I was honestly speechless. I didn't quite know how to react. This concerned citizen was obviously upset that I had checked my voicemail while at the wheel of my vehicle, and decided to scold me for the sake of upstanding drivers everywhere. I didn't break any laws, or drive in any reckless manner, however this gentleman decided it would be appropriate to teach me a lesson by weaving his car from side to side aggressively, nearly sideswiping my vehicle, and taking his hands off his own steering wheel to make obscene gestures at me. Clearly this man was not well, and I feared that if I reacted inappropriately his head would begin to twist around 360 degrees and spew green pea soup in my direction (the power of Christ compels you!). My anger faded and turned to awe and disgust. To my better judgment I nodded in agreement and sarcastically replied "OK!" with a reassuring thumbs up! I pulled away, hoping the guy wouldn't follow me.

"Fear of (and participation in) aggressive driving has grown so much" that in a recent poll conducted by AAA, D.C. area residents are shown to be more concerned about aggressive drivers than drunk drivers.[2] With these sorts of crazies on the street in this area, I can understand why.

Ok, ok, I shouldn't entirely shift the blame here. I'm guilty as well, of course. I probably shouldn't have been operating my cellular phone while behind the wheel. But I must wonder, what turns a regularly meek person into a vicious monster on the road?

In much of life, people feel they don't have full control of their destiny. But a car—unlike, say, a career or a spouse—responds reliably to one's wish. In automobiles, we have an increased, but false, sense of invincibility. Other drivers become dehumanized, mere appendages to a competing machine. "You have the illusion you're alone and master, dislocated from other drivers," says road rage expert Dr. Leon James, Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii.[3]

Yes, there is something about being at the wheel of a 3,000-lb speed machine that makes one feel like the road is a battleground; a space to be conquered. One is cocooned inside an impregnable metal shell, divided from the world by thick insulation, plush seats, and surround-sound speakers blaring the latest Jay-Z tune, or Garth Brooks (depending on your taste of course).

But am I really an aggressive driver? Do I really have road rage? Dr. Leon James outlines some components of aggressive driving that I am guilty of: "Mentally condemning other drivers"; "verbally denigrating other drivers to a passenger in your vehicle"; "speeding past another car or revving the engine in protest"; "tailgating to pressure a driver to go faster of get out of the way"; "pursuing another car in chase because of a provocation or insult"; among other embarrassing acts of rage.[4]

It's true. When I'm in my vehicle, I often tend to feel like my driving ability is perfect, and others are, well ... less than perfect. After all, I've never been in a car accident before; at least not one that I caused. In the last year or so, two separate but equally inept drivers rear-ended my car. Once this summer it was the Ethiopian immigrant who ripped off part of my rear bumper while I was trying to make a right hand turn at an intersection downtown (he had no insurance, and tried his very best to convince me in his broken English that he had not caused any damage to my vehicle, even though part of my bumper was sitting on the pavement). Then there was the Eminem-look-alike highschooler homeboy who plowed into the back of my Jeep while we both waited at a red light! Never before had I come so close to committing murder. I got out of my car, walked up to his window, and demanded an explanation (not so nicely this time) as to why he ran into the back of my car from a full stop! All he could do was quiver with fright (his first accident, and first week with a driver's license too I would imagine) and told me his "foot slipped and hit the gas by accident." I nearly wrung his neck with his own phat gold homey-chain. In retrospect, it sort of frightens me how I might react the next time somebody slams into the back of my car.

So could I really be a "lethally inclined aggressive driver" after all? I decided to go to the AAA website again and take their "Are YOU an Aggressive Driver?" quiz.[5] On a scale of "never," "sometimes," "often," and "always" the quiz asks such incriminating questions as: "Do you: get angry at slow drivers?" "Do you: get angry at tailgaters?" "Do you: challenge other drivers?" "Do you: get impatient waiting for parking space?" "Do you: "punish" bad drivers?" I scored a 34 out of a possible 120. The current average score for this online quiz is 30. I guess it's official. I am an aggressive driver! The online computer brain even told me I needed to improve my tendency toward "anger" and "punishing" while on the road. Screw that! What anger?

