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We’re beeping mad.
As a society of drivers constantly on the go, we seemingly simmer while behind the wheel, just waiting to unleash our fury at other motorists by sounding our horns, screaming harsh words and stabbing fingers upward in the most unfriendly of signals.
Forget baseball. Road rage appears to be America’s national pastime, judging from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety’s recently released report.
About 80 percent of drivers who participated in AAA’s survey during 2014 said they had lost their cool and let it show at least once in the prior year, most often by tailgating. Yelling and honking the horn also were common outlets for motorists’ frustrations, according to last week’s report.
A small fraction of the survey’s approximately 2,700 respondents indicated they exited their vehicles to confront another driver, or even purposefully bumped or rammed another car. Extrapolate those survey results across an entire nation of mobile people, however, and it’s alarming how many hotheads (6 million, 7 million or more?) potentially travel the highways and byways.
Bad behavior on the roadway has implications for everyone. “What people don’t realize is this is a big safety issue,” said Jana Tidwell, manager of Public and Government Affairs for AAA Mid-Atlantic.
Tailgating, speeding and other aggressive maneuvers can result in crashes, including fatal ones. Assaults also occur. For those and other reasons, preventing road rage is in the best interest of insurance companies, law enforcement members and the traveling public.
The AAA Foundation offers safety tips in a brochure titled “Road Rage: How to Avoid Aggressive Driving.” For example, if you find yourself threatened by an aggressive driver and safely can place a phone call, dial 911. Don’t go home, the brochure suggests. Instead, drive to a location such as a busy shopping center, convenience store, police station or hospital.
Advice also can be found online for the rage-prone and other people who want to change their ways, staying in the driver’s seat of their emotions.
For instance, Edmunds.com, the car-shopping service, offers “Top 10 Tips to Prevent Road Rage.” At No. 3 on the list is this truism: “Your car is not a therapist.” “If your boss or your spouse left you steaming, take care not to use driving as a way to blow off steam,” according to Edmunds’ suggestions.
Its advice further reminds drivers not to take things so personally. Perhaps the fellow motorist whose vehicle erratically moved into your lane was distracted by a child’s yell or a buzzing insect. Maybe it was purely a lapse of attention. Are any of those “offenses” worthy of a confrontation? A crash? Not by a long shot.
Try tolerance.
It can go miles toward eliminating unnecessary flareups, allowing each of us to get to our destinations in a safer manner – and in a better mood.