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http://www.guardian.co.uk/transport/Sto ... 30,00.html

Whatever happened to ... road rage?

Iain Hollingshead
Saturday December 31, 2005

We British might have a reputation as a mild-mannered race - always willing to form a queue and quick to apologise when someone treads on our toes - but it sometimes seems as if a collective red mist of madness descends whenever we climb into our foreign-made cars. The latest RAC survey has found that 80% of motorists have been victims of so-called "road rage" in the past year. Worldwide, only South Africa is thought to be worse than the UK.

The term "road rage" originated in America in the late 1980s although it had been identified as a phenomenon - if not a buzzword - in reports on aggressive driving back in the 1960s. In 1994 we were first told that it was "sweeping the country" this side of the Atlantic. The murder of 21-year-old Stephen Cameron on an M25 sliproad in 1996 triggered significant media interest in the issue. OJ Simpson, Jeremy Guscott have both been cleared and Mike Tyson convicted in road rage trials.

At its most minor, road rage constitutes a rude hand gesture, a honk of the horn or a flash of the lights. At the other end of the spectrum it involves full-blown confrontation, often with tragic consequences.

Newspaper reports over the last two years reveal that dozens of people have been stabbed - sometimes fatally - following altercations at the side of the road.

One poll found that 30% of men carried some form of "security" item with them in the car - including knives, repellent sprays and crowbars. In October 2003 a pizza delivery driver in Edinburgh was attacked with a hammer. In Watford a month later, a motorist had ammonia thrown in his face. And in September this year, a Surrey chef reacted to being "cut up" on the road by brandishing a meat cleaver. The UK's first specialised road rage insurance was launched by Acumen in June 2004.

These, of course, are the more sensational incidents, but there appears to be a swelling undertone of aggression on the country's crowded roads. Lollipop ladies are facing recruitment problems; the ones that remain are persuaded to go on self-defence classes. Roadworks intended to calm traffic in a Cotswold village had to be abandoned in May this year because workmen felt too intimidated by passing drivers.

Whilst tailgating and parking disputes are identified as short-term "trigger" causes of road rage, there are clearly some longer-term factors at play. A report in November last year found that commuters often experience greater stress levels than fighter pilots going into battle or riot police.

There is also a problem - which is particularly prevalent among male drivers - of cars being viewed as an ego extension (or an extension of something more tangible, according to some wags). The sense of private, indestructible space which modern cars attempt to create is often more public and more fragile than thought.

On the other hand, the RAC and the Home Office both believe that road rage is blown out of proportion by the media (viz computer rage, air rage, shopping rage, etc). Although no official figures exist, it doesn't appear to have got much worse in recent years. Incidents, shocking though they may be, are fairly isolated.

Perhaps the best piece of advice comes from the quirky JCB Song which made number two in this year's Christmas charts. The five-year-old narrator sings of "holding up the bypass" while the "procession of cars stuck behind are getting all impatient and angry". Fortunately, his JCB-driving dad does the sensible thing and "pulls over to let cars past" - a wise course of action and infinitely preferable to reaching for the meat cleaver. Do you have a forgotten news story that you would like chased up?

iain@iainhollingshead.co.uk

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I do think there's a general increase in impatience and aggression. I also think it's been going on for a long time. And I think it's wrong to consider extreme 'nutter' behaviours alongside average behaviours. But of course there are a number of basic psychological effects that should lead us to expect an increase in frustration. For example:

* Engineered inequality. Bus lanes, cycle lanes, advanced stop lines and so on set groups of road users against one another. We all need to be treated equally. We need balanced and shared responsibility.

* Frustration caused by congestion. It's not just that we have failed to adequately invest in roads development. It's also that we have wasted, removed and misused valuable road space. We even (apparently) have traffic lights phased to increase delay in the misguided hope that traffic will go away.

* Anger, paranoia and pressure caused by needless law enforcement. Drivers obviously feel under pressure due to speeding, parking and congestion charge schemes applied without tolerance, intelligence or discretion.

