It’s 5:45 P.M., the end of a long day, and I’m glad to be on the way home. Country roads in Vermont are beautiful, and I’m looking forward to a relaxing drive. Then I see it—a drab, ten-year-old sedan, crawling along the road in front of me. The speed limit is a mere thirty-five miles per hour, and this guy’s barely doing thirty. Traffic’s coming the other way, and I’m trapped: I have to brake.
I’m so close I can’t see the road between me and him, and I can feel the rush of adrenaline. “Come on, idiot, move it!” I snarl to myself. After a couple of minutes of this, believe it or not, he starts slowing down. Meanwhile my blood pressure is moving just as quickly in the opposite direction. A right turn’s coming up, we’re down to ten miles per hour, and I’m boiling over with impatience. Just as he starts to turn, he finally switches on his blinker.
I squeeze by, hit the accelerator, and roar past his receding rear end, thinking, “That showed him.” A mile later I turn onto the dirt road where I live, and before I know it I’m home—still hyped from the adrenaline rush from my encounter.
I wasn’t as bad as I might have been—after all, I didn’t yell, curse (not so the driver could hear me anyway), or worse. Still, with the benefit of hindsight, I can count several aggressive behaviors in my one brief encounter: tailgating, unnecessarily abrupt speed change, lost temper, and venting my frustration verbally.
Road rage, aggressive behavior—call it what you will—is dangerous, foolish, and doesn’t get you anywhere. As it turns out, I got home one or two minutes later than I would have otherwise. Big deal. If I had simply taken a few deep breaths and kept calm instead of overreacting, I would have arrived home relaxed and in a good mood rather than tense and fuming.
While you’re never going to be able to control how others act in their cars, you can start changing your own road rage behavior. The first essential step is to recognize that you’re engaging in this type of behavior. Ask yourself these questions:
- Am I screaming at other drivers?
- Am I always right and the other driver always wrong?
- Do I sense that my blood pressure is rising rapidly during a frustrating encounter on the road?
- Do I think of my vehicle as a weapon of revenge?
- Do I make obscene gestures at drivers who offend me?
The next step is to work on developing a different response to situations that ordinarily would get you fuming. Slow down, take a deep breath or three, and yield to the other driver. If not for yourself, then at least do it for the others close to you, for the people in the other car, and for your children who will be drivers themselves one day.
Your goal: Consciously work at being considerate of the people in your car and in the cars around you. That’s how to combat road rage.
Of course, this process takes time. I’m working hard on it, but I still catch myself muttering under my breath or casting the evil eye at a particularly foolish driver. Overall, though, my attitude is getting better. For instance, I no longer do the tailgating trick to force a slow car in front of me to go faster. (It doesn’t work, anyway.)
Yikes!
“My husband tailgates, changes lanes without looking over his shoulder to check the blind spot, and falls asleep at the wheel, saying, “I was NOT asleep,” when we observe him over and over still doing it. (He totaled our car once after telling me this five times.)”
While road rage is the most dramatic example of inconsiderate driving, there are other key behaviors that the thinking man should also keep in mind at all times:
Texting/Cell Phone Use
Just the other day my wife and I were waiting patiently at the first tee on the opening event of couples night at our golf club. Our friend Dan, whom we were playing with, was nowhere in sight and the starter was panicking. Suddenly Dan roared up in his car, jumped out, and hurried to the tee. It turns out he had been at a dead standstill for thirty minutes waiting for an accident to get cleared up. Cause: using a cell phone while driving.
Don’t do it. It’s dangerous, and in more and more states it’s becoming illegal.
The Radio
It was surprising to see the radio as the third most frustrating behavior after aggressive behavior and misuse of cell phones. It’s not just how loud men play the radio that is a problem. The radio, it turns out, is like a weapon. Men seem to use it as a means of keeping the other people in the car silent. Turn it up loud enough and no one can talk.
Disgusting Habits
The car is not a private bathroom. Yet too many of us (men and women, actually) treat it as a place where we can groom and care for our bodies with total freedom. We shave, floss, and comb our hair. But perhaps most revolting was the astonishing number of respondents who complain about men who pick their noses. You’re not alone. Other people really can see you. And in some cases your grooming completely distracts you from driving and makes you a menace on the road. Do yourself and people in the other cars a favor and pick in private.
Use Your Blinkers
It’s amazing how many people fail to use their blinkers properly. If that guy in the ten-year-old sedan had flashed his signal to let me know he was slowing down to turn, maybe I wouldn’t have been up his tailpipe. (I know, it’s still no excuse.)
Signaling all turns well ahead of time is the courteous—and safe—thing to do. The same goes for using your blinker to indicate when you’re changing lanes on the highway. (In most states it’s also required by law.)
“DON’T WORRY—I KNOW HOW TO GET THERE”
It’s a funny thing about men and directions. Our survey results indicate that men really don’t like to ask for directions and women really don’t like getting lost. In fact, a man’s reluctance to ask for directions was the third most common “annoying car behavior” cited by our women respondents, after aggressive driving and speeding.
What the “asking directions” issue is really about is letting go of your male ego and surrendering to the fact that it’s not a loss of face to ask someone for help. In fact, the alternative may leave you looking pretty foolish. As a bonus, you’ll find that if you trust in people, this trust will often be repaid in surprising ways.
To illustrate this point: One year, when my wife and I were on a trip to Italy, we wanted to drive the mountain pass leading to the famed Amalfi Coast. The road up the pass is one of the world’s truly great switchback roads, with magnificent views of Mount Vesuvius and the Italian coast around every turn.
The trouble was, after driving for quite some time we were hopelessly lost in Pagani and still at the base of the mountain. All we knew was that we must’ve missed a turn. Reluctantly, I pulled into a gas station to—you guessed it—ask for directions. The only saving grace for my male ego was the fact that my wife speaks Italian. She got out to ask directions. Whenever a good-looking woman approaches a cluster of Italian men and asks for help, a great discussion ensues. Finally, she came back to the car.
“Follow that man and his son,” she said, pointing to two members of the group who were getting into a car. “They’re going to lead us to the road we’re looking for.” We followed their car through a bewildering number of turns along the back roads of the town. Never in a hundred years would we have found the way on our own. Then the car suddenly pulled to the shoulder, and the man waved us on. “Turn right at the next intersection and just follow that road,” he instructed.
I never got the chance to thank our guide and his son for going so far out of their way to help two Americans lost on the way to Amalfi. If they happen to read this: Grazie mille.
Poetic Justice
For years men have resisted the temptation to ask for directions, especially from their significant other who is sitting patiently in the shotgun seat in possession of the right information. Their egos just wouldn’t let them go there. But guys love their gadgets and bought GPS units by the thousands. What is so remarkable is now they have this beguiling female with a British accent telling them when to make every turn. Go figure…