This has to be one of the biggest non-stories you could ever have.
The AA has done a poll. Now, it isn’t clear if it is the AA who have concluded this, or if it is the media trying to make a boring story slightly less boring, but…
Parents are passing on road rage habits to their learner-driver children…
What misleading clap-trap! How do they pass it on? In their wills? Do they “bequeath” the skill to their offspring?
Everyone knows that children pick up habits and behaviours from people around them as they grow up – parents, friends, TV. Everything. Not just road rage, and not just when it comes to driving.
EVERYTHING.
And the behaviour is cultural. You go near one of those estates where they use the garden instead of a dustbin and you’ll see ten times more of this behaviour. Conversely, stop out side a school and you’ll see a dramatic increase in the CAUSE of such behaviour as diminuitive women in illegally- (and badly) parked BMW X3s and X5s try to mow down other people’s kids once they’ve picked up their own.
And another thing: why this crusade against road rage, as if someone who gets annoyed at morons trying to kill them is a child molester or something?
It is perfectly natural to get angry with people who cut you up and force you to brake or swerve.
The campaign should be against the morons – not against the rest of us.
EDIT 14/3/2011: Just adding this next bit later in the day – the same story is covered in Autoblog, but with considerably more commonsense and less childish, sensationalist editorial spin.
Speeding, tailgating, driving one-handed and a tendency for road rage are among the top 10 faults many learners copy from their mother and father.
The original AA survery is still superficial – but at least it isn’t saying what the original source suggested it was.