Definition: Road rage is aggressive or angry behavior exhibited by motorists. These behaviors include rude and verbal insults, yelling, physical threats, or dangerous driving methods targeted at other drivers, pedestrians or cyclists in an effort to intimidate or release frustration.
Aggressive driving is not the same as road rage, but it can lead to road rage. I think those of us who are drivers have all seen aggressive drivers. They are frightening, but their actions don’t seemed to be directed at you. They are dangerous to everyone on the road and near the road.
Road rage is different. It is coming at you. I know rage. For some years I remembered two episodes of road rage where I was the target. For some reason, like memory loss, aging, time, whatever, I have lost one of the incidents. In the other one, I can recall vivid details and it is still chilling.
It happened one day when I was driving home from seminary classes, about a 30 mile drive. I was driving on U.S. 33 and stopped where U.S. 6 and 33 run east together for five to seven miles. At the stop I looked both ways and sensed that it was okay for me to turn left to go east.
I misjudged the speed of a car coming from the west. Soon after turning I realized that the car was right on my rear. Honking, flashing lights, weaving back and forth. I was surprised and frightened. The amygdala, that small organ in the center of the brain, was going crazy with stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, were pumping. My heart rate was way up. The driver was on my tail and would not let up. For several miles we were bumper-to-bumper.
I tried to think of what I could do when I sensed the rage. I could see a carload of guys. Maybe they were just out of work from the Mallard RV factory where I used to work. Hells bells, what did it matter. This old slow-driving dude had pulled out in front of them and they were bent on making me pay.
In a mile or so I planned to turn and follow Highway 33 south where it left Highway 6. Then I would be a few miles from home. I thought they would probably follow me. I was afraid. A few hundred yards before the intersection the car roared around me and slammed on the brakes. The doors opened and several guys jumped out. I am not a fighter. In that moment I became a Grand Prix driver and executed a quick turn across the dividing line, I floored it up to the stop light and turned right on 33 and drove like a bat out of hell.
I kept checking my rearview mirror for the rage car. I fully expected them to follow me right up to my front door. That didn’t happen, but I was shaken. I felt I had been violated. It took days before the incident left my body. I learned to be as totally aware as possible before making turns onto highways that didn’t have stop signs or signals.
January will mark a year of tales from an Average and Ordinary life. Subscriber numbers have grown with the expected Substack percentage of 10% being paid subscribers. That is great! Thank you! Paid subscribers have access to the archive all the weekly posts. In addition I will be starting a new section of Golden Mean — Stoicism Redux. This weekly feature will introduce you to modern Stoic writers as they capture the goodness of ancient Stoicism. My personal stories will continue until I run out of gas. At that point I may have to get creative and write real stories, not vaguely remembered tales.
A few AAA road rage stats:
The most common types of road rage are tailgating, yelling or honking at another vehicle, and are a factor in more than half of all fatal crashes.(AAA)
In a seven-year period, road rage incidents caused 218 murders and 12,610 injuries.(AAA)
That’s about 30 deaths and 1,800 injuries per year caused by road rage.(AAA)