ALT-6 Road Rage
You woke up late, traffic is backed up due to an accident, your stress level is rising like the mercury on a hot day, then finally as traffic starts moving again, a yellow Honda in the lane next to you suddenly swerves and cuts in right in front of you. Your anger ignites as you lay on the horn and glare at the Honda ahead of you, it's not long before your anger will turn into a raging fire, Sound familiar?
Life's fast pace and constant everyday stresses in our work and personal lives can be difficult for everyone to handle at times, but for some people, it's a struggle every day. When you add in the pressures of traffic and dealing with people on the road who aren't all as considerate as we'd like them to be, unfortunately some of these people pass their breaking point, go over the edge, and turn to road rage to express their anger.
Being a calm and laid-back individual myself who isn't bothered by much of anything, I found this concept hard to understand until talking with a friend last week. We were talking about our career choices and what we had thought about doing before we chose our current careers when he said, "I'm lucky I didn't choose trucking as a career because I'd be in jail by now; I couldn't deal with people cutting me off or driving like idiots every day, I'd probably end up hurting someone very badly." Naturally, I was a bit shocked as I'd never really seen him to have anger problems, although I knew that he does have the tendency to let the stresses in his life pile up until they seem to be too much to handle. In thinking more about it, I know that there are many more people out there with similar viewpoints. In actuality, this kind of scared me as I came to the realization of who I was sharing the road with every day, I suddenly felt less safe as a commuter than I ever had before. However, I'm one who likes to do everything I can to help others so I started to think of ways to help those who struggle with dealing with stress and anger to keep from giving in to or turning to road rage.
First of all, it's important to appreciate the privilege of possessing a driver's license and approach driving responsibly each and every time we find ourselves behind the wheel. This is not just important for our own safety, but also for the safety of our passengers, and everyone else on the road at the same time as we are. Part of this responsibility includes knowing when it's a good time for us to be driving and when it is not. Just as you should never get behind the wheel when you've been drinking or using any substance that may alter your judgement or perception, you also shouldn't get behind the wheel when you are feeling a great deal of stress or anger. The responsible thing to do in these situations is to find someone else to drive you where you need to go, wait until you are able to find a way to calm yourself down or talk to someone about what is bothering you, or find alternate transportation, if available, such as the bus, subway, train, or even a taxi. The more stressed out or angry you are when you're driving, the more likely it is for you to give in to using road rage if someone sharing the road with you does something they shouldn't do.
If you regularly have children in your car, keep in mind that they are watching your every move and see you as a role model. Do you want to be a positive or negative role model? Hopefully, you want to demonstrate positive ways of handling difficult situations for your children to see. If so, put mind over matter when you become angered while driving and choose your words and actions carefully, in other words put your children's interests over your own. Retaliating against someone who wrongs you in traffic will not take back what happened, but retaliating will affect the perception of the children you are riding with and contribute to them molding their own ways of dealing with situations that they'll face in the future as adults.
When someone cuts you off in traffic, passes you on the shoulder of the road, or does something else illegal that irritates you and jeopardizes your safety, it is important to stay calm and never, never retaliate. If you retaliate, you are only creating more danger on the road and jeopardizing the safety of even more people. If you struggle to stay calm, you may want to learn some simple and quick self-calming strategies. that you can use when you start to feel indications of rage setting in. The follow three should really help if you apply them right away at the onset of anger:
1) Count down from 10 backwards while focusing on the numbers themselves and the road ahead of you rather than what just happened. This will give you time to think and make it more likely for you to not do anything rash that you will regret later.
2) Focus on the positives of the situation and be thankful that you weren't hurt or involved in a crash because of the incident. When you do this, the negatives will seem less important.
3) Take several deep breaths and count to 3 slowly while exhaling. This may seem extremely simple, but it has the possibility of calming you and keeping you from doing something you know you shouldn't, which is very, very important.
If these strategies aren't working or you realize you are losing control, pull off the road or get off at the next exit and get yourself off the road as soon as possible. Find a safe place to park, calm yourself, and regain control before re-entering traffic, you are doing everyone on the road a favor by doing this.
In conclusion, people make mistakes while driving everyday, both intentionally and unintentionally; this is inevitable. Retaliation in these situations only makes the situation worse, so it is very, very important to find a way to calm yourself so you don't give in to road rage and endanger your own life and the lives of others.
