Tweet

Road Rage--Dangerous Anger Behind the Wheel

Guest post by: Barbara Garro

Article Overview: Anger behind the wheel of a car or truck that weighs thousands of pounds can get you into a war with other vehicles that weigh thousands of pounds and one day you could lose your life.

Road Rage--Dangerous Anger Behind the Wheel

Title: Dangerous Anger Behind the Wheel



You and your drivers have a tremendous amount of control when it comes to safety behind the wheel. Yes, there are nuts out there. Yes, you and your drivers will meet them on the road. But, you and your drivers have the opportunity to make safe choices more than 95% of the time.

Remember, the bigger the vehicle, the more dangerous all types of aggressive driving becomes. You’ve seen the signs on tractor-trailers, How’s my driving? with an 800-number to call to report bad driving.

Consider the increased risk when you run a business where your employees drive for a living, spending entire shifts on the road, where hundreds of cases of road rage accidents and injuries take place every year, according to AAA Foundation.

While aggressive drivers are not always angry, drivers exhibiting road rage are always aggressive and they are out to hurt others. Beginning in the late1980s, levels of stress behind the wheel became news when drivers began shooting at each other on California roadways.

You are truly lucky if you have never been the victim of road rage. Dr.Driving.org says 56% of men and 44% of women surveyed said they experienced rage behind the wheel every day.

Early in the 1990’s, I got targeted by an angry driver when I hit my brakes to get the tail-gating driver to back off on a 30 mph city road two blocks from my office. Was he angry while he was tail-gating me or just in a hurry? Not smart, my decision to react by hitting my brakes to get him to back off. He retaliated by bumping me in the rear three times before I could escape out of harm’s way.

Drivers attacking drivers on roadways, in parking lots and at intersections has escalated. You may be thinking there have to be laws against this. Fourteen states have enacted aggressive driving laws. In Colorado, a driver was convicted of murder for causing two deaths in November 2005. That being said, law enforcement officers can’t always define road-rage behaviors after an accident, especially when particular driving behaviors behind the wheel are not defined, like tail gating, following too closely. How close is too close and illegal?

Defensive driving says keep two car lengths behind the vehicle in front of you. Well, in heavy traffic, you could have most of the vehicles in the other lanes cutting in front of you. This could be why the law doesn’t define it widely.

These actions and non-actions are known to fuel road rage behavior—

Ø Taking Bad Driving Personally: Stress builds as other drivers block intersections, drive below the speed limit, cut in too close, speed through yellow lights, and put on their turn signals after they stop at a light in front of your vehicle

Ø Justifying Aggressive Driving Behaviors: You’re in a hurry, impatient. Traffic is heavier than you expected. You’re afraid you’re going to be late. You lean on your horn and shine your high beams at slower drivers, speed and weave to go further faster, change lanes without taking the time to signal, maybe even run a red light

Ø Venting Behind the Wheel: The road belongs to all drivers, not just you. Judging other drivers with your horn, lewd hand gestures and language, throwing things at other cars escalates everyone’s stress levels

Ø Driving When Emotionally Unstable: Fresh from a bad situation, argument, disappointment, behind the wheel is unsafe for you and others

Ø Not Paying 100% Attention to Driving: Looking for addresses, reading maps, eating, drinking, writing, texting, talking on cell phones, having serious discussions with others as you drive that can cause you to have to slam on your brakes. The inattention may make you go through stop signs and lights, drive the wrong way onto one-way streets, even drive on the wrong side of the highway

Ø Normally Nice People Turning Nasty Behind the Wheel: Their personalities turn critical, judgmental and often aggressive as soon as they feel powerful behind the anonymous cover of their cars

Most Dangerous Road Rage Behaviors While in Vehicles:

Ø Chasing

Ø Screaming and threats

Ø Sudden acceleration, braking, cutting vehicles off, hitting vehicles

Ø Intentionally causing a collision

Ø Throwing things at other vehicles and shooting firearms

What Never to Do When Facing Road Rage--

• Make eye contact
• Retaliate in any way to fuel the rage
• Leave your vehicle if invited to a physical confrontation
• Be afraid to call 911 to report your situation

What to Do to Decrease Your Chances of Road Rage Reactions:

• Be awake and alert, know where you are going, how to get there before you go, and how long it should take to give yourself the best advantages when driving. (Read everything about new medications, prescription or over-the-counter. If they have a driving warning, take the time to learn how you’ll react before you put yourself behind the wheel)
• Make safe, courteous driving your top priority behind the wheel, each time, every time
• Force yourself to watch for road signs, speed limits, and lights and signal your intentions each time, every time
• Listen to relaxing music and belly breathe. (Angry talk show hosts and angry music will fuel your aggression behind the wheel)
• Cut other drivers a break
• Get your vehicle quickly out of the way of aggressive drivers
• Calm yourself down by remembering how much aggravation and time every accident causes

Driving with these seven things in mind will keep you out of trouble. I miss the mark more often than I would like. Still, these behaviors are uppermost in my mind behind the wheel.