* Worsening road culture. Govenment is doing nothing to encourage calm cooperation between road users, appropriate attitudes or skills development.

I'm sure there are wider social issues too, but equally I'm sure we're (national we're) not managing the roads or road safety properly either.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I'm pretty sure this plays a key role. They don't call us thatchers chirldren for nothing, seems one-upmanship is seen as strength and manners are seen as weakness today, on and off the roads.

one ignorant driver on his way somewhere may annoy 50. of them 3 may be particularly suseptible and go on to annoy more. the cycle continues. we need trafpol to pay more attention to the unecessary aggressive driving to break it, evan if it's just to stop them and waste their time with a patronising lecture.

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

The most common cause of road-rage I have been involved in is when going through a narrow 2-way street where two vehicles cannot pass each other.

Particularly this is annoying when

- I have let a few through but while I am waiting, more are continually appearing behind them.

- where they have only just entered the road and I have been on it for a length of time, and for a moment I had a clear exit but they charged straight through and blocked it.

- It is a "common" rat-run in the direction I am going but not in the direction they are going.

I have known deadlock to occur in such incidents with neither side refusing to budge.

Of course the solutions would be to

1. Improve the main roads so no need for rat-running.
2. Make many of these streets one-way, preferably in the more convenient direction.

Then, of course, there are the garbage collection vehicles. Now I know they have a job to do, but it would be nice if there could be some kind of warning that they are there. And would be useful if they didn't work during rush-hour. (I'd like to see major lorry restrictions during rush-hour on many roads. To compensate they could be given priority at other times, eg bus-lane use and loading bays).

And I'm still convinced that the recycling ones are less green in that they cause more pollution, not only directly but indirectly for all the vehicles that they hold up.

I'm not so sure about that one. You always come across as a polite person, as does virtually everyone on here. The same goes with the vast majority of people you meet in the street or at work etc, it's just a small minority that are selfish and rude. I don't think that propotion is getting vastly bigger.

I think it's just a particular problem on the road. Too many cars going for too little space. Too few roads, too few car parking spaces, and too many things seemingly put there just to annoy anyone who dares venture out in a car. So if someone makes a mistake they immediately become a focus for all that is wrong on the road!

Could there also be a few drivers who enjoy being in control for once? Perhaps they are too weak to stand up to people face-to-face but give them a steel box and they will feel in control. Therefore they take their frustrations out on people on the road who can't remonstrate with them so easily.

I think they would find (if they bothered to look into it) is that most road rage is caused by pure short-sightedness and lack of forward thinking.

Earl Purple has hit on it.

Like recently, a brief snow shower over night seems to bring a halt to the roads in my region. It happens every year but because we only seem to get about weeks worth of snow every winter there never seems to be any kind of plan of action. We probably have the bare minimum of gritters as it is and that’s it.
Or other things like streamlining our transport system (which in Europe they seem more able to do) instead of this mass free for all of parking your car or getting off a train and waiting half an hour for a bus etc.

If I saw more forward planning, authorities in particular thinking ahead and our senior officials actually doing their jobs correctly I definitely think people would be a lot calmer. However were just too cheap in this country to do anything like that, its absolute bare minimal at all times or so it seems anyway.

Probably if we asked the government about their solution on road rage their answer would be to introduce narrower roads and increase petrol prices.

Shared responsibility is one thing, but surely separate lanes are necessary in some cases due to the differing needs of different road users, e.g. a bus which may need to stop every few hundred metres? And the vast majority of incidents occur between car users anyway.



Studies dating back years have shown we cannot build our way out of the congestion problem, we have to work together to reduce car usage. In my experience, most road rage incidents (minor ones, I'm happy to say I've never seen a serious one) occur in moderate traffic, due to people trying to 'get ahead'. In very heavy traffic people tend to accept their fate and sit it out.



I'd agree there is sometimes a lack of discretion in enforcement, but surely you can't blame road rage on speed cameras and parking restrictions? I'm wary of being zapped by cameras, but am hardly in a state of violent paranoia. About the only situation I can think of which has caused me mild irritation is the car in front braking for a camera when already below the speed limit.

