Why do some normally pleasant and civil people

[wildwood]

turn into monsters when they sit behind the steering wheel of the car. It is not just a testosterone thing as my usually patient and courteous daughter turns into an unpleasant impatient road ogre. Someone only has to move into her lane way in front of her with plenty of room and she hangs on the horn as if she was dangerously cut off. With two lanes merging into one I sink below the dashboard as I don't want to see; she won't even relent to a bus or truck. I've now refused to go in a car with her and she can't understand why.

[alexanderd]

May I suggest she takes an anger-management course? sounds to me as if she is a danger on the road

[society]

Wildwood, people like you've described above are always in a rush to go nowhere.

[Huderon]

Piet Hein wrote quite a lot of short verses about verious things ... this one might be appropriate for her (just change the pronoun)

MORE HASTE --
Inscription for a monument at the crossroads.

Here lies, extinguished in his prime,
a victim of modernity:
but yesterday he hadn't the time --
and now he has eternity.

[andy-hughes]

It's connected to the psychological isolation we feel inside our cars.

They become our own little world, and some of us feel more aggressive about potential space infringement than others.

Add to that, the fact that you can rant and rave from the isolation of your car, and no-one can hear you, which encourages you to do it more. Rest assured, if the other driver could hear you, and you hear him, people would be a lot less keen to sound off.

A few summers ago, i was sitting in queuing traffic for about twenty minutes - everyone had windows down because of the heat. A skinny youth in an ancient Capri at the kerbside and trying to get into the traffice queue, shouted to the driver of the car at his side "Hey, are you going to move that heap of s*+t!"

The driver got out of his car, and when fullly visible, as opposed to sitting down, he turned out to he about six foot tall, and built like a Marine. He strolled over to the Capri, leaned down until his face was leve with the skinny youth with the big mouth and quiety said "When the queue moves, I will move, and when I move, you can join the queue and until then you are going to sit there and be quiet. OK?"

The youth agreed with his voice trembling, the large guy got back in his car, and we all resumed queuing.

The moral? The other guy you are shouting at may be a lot bigger that you - so don't shout at strangers, it's not a good move!

[jovian]

andy,I love that story, it is on a par with a tale told in Birmingham a few years ago, a young man was walking through an underpass in the city centre when he was jumped by 3 guys, the 3 all ended up in hospital, what they didn't know but soon found out was he was a commando home on leave. Doesn't it warm the cockles of your heart?.

[jno]

the thing is, andy... in a car we're all the same size. Or rather, the dwarf in a 4x4 is bigger than a wrestler in a Mini. The road changes our proportions.


As for road rage, part of it is a good thing. It suggests the driver is concentrating. The laid-back ones who sit and chat as they drive (maybe even on the phone) scare me more.

There must be a happy medium, though, where you pay attention to the road without actually trying to rule it.