a greater proportion than anywhere else? What are the factors that breed road rage?
If someone wronged us on the street, would we be just as angry? Maybe on the busy Manhattan streets sure. Where everyone is trying to weave between the crowds, but when they get stuck behind a gaggle of slow-walking tourists, the anger starts seeping out.
Have you ever gotten road rage just walking behind someone at the supermarket?
But generally for walking on sidewalks, my experience has never been as exacerbated as while driving. People seem to have a lot more patience and tolerance for missteps. Sure you occasionally encounter someone who is angry at the world and wants any excuse to let out their frustrations.
But what is interesting is that even the most docile people will tend to exhibit some form of anger while driving. The most genuinely pleasant people in everyday life will be unable to control their emotions.
Even if they don’t actively go out of their way to flip off other drivers, the anger and hate will be evident. The slight twitch of the lips. The scrunching of the nose in disgust. The squinting of the eyes at the stupidity of others.
Beyond just Angry People
There are a ton of studies showing what patterns might hint at increased road rage. A few of the most common are an inability to take responsibility and anger management issues. But what about every other situation? Why is road rage not a characteristic of only the very angry?
Empathy Aversion
We have our own sense of what is and what should be. On the road though, our sense of normality becomes reduced to our own version.
Anyone who drives slower than you is an idiot. Anyone who drives faster than you is a maniac.
George Carlin
It doesn’t matter whether someone else is in an emergency or might also be having a bad day. The fact of the matter is that on the road, it’s every man, woman, and child for themselves. Maybe it’s akin to capitalistic thinking, where we think the best outcome is achieved with everyone thinking just for themselves.
But our default state is believing that we are right and everyone else is wrong. It becomes easy to overlook our own reasons and mistakes while ensuring a negative filter of everyone else.
Perpetual Anger Propagation
Imagine the first driver to develop road-rage as patient-zero. They go about spewing anger and spreading aggression simply by their driving habits. From there, the virus spreads, peaking during rush hour, abating as the traffic dies down.
But this cycle continues. Passing from one car to the next. Cut someone off, and their tolerance decreases until they inevitably get consumed with road-rage themselves.
If each car has a relationship with every other car, then anger has the corrosive power to dissolve any form of trust on the road. Without even a semblance of trust, aggression rather than cooperation becomes the norm.
What’s so special about driving ?
Awareness of Risk
We have all felt the anxiety of being honked at. When humongous trucks drive by, breaking the speed limit, it’s perfectly normal to tense up for fear of some mishap happening.
We rarely get placed in life or death situations on a regular basis. Although everything has a probability of causing some level of fatality, operating heavy machinery around other people also operating heavy machinery has the unique ability to increase tension.
Driving is unlike any other experience. Even when horse carriages were the mode of transportation, the speeds and volume could never hope to reach a congestion density of 4 pm traffic.
Enhanced Anonymity
If the internet has taught us one thing, it’s that anonymity emboldens people to act without thinking. Why hold yourself back if there aren’t going to be any direct consequences.
But it’s not just our anonymity, but the anonymity of the person on the other end. We fail to empathize when we don’t know the person on the other end.
While walking, at least we see the faces of other people. We can’t escape them with the same discretion that we can on the roads. We also feel more connected to them simply because they aren’t hidden behind a metal barrier.
To us, the car that just cut us off isn’t driven by another human being with problems of their own. To us, they are simply blobs of menacing annoyances whose primary goal in life is to make us angry.
Struggle for Control
Humans have a tendency to try and control life. We plan and organize to make our lives easier in some way. We think when we have control, we avoid risk. That for some reason, we can make sure that the outcome will always be beneficial for us if we are able to plan properly.
On the road though, try as we might, our control is limited to our own driving. And it’s exactly that lack of control we struggle to cope with. Watching others behave in ways we think reduces our ability to control the situation, heightens our emotional response. According to a study in Germany, this perceived loss of control actually leads to further increased risk-taking. Basically continuing the cycle of aggressive driving.
What has worked wonders for me?
I hate cliches. They are created by people who have already had the experience needed to simplify the lessons to just a single phrase. Sure it sounds profound but to most people, it’s pretentious and annoying.
But here goes.
We have 86,400 seconds in every day so don't let someone's negative 10 seconds ruin the rest of the 86,390 remaining seconds.
Every single time I’ve felt cheated on the road, I’ve reminded myself of this. I’m not trying to make excuses for others, “maybe they had an emergency” … no I don’t give a *&^% what they had going on. But I can be selfish here, and realize that unless I was a traffic cop, or saw one chasing them down, nothing would quell my anger.
Sounds like I’m letting people walk over me? Not really since you aren’t exhibiting a pattern to the same people. Drivers are usually semi-random, at least on the highways, where most road rage tends to happen. Just because you didn’t pursue someone who cuts you off doesn’t mean you now have a bumper sticker labeling you as an easy target.
Road rage won’t go away even if everyone took anger-management classes. It’s not just perpetually angry people who create the environment, and unless driving becomes a completely different experience, not much will change. But, we can take the same idea of selfishness that aggressive drivers hold, and realize our situation isn’t going to improve by “teaching someone a lesson”.