I think the article has it about right, when they step in a car people feel they are in a private space, insulated from the consequences of their actions (which can have safety implications as well). It's hard to say whether the problem has got worse or not. There are more incidents, but there are more cars on the road. Certainly it is not a new phenomenon. I have a rather amusing ladybird kids book from the 70s called 'man and his car', which explains how normally polite people suddenly become impolite when they step in a car. It also has a vision of the future in which we are all driving round in electric cars which look remarkably like fiat puntos.

Like Hairy Ben, I would like to see more policing of unnecessarily aggressive driving; tailgating etc., which probably is the cause of most incidents. I suppose the problem is everyone suddenly drives impeccably for 5 mins while the cops are around!

These are big subjects and it's important that they are taken in the context of the 'bad psychology' statement in the first post. I'm going to give brief and to the point replies. If a conversation develops then maybe we'll need to split it into multiple threads. As things stand it might be hard to deal with.



Having spent much time looking at road safety psychology, and having participated in road safety as a user before these modern inequalities were introduced I really seriously claim that they are psychologically dangerous. They send messages which cause people to blame others instead of taking responsibility. And they set road user groups against one another. On a system level that's bad psychology.

And I've never seen a study that honestly claims that bus lanes are effective in any 'obvious' purpose. They don't speed busses much, if at all.



Yes, but the studies ignore the fact that congestion self-regulates. Look at London. Traffic hasn't grown significantly for 30 years. That's because it's saturated with traffic and demand regulation takes place because of journey time.

Proper traffic planning must maximise throughput rather than peanalise car use. The other ideas have failed. All of them.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I did raise a few big points there, sorry if I strayed a bit off topic. Just picking up on the congestion thing, I can see that self regulation occurs, but I'm not sure I understand your point. As you reach saturation, people find other routes or modes of transport and the traffic then self-limits. Building further roads gives people other routes to explore, until they too reach saturation, and so the situation continues.

I'd agree that maximising throughput should be part of traffic planning. But I think this needs to be complemented by a range of measures to reduce demand.

That's fine - my only concern was that we'd create a fragmented and difficult to follow discussion. No need to apologise.



The saturation point is a demand driven "wish to travel" / "can travel in a reasonable time" balance point. As far as I can see we're going to be working in the region of the balance point for the forseeable future at places and times where some degree of saturation takes place.

The main solution we have is to work with saturation pinch points and try to enable the most efficient traffic flow.

But we should also invest in the road network appropriately to enable travel choice.

The road pricing thing is a complete red herring and cannot possibly 'work'.

Have a look at:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... 18we58.htm

I realise that this post is a light treatment of a massive topic, I just don't have the time or the space to do it justice.



I've yet to see an real and effective 'demand reduction' measure. We're just having a minute effect on the balance point. In time, I can see that electronic comunication will bring about natural demand reduction.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

It might be useful to go back in time. Like back to the 60s when there were horrendous traffic jams at holiday times. Most roads were single carriageway and you got some suicidal overtaking manoeuvres. Older people will remember the tailbacks caused by caravans and their like. I think the difference then was that drivers got really hot under the collar but didn't do anything about it. Why not?
Come the 70s and 80s and millions were spent on motorways and other new roads and the congestion largely went away and it was pleasanter to drive around.
40 years on, and the wheel has gone full circle and we are back to where we started, only drivers are more willing to express their frustration and anger. Less chance of having your collar felt by a real live policeman? Selfish attitudes promoted by the Conservative governments of the 80s?

Pleasanter to drive around perhaps, not always so pleasant for those living near the new roads! There's a farmhouse on the M62 towards the Yorkshire end of Saddleworth moor which I guess many of you must have seen. The story goes that the farmer wouldn't move, so they just built the carriageways around it! can barely imagine what the noise must be like. My dad used to speak with fondness about the days before the motorways, but then he did about most things pre 1960! Of course I can hardly deny the convenience they have brought. The question is at what point do we say enough is enough, we can't just keep devoting more and more public space to roads.

