By Karma Christine Salvato
Aggressive driving is one thing. Road rage is another.
Although there is no national definition for road rage, officials at the Iowa Department of Transportation said that it is “commonly defined as a societal condition where motorists lose their temper in reaction to a traffic disturbance.”
The violent criminal behavior associated with road rage is pervading our streets. In recent years the number of incidents connected with road rage is increasing.
In Oklahoma City this week a pregnant woman was dragged about 100 feet in what authorities call a possible road rage argument. According to an Oct. 16 article by the Associated Press, the unidentified woman apparently angered another motorist who followed her to a day-care center.
Luckily the woman is in good condition, only having suffered scrapes.
But what about next time an incident like this occurs?
Aggressive drivers should get their emotions in check before they end up killing someone from a rambunctious road maneuver. They need to realize the ramifications their actions before it’s too late.
Surely we have all succumbed at some time or another to the rage within. When people act as if they own the road doing whatever they want, whenever they want, it’s sometimes hard not to lose control. Perhaps we too have responded irrationally by acting like we can do what we want as well, with an “I’ll-show- you” attitude.
This gets us nowhere — except helping to perpetuate a dangerous cycle.
Get a grip. Cool off. Pull over to the side of the road if you have to. And stop being a bigger bastard than the person who cut you off as you were changing lanes on the freeway.
Unfortunately, road rage has extended beyond our nation and is indeed a global phenomenon. It is becoming an international epidemic.
“In London, two drivers came to blows over who was going to use the car wash first at a service station in Lightwater” (Sunday Telegraph, July 2, 2000).
“In Israel, a driver was beaten to death after he cut off another driver in traffic” (Los Angeles Times, July 1, 2000).
“In Malaysia, a 30 year-old man who stabbed another man to death over an incident of road rage was sentenced to 10 years in prison.” (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, July 4, 2000).
Perhaps more stringent laws would help us control those waves of anger that tend to morph us into the evil Mr. Hyde. Or maybe they wouldn’t have any effect at all.
Don’t purposely do something to upset another driver. Next time you are about to cut someone off in traffic, display an obscene gesture or act in a way that you might regret, imagine the other driver so enraged that they respond with violence. Now visualize someone you love as the victim of the assault.
We may not be able to completely obliterate road rage — but we can certainly each do our part in regard to creating safer driving conditions.
—Have you been a victim of road rage? E-mail Karma Christine Salvato at prancingpen@aol.com
October 24, 2002