Road Rage

Most of us are familiar with “road rage”. There are, of course, extreme
examples of violence and assaults on the roads that end up in the courts,
hospitals, and the media.

But every day, drivers get angry and aggressive, and the evidence is
mounting that this can put themselves and others at greater risk.

Road rage victims and perpetrators have been pepper sprayed, stabbed,
beaten, run down, and shot by each other.

For instance

In a brutal road rage incident near AIIMS, a young student of DU was mauled to
death by a car following a scuffle over a trivial issue. Gurpreet was just 21.

In another case of road rage, a father of 2 was shot dead by four persons on
Jharsa Road in Gurgaon following an altercation over allegedly blocking the way
of an SUV.

a lab technician working with Gurgaon's Fortis Hospital was viciously attacked
with an iron rod when his car accidentally scraped a man's vehicle from behind
in south Delhi. He soon succumbed to his injuries.

Incidents like these are a glaring reminder of rising cases of road rage in india.

Let’s take a look at some horrific statistics on road rage in India.

• According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 5 Lakh incidents

of road rage are reported from India annually

• Nearly two of every three drivers believe “aggressive driving” is a bigger

problem today than three years ago, and nine out of ten drivers believe
it’s a threat to their personal safety.

• A staggering 88 percent of drivers have engaged in at least one aggressive

driving behavior in the past year.
 • Three in four said they had “purposely tried to block another driver from
changing lanes.”

• 23 percent said they had “bumped or rammed another vehicle on

purpose.”

• Young Indian male drivers (less than 23 years) were more likely than any
other age group or gender found to commit aggressive driving behaviours.

So basically what causes Road Rage

The answers are many

Usually road rage is triggered by

• Tailgating Aggressively

• Flashing high beam

• Speeding past dangerously

• Weaving dangerously across lanes without any signal

• Showing Obscene Gestures

• Deliberately Obstructing Other Vehicles

• horn Honking aggressively

• Snatching someone’s parking space

• Cutting others off

• Abusing Verbally

• Physical Assault

• Exiting the car to start confrontations

Coming to What makes people behave like this

For some road ragers, it’s

The need for control

to counter other drivers whom they feel violate their proxemic space

a need for possession of their lane or their part of the road

For others it’s

unchecked anger and aggression

primitive, small-brain thinking

personalising (“they cut me off on purpose!”)

catastrophizing (“you could have killed me!”)

overgeneralising (“people are hopeless drivers!”)

lack of emotional intelligence and empathy

Add in

unchecked egos

superiority complex and narcissistic pride

male genital one-upmanship (my vehicle is bigger than yours).

So let us look at how anger affects your brain and body

Assume you are driving and suddenly another vehicle comes out of nowhere
and barges into your lane and meanwhile at doing so it touches your
vehicle. So how would you react

The 1st spark of anger activates the amygdala before you are even
aware of it.

The Amygdala turns on the stress response system commonly referred

to as ‘HPA axis’ in your body

So a chain reaction follows

Amygdala activates Hypothalamus, which in turn activates pituitary
gland and which activates adrenal glands

The adrenal glands secrete stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol

Cortisol in particular, which was lying dormant till now is awakened like a
sleeping bear

Cortisol kills neurons in pre frontal cortex which impairs our various
cognitive functions, such as attention, reasoning, judgement and
decision-making

This “amygdala hijacking” drives some people to do things under the

hazy rage of uncontrolled anger that they often regret later, but simply
cannot see at the time they’re trapped in the event.

So basically how to deal with problems like road rage

Fortunately, there is emerging evidence that psychological

interventions hold hope for angry drivers.

cognitive and behavioural interventions like cognitive restructuring, or

reframing of negative events have helped high-anger drivers stay cool.

These interventions include changing anger-evoking cognitive patterns

or faulty thinking like for instance people’s perception about themselves
and about others.

Studies state nearly 95% drivers rank themselves well above other
drivers on the road, in terms of driver knowledge, ability, and safety. Of
course it can’t be statistically correct otherwise no road accidents would
be taking place at all

But what it does is people have a wrong perception about their driving
ability and often suffer from what psychologists term as “It’s the other
driver’s fault” syndrome.