If speeding, as Dr. Leon James is convinced, is a component of aggressive driving, then I am more than guilty.[6] Last week on Thanksgiving Day I received, as a special gift from the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police, two "Moving Violation Notice[s] of Infraction." A hidden camera had caught me speeding on two separate occasions, on the same road I use every day to commute to the GWU campus, sometime in early October.

It was such a pleasant surprise on the morning of Turkey Day, with the delicious aroma of homemade gravy and stuffing hanging in the air, to receive a veritable photo album of my vehicle from all angles, accompanied by fines adding up to nearly $200. The District police department waited an entire month from the dates they had taken the photographs to send me notices of my "violations." This means that I've probably still got a handful of tickets heading my way as I type. There was a four-week period of time during which DCPD probably snapped photos of my car on a daily basis while I was completely oblivious to their underhanded plot. Bastards! I guess DCPD is so afraid of aggressive drivers that they've employed automated android cameras to do their work for them. I think I'm going to send them Polaroid photos of the money I owe. I wonder how they'd like that.

Maybe I should just take a deep breath here. It's not so bad. It's actually a good thing that DCPD is at least trying to curb dangerous speeding on this city's major arteries, right? But why do they have to send impersonal remote spy drones out to do the job? I can't drive anymore without wondering if R2-D2 is hiding behind that next row of bushes on the side of the road, chirping with glee as he catches my boxy Jeep careening down the road at high velocity. I guess I miss the days when an actual human police officer would make the effort to chase you down and pull you over. I've really got no affection for being scolded by pretentious lawmen asking painfully redundant and condescending questions (like the classic "do you know how fast you were going back there son?"), but at least there is a bit of excitement in the interaction. Getting a "Notice of Infraction" in the mail about a month later just isn't the same.

I guess that's the point though: there's no room for humanity on the road these days. Nobody wants to interact on a civilized personal level anymore. Common courtesy is a thing of the past. Perhaps I'm not really an "aggressive driver," but a "humanist driver." When I am nearly run off the road by a kamikaze in a speeding roadster, I want to ask that driver why he wants to take me to a burning grave with him. When another driver wants to begin a dispute with me about when it's appropriate to use a cellular phone in a car, I'd like to get more out of the engagement than demolition derby driving tactics, primitive sign language, and offensive gestures. When another driver smashes into the back of my vehicle for no apparent reason, I'd like to ask him, face to face, why he's such a moron. Is all this too much to ask?

The synthetic bubbles that are our cars and trucks do have a way of dividing us and diminishing our humanity, but I'll admit, testosterone-fueled aggression is definitely not the ideal way to foster healthy communication among drivers on the road ... or anywhere for that matter. "Road rage" incident statistics do seem to be rising at an alarming rate, and I'd rather everybody just tone down their furiously self-righteous driving attitudes a bit (including myself, God forbid) for the sake of the common good.

So the next time somebody barrels past my car waving their middle finger at me for whatever reason, I'll simply smile and be comforted by the thought that in about a month or so they will undoubtedly receive a hefty bill from the D.C. Metropolitan Police in their mailbox. Until then I'll work on remaining tranquil behind the wheel, and make sure to slow down when the light at the intersection turns yellow.

References

1. Road rage (USA). Jason Vest, Warren Cohen, and Mike Tharp. U.S. News and World Report, June 2, 1997. Reproduced with permission on Drivers.com.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. The Symptoms of Road Rage. Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Infrastructure, US House of Representatives (Washington, DC), July 17, 1997. Testimony by Dr. Leon James, Professor of Traffic Psychology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu.

5. Are you an aggressive driver? AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety webpage.

6. cf. The Symptoms of Road Rage.

Copyright © Liam Finn 2003