One last thing: You Pennsylvanians may know the Schuylkill Expressway, nicknamed the Sure-kill Expressway, just outside of Philadelphia. When I was the Risk Manager for Comcast Corporation in the 1980s, I commuted to work every day on that road and back and forth to meetings. No exaggeration, an accident could keep you stuck for many hours. On my way to a meeting, traffic was heavy. The slower I went, the madder I got. At one point, I was so angry, my head felt hot enough to boil water. I thought, Who is going to want to meet with stressed-out, angry me? I made a vow right then, that I would never, ever get angry behind the wheel again. And, I have kept that vow. Yes, I will occasionally blow my horn. Yes, I will sometimes make sure that car after car does not cut in front of me in heavy traffic. But, I do not allow myself to get angry. That was 25 years ago and counting.

I believe that vow has kept me out of car accidents.

If driving still stresses you out, are you willing to make that vow and keep it to be as safe behind the wheel as self-control allows?

Related Articles
  Assess – Are You a Victim or a Victor?
  The Third Deadly Workplace Sin: Anger
  Build a Cage and the Bird will Come
  Fear of Anger - Yours and Others
  Balance Yourself With Your Life Wheel
  Anger Rising
  Is Anger Now a Medical Issue?
  EQ Leadership Vital Sign The Power of Anger
  Anger – The Hardest Employee Performance Emotion For Managers To Deal With
  How To Drive Your Business
  The Wheel of Life
  Coaching Your Business To The Next Level Series Part 8 Work Life Balance
  Talent Development and The Wheel of Becoming
  Anger Management
  Leadership Tips: How to Spot Many Forms of Anger
  Google Wonder Wheel - A Powerful Keyword Discovery Tool That Assists Marketers
  Stuck in a Rut?
  Cruising with no driver?
  Are You Suffering From Sales Rage?
  Anger Power

Article Tags: Anger Behind the Wheel, Controlling Anger on the Road, Road Rage



Related Forum Posts
Re: I call my invention "The Wheel" but so far I've been unable - Words words words The problem our friend has here is that he thought he was inventing a Wheel, when in reality he has a designed a perfectly good junction for incoming and outgoing pipes used all over the world - most often made of brinks and concrete in the same shape Isn't innovation grate, sorry great!
Re: Website Ranking #1 in all Search Engines - It's worth taking the time to build a 3 blog network for traffic. Using separate domains and hosting, you can get a lot of free traffic this way. You can also use free WordPress sites and Google Blogger sites. You can also use Google Wonder Wheel to expand the topic areas around your niche...
Re: Rumor Has It! - Thanks been there since the late 70's when the market was IBM and Victor. Road the Victor while IBM went though 286's and 386's. Do a lot of cannibalization to keep my Victors going A year ago lost my workstation's hard drive and more recently my operating system due to lightning strikes. Have bought a few computers and modems due to lightning. Take me about a week to recover a hard-drive Lessons learned: regularly backup your programs and data When I grow up I hope to get a what u call it "Power Interuptus Device"
Re: Using Craigslist SEO to Promote Your Website - To build a Link Wheel you need to join several social sites such as squidoo, blogger, wordpress, livejournal, hubpages, etc... around 10 or so should be sufficient. Then, you build one site such as Hubpages and link it back to your main website. Then you build a second site on say Blogger and link it to your Hub that you built, and to your main website. Then you build another site and link it to your last site and to your main website. Just keep repeating this until all sites are linked to each other one-by-one. When you are done each site will be linking to only the site before it and back to your main website. These can work really well. I've only recently gotten started using them but so far I have seen good results. Don't expect just one link wheel to skyrocket your rankings, especially in a competitive niche. However, they are a good thing to include in an overall link building campaign.
Re: Who inspired you to start? - Hi Evan, I was inspired by Mr. Bill Gates ever since I was a student learning Computers. But I was motivated for Internet as my Business, when I read his book "The Road Ahead" in 1995. It was in this book that Gates laid out his vision of an interconnected world built around the Internet. Based on the premise that life will be transformed by the convergence of inexpensive computing and inexpensive communications, Gates drew from his experience at the center of the personal computer revolution to give insights on the growth, evolution and impact of technology. I had always looked up to Bill Gates as my idol. When I read this book, it made me more focussed on Microsoft and Internet, The Internet was one of the upcoming things in this time. So I took over to the Internet as my primary business. Regards,


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Basic Operating Question (BOQ) for Empowerment

Understanding Influence

Top 5 Qualities in an Outsourcing Company

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.