The term “road rage” was coined as long ago as the late 1980s in America as a result of a series of roadside shootings. It was quickly bastardised to mean anything – from a slightly elevated pulse rate, all the way up to mass murder and genocide. The Wikipedia entry makes amusing reading. After effectively identifying every single human behaviour as “road rage” (if it occurs within 50 metres of a car), it then goes on to suggest that road rage is a medical condition. What a load of crap.
But what made me mention it was this story in a Scottish newspaper. Admiral – a company whose purpose is to make as much money out of motorists as possible for the service it knows they have to have – has done some “research” (i.e. it asked some people), and claims that:
As many as 32% say they are subject to road rage more than once a week, a new survey by insurance company Admiral found.
Of those road rage sufferers, 21% have had full-blown arguments with another motorist, while 36% said experiencing road rage made them drive more aggressively.
Believe me, if someone does something stupidly dangerous in front of me, they are going to get a little bit more than the total understanding and complete acquiescence Admiral appears to be suggesting they should merit. Shaking my head, or – if they can lip read – words along the lines of “clucking bat” are not road rage. Nor is there a medical condition anywhere inside my car – any such condition lies wholly with the prat who caused the alleged “road rage” in the first rage.
Road rage is actually when someone takes their anger to extremes and starts physically assaulting people or property. I’ll go as far as saying that physical intimidation is also road rage – where people aggressively tailgate you or deliberately cut you up, for example. But it isn’t just someone being annoyed at someone else’s stupidity, nor is it necessarily any sort of verbal exchange. It’s when it goes beyond that.
Admiral has basically allowed crap drivers to define what “road rage” actually is, and then they’ve run away with the results. I’d lay odds that of the 32% who have apparently encountered it “more than once a week”, most of them will have completely overlooked the fact that they were the fundamental cause of it to start with. If they learnt how to use roundabouts properly, how to drive at the correct speed, how to get into the lane they need more than 5 metres before they need to make a turn, how to signal (it’s that little lever on your steering wheel), how to queue for the next available pump, and so on, there’d be a whole lot less “road rage” around. At let’s not forget that many of them behave the way they do on purpose (especially if they’re Audi owners).
What should change first? The people who drive badly, or the people who they annoy by doing so?