How to Avoid Road
Rage
By this time, most people have either experienced, or heard
of road rage, that special level of insanity that makes drivers want to
literally kill other drivers for cutting them off, not going fast enough, or
even very simple things like a driver forgetting to turn their turn signal off. It seems to be most
prevalent in larger cities, but if your community has cars and at least some
asphalt, it can happen where you live. Here is how to avoid it in yourself, and
avoid it in others.
First off, let’s look at the cause of road rage. Road rage
is simply the result of someone having a bit too much on their plate, and
exploding at the first opportunity. Just like most fights between couples, the
supposed cause of the road rage incident is very rarely the real cause. It
might be that a driver up ahead is going too slowly for the road rager’s liking, and that person loses it, but that is
not usually the real reason that person loses control. We all face pressures in
our lives: people with road rage simply have poorer coping skills to deal with
those pressures, or they don’t know how to deal with the pressures at all, and
as a result, they explode on the road.
So how do you avoid road rage in yourself? This is actually
the easier of the two to explain. To avoid road rage, you need to know how you
are feeling. And by saying that, I don’t
mean whether or not you have caught a sniffle or if your knee hurts. I mean how
are you feeling emotionally? To figure this out, I recommend asking yourself
just that question: How do I feel today? Ask it, and then wait a bit for the
result. Your body is amazingly good at letting you know what’s going on with
it. Unfortunately, few people listen to what their bodies have to say. But if
you ask that question and take a minute and see how you feel afterwards, you’ll
have most of the information you need to know to figure out your emotional state.
If you notice that you’re tense. If you notice that you’re stressed, if you
notice that you feel under enormous pressure, you have all the components of a
classic road rager. But forewarned is forearmed as the old saying goes, so
knowing that you have the components of losing control before you start can aid
you in not losing control. This is going to sound very out there, but you need
to be mindful of where you are and how you are feeling. All that means is that
you monitor your emotions, and take steps to control them as much as possible.
If you know that taking the freeway makes you nuts, and you can take sides
streets instead, take side streets. If you know that drinking soda makes you
tend to get angry, give it up. (And I can attest to that being a problem I had.
I gave up all sodas, and my temper evened out in a way that blew my mind. If
you find yourself inexplicably angry, give up the sodas and the caffeine as
much as possible, it will help). As much as possible, always try to know what
emotions you’re feeling. And if you know you are feeling really strong
emotions, and are very stressed, maybe today would be a good day to not drive.
Only you know your emotional state, but if you know you get so worked up when
things don’t go the way you think they should, and you are that worked up
before you drive, then you should not drive that day, even if it means making
your boss mad and staying home. A day
without pay is better than a jail cell for hurting someone because you got so
mad you lost control of yourself.
Another very important aspect of fighting anger is the idea
of should or woulds. What his means is that a road rager sees the world in
those terms. It goes something like this: “Traffic should be going faster this
time of day. If only this bozo would move over, I could get to work on time. I
should get green lights this time of day, but nothing ever works for me. If you
would learn how to use a Stop Sign, we wouldn’t be here all day.” The list goes
on and on, but should and woulds are indicative of a very rigid mindset, ruled
by an expectation of order which is absolutely foreign to the real world. Or in
English, the world doesn’t work the way we think it should or would. It works
the way it does, and as people, we need to adjust to that. Once a person
eliminates as much as possible the shoulds and woulds from their mind, stress
goes away because that person is not trying to force the world to fit into the
box he or she thinks it should. That person is just going with the flow, and
not trying to make anything happen. This lowers stress levels immensely, and
makes driving, and life, much better.
To eliminate woulds and shoulds, monitor your self-talk
(self talk is that steady stream of talking that we all have going on in our
head. When you pay attention to it, if you notice a lot of would or should
statements (like the ones I used above), try to eliminate them). You do this by
asking why should this be that way, or what right do I have to judge what would
happen if this person would do this or that? By doing that, you lessen the
power of the should or would statement because you bring the illogical nature of that statement
out into the open where your brain can recognize it for the foolishness it is,
and you can stop following it.
Now we switch gears and talk about other people locked in
the road rage loop. These people are stressed and view the world through a
narrow mindset of woulds and shoulds. The first thing you need to do is to find
them. If you are paying attention, it isn’t actually that hard. road ragers are
not good drivers: they tailgate, they speed, they make very unsafe maneuvers.
They are your classic jerk drivers. When you see one, my advice is to not hold
your ground. Get away from them as quickly as you can. If you’ve had a person
tailgating you for a mile or so, try and get over, or speed up or slow up
enough to make a space to the side so the tailgater can pass you. If you do
this, and the tailgater doesn’t pass you and go on down the road, or
antagonizes you by pulling up next to you and making threatening gestures, get
away from this person as soon as possible. I would suggest getting off the road
as quickly as you can. Road ragers tend to be opportunists. They will often go after the
closest targets they can, so if you are not around to be a target, you will be
safe (or as safe as you can be with those kinds of people around). Get away
from the road rager, and then call the Police or Highway Patrol and tell them
about the person. Do this even if you don’t have a license plate for them. If
you give them the details about the road you were on, there are often police or
patrolmen who drive those roads all the time, and one is likely on the road you
are on and can check the road rager out.
One thing you don’t want to do is add fuel to the fire by
returning gestures. I know how tough it is to not return a middle finger or not curse at someone when they do the same to you. There is just something
about a middle finger that makes us all go nuts and make us all immediately
want to become movie tough guys and get even. But think about it: you already
are dealing with a deranged person (and that’s not just a knock on road ragers.
Their anger has made them deranged. They don’t see it, but it’s true). If you
flip the road rager off or curse at them after they have done so to you, you
will just incite them more. You will be adding a gallon of gasoline to the open
flame that is their rage, and we all know what happens when gasoline and an
open flame come together. Don’t add fuel. Ignore the road rager as much as possible when they are saying or doing things to try and get a reaction out of you, and get away
from he or she as soon as possible.
Dealing with road rage is one of the most uncomfortable and
scariest things we deal with on the roads today. To recap:
Road Rage occurs
because people are over stressed and either have bad coping skills, or don’t have any skills at
all to deal with their anger. As a result, these people are at the mercy of
their anger, and it
rules them in a very real way.
We looked at two
things in this article: How to spot Road Rage in yourself, and how to spot it
in other drivers.
When it comes to identifying it in yourself, you have to figure out what emotional state you’re in,
and whether or not you feel stressed or overwhelmed. If you do, you are likely
a target to potentially
commit Road Rage
Another thing we
looked at was the idea of woulds and shoulds, and how messages like the
world should be
this way or my life would be better if you only did this are attempts to force the world to do
what we want. Since the world doesn’t do what we say, we can become angry, and since this is
anger without any sort of logic, it can turn into Road Rage
You spot Road Rage
in other drivers by looking for drivers who drive aggressively and unsafely. These are your
classic jerk drivers, drivers who tailgate, insult other drivers, and do their
best to make others
uncomfortable to get them to do what they want. Your best bet when dealing with one of these
drivers is to get away from them, then call the police and tell them where they are.
Do not
return middle fingers or curse at Road Ragers. This just pours gasoline on an
open flame.
Above all, stay safe, stay vigilant, and watch our not only
for yourself as a driver, but other drivers out there. Until next time…
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