ROAD RAGE

Road Rage is loss of emotional control while driving. Frustration and anger are key components in the creation of road rage. Being in control of the vehicle and one’s self while driving seems a self-evident goal to most drivers, however external factors can affect a driver’s control over their emotional state and result in loss of emotional control to a greater or lesser degree.

Aggressive driving can be described as “Driving under the influence of impaired emotions resulting in behavior that imposes risk on others”. Aggressive driving behavior is a driver’s attempt to respond to some type of situation or perceived problem using their available strategies. Unfortunately, these strategies are frequently ineffective or counter productive in resolving the issue and may ultimately result in the creation of greater problems for the driver and other road users.

Aggressive driving demonstrates hostility, lack of awareness, resistance to change, lack of emotional maturity, and cynicism towards authority. There are 2 types of aggressive drivers: Chronic and situational.

Chronic aggressive drivers have adopted a driving style, which is out of step with normal traffic flow and accepted norms of courteous driving behavior. They argue that their driving style is not aggressive at all, in fact it is the safest possible driving or they admit that it is aggressive and justify it based on various personal motives.

Situational aggressive drivers are responding to external pressures imposed on them as a result of schedules, traffic flows, the behavior of other drivers, environmental or other factors. Their otherwise safe responsible driving becomes aggressive under certain circumstances. These drivers may admit to the inappropriate nature of there behavior after the fact or alternatively justify it in a similar way to the chronic aggressive driver.

As a driver’s emotional state changes, their risk perception and tolerance also changes. Drivers with road rage tend to have an inappropriately high level of risk tolerance and therefore pose a risk to themselves as well as others on the road.

A stressed out driver may react with road rage, to frustration in traffic or what he perceives as hostile attitudes of other drivers. A study which looked at environmental factors that influence aggression showed that the following can cause rage in those with low frustration tolerance:

• Noise: While not provoking aggression, noise has been shown to influence the intensity of a pre-existing case of aggression. Thus a person prone to road rage, who is under stress or in an irritable mood, may be “set off” by someone honking behind him.
• Temperature: there was a direct relationship between temperature and driver aggression. The hotter it was the more aggressive the subjects became.
• Overcrowding: This is a subjective environmental factor. In experiments where all the subjects agreed to the fact that conditions were overcrowded, and especially in the case of traffic congestion, aggression may reach detrimental levels. Noise and heat may exert the most influence on motorists in a traffic congestion situation.
• Territoriality: individuals often view their vehicles as an extension of their home. At home, one sets standards for oneself that may be fine in the privacy of one’s home but would not be acceptable in public. The car seems to straddle the boundary between private space and public domain.