One of the reasons we rant at drivers is to "show them who's boss and
teach them a thing or two." Guest what? You can't. You can't control,
 coerce, or fix other people on how to drive better if you're simply reacting
to their behavior.

 So it’s better to avoid blame and punishment, and be forgiving – we can

accept that negative events happen and that as human beings we all
make mistakes. Maybe they were distracted in that moment, maybe they
are in a hurry, maybe it was just a case of human error, which we’re all
guilty of

We are all in this traffic together and it can be frustrating for us all

 So rather blaming others focus your attention on safe, calm driving,

ensuring you get yourself to your destination safely and without incident.

Another thing We need to change what psychologists term as the

"intentionality bias"

people have an implicit bias to infer intention in all behavior".

These days, it’s hard not to feel like the drivers to your left and right have
become more territorial, more aggressive, and just plain meaner when they
get behind the wheel.

we often jump to conclusions about other drivers and assume they do

things on the road to affect us personally. the psychological root of this
behavior is often something called Hostile Attribution Bias—the belief that
every accidental injury or threat is purposeful, and personal. Due to this people
tend to over-personalize every interaction, and then over-react with immediate
aggression. Which is wrong

we need instead to change our perspective. Not everything that happens

to us on the road (or anywhere in life) is a deliberate action or outcome.

Things happen and folks often regret things that happen "accidentally" or
unintentionally to others.

Road rage, therefore, is nearly always self-generated. It’s all in your

head.
So How can we escape this hall of mirrors? Most simply, we can remind
ourselves that our assumptions about others may be mistaken. We may
recognize that we tend to assume the worst in people, and take
this bias into account. There’s no need to assume evil intent when sheer
stupidity—or momentary confusion or misunderstanding—can account
for the behavior.

Another catalyst of road rage is anonymity.

Numerous psychological studies show people exhibit more aggressive

behavior when their identity is hidden. “You’re in a car, and it’s kind of a
weapon, and you’re in a protected environment, and you think no one’s
going to be able to get to you while you are spilling profanities from your
mouth or showing middle finger

but We all know of road rage stories where people can in fact, get to
you.

We forget we are social beings at the core, vulnerable to and dependent

on interactions with others.

It’s a paradox: in some ways, we are most dependent on others when

we’re on the road, and yet that’s also when we feel most powerful,
independent and egotistical.

The message should be made quite clear Being on the road is a team
sport — it’s not you against all the other drivers.

Many psychological studies also believe that a predisposition to road rage

is cultivated as early as childhood.
 Psychologists often call The back seat of the car as the road rage
nursery. It is from here children learn to become aggressive behind
the wheel later in their own lives by witnessing their parents and
how they respnd to their co-drivers using curses, threats,
retaliation, or violence.

So parents must be made aware whatever they do and however

they may act, it leaves a deep psychological impact on their
children and in this case a detrimental one.

And finally lets come to how do we treat road rage using a Hawaiian
shirt.

Also known as “Free-Range Psychology”

For many people, road rage comes from frustration due to “being stuck”
or “impeded” by other drivers.

There is chronic time urgency in their approach to life

The violation of their sense of personal freedom instantly arouses in

these people negative emotions that escalate in sequence from
frustration to hostility to hatred.

So in order to counter these emotions an experiment was done on a

treatment group. They were simply asked to carry a Hawaiian shirt in the
car, listen to some Hawaiian music CD’s and place coconut-scented
surfboard wax on the dashboard which made the car smell as if you
were on an island

By the way this is also known as Olfactory cuing

This simple intervention which made use of context

dependent memory,”, EMDR techniques, and a Hawaiian shirt gave
excellent results

More than 77% of the people which earlier had associations of irritability
and frustration while driving and who used to snap at even a slight delay
were to everyone’s surprise more laid back, mellow and unhurried in
their approach. They were operating in what psychologists termed as the
‘island time’ and they were unfettered by the daily hustle-bustle of a
typical city life.

In fact the study corroborated that the treatment group averaged a 74

percent drop in aggressive driving behaviors, and showed marked
reductions on measures of psychological distress, a standardized
Driving Anger Scale and Stress Profile.

So the bottom line is

Road Rage is self-generated. It is all in your head.

Road rage is ridiculous, life-threatening, and not something you have to

participate in, ever. Period.

And so thank you very much.