Thanks for the info Paul, I'll give it a look. I realise this is a big topic that we couldn't really expect to treat fully here. I have some reservations about road pricing too, it seems likely it could have the unintended effect of forcing traffic onto minor roads and so increasing journey lengths, pollution etc. I believe it's worth looking at though, and remain of the opinion that we need some innovative measures to reduce congestion. It's in no-one's interests to let traffic continue to grow unabated. Teleconferencing and the like has been around for a while. I'm sure it's having a positive impact, but only slowing the growth. Hopefully more employers will begin to warm to idea of home working etc.

Personally, I feel that a lot of aggression is caused by frustration. Frustration that what was once a free-flowing road has now had 'safety improvements' made to it - i.e. chicanes, humps etc... have now become crawler roads and added time (needlessly) to people's journeys.

In the midlands (where I live) our local council (grrrr ) have made 'improvements' to 2 major road systems and totally screwed up the flow of traffic, adding a lot of time to journeys.

This frustration encourages road rage.

And not so long ago, a road-rage driver actually deliberately knocked down a lollipop lady (but I've said all this on another thread...)

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

I'm not so positive as you that road pricing can have no part to play. I don't like the idea at all but taking (for example) the motorway network, I can see the possibility that there is a section of the motoring public (say retired folk) who, under a road pricing regime, may reasonably happily elect to time their journeys in 'quiet times' (say midnight +/- 2 hours) to avoid a charge and this may free up space for those who do not have the choice (and have to pay).

What I don't know is how large that section is and how much road space is likely to be released; but I think it's worth more research.

I do agree that other measures to improve traffic flow should also be taken.

But what about people who have to be at work at the same time as everyone else, but are on a fairly low wage?

The better-off or company car driver will see no impact, but the poorer would?

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

I think road pricing, albeit in a simple fashion, already exists. the busier the road the more fuel (which is largely tax) you waste.

I think the main reason this other form of taxation won't work is that people generally use the roads they have to use when the have to use them, regardless of cost.

I appreciate that there are factions of society that could choose to alter their journey times, but I think they already do, I certainly do not travel during rush hour if I don't need to.

Perhaps a better method would be to use a carrot instead of the old taxation stick, perhaps give tax incentives to companies to encourage home working? I know I could do 99.9% of my job sat at home, with perhaps a group meeting say once a month (more for clarity than absolute need).

Also provide more school transport, so reducing the burden on parents and the roads, I know in my school days it was the exception rather than the norm for children to arrive by car, it was nearly always by bus or minibus.

Cheers

Paul

But don't people already do that? Maybe not shifting their journey to midnight, but I believe most people try to travel off-peak unless their journey dictates that they need to be at a certain place by 9am. I know I do, and I'm sure I'm not alone. I would never attempt a journey of any distance between 7-9am and 4-6pm unless there was no alternative.

I'm sure there are parts of the road network that are heavily congested during all daytime hours, but where I live in Lancashire the road network flows resonably well between 9.30am-4pm. Until recently I used to drive throughout the North West for my job and barring an accident virtually all journies could be completed without incurring significant delays outside the main peaks.

The biggest challenge is how we get everyone to work and back home again without everything grounding to a halt as it does now. Or perhaps we don't, perhaps with enhanced internet connections working from home will start to take some of the strain.

Our local council, Darlington (the one that can't get anything right) has "improved" our town centre roads by reducing the amount of space available to vehicles other than buses, installing pedestrian traffic lights everywhere that only change to red when there is a break in the traffic and the pedestrians have given up waiting and crossed anyway etc. Darlington is a "town on the move" BTW and has been given a few million quid to be a pilot for decreasing use of cars and increasing use of bikes. Ha, ha, ha....

I should have said 'national road pricing'. It's just about possible that specific schemes might deliver a benefit.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

hello im new here
i was involved in a road rage incident last week i was driving back home from a friends in liverpool i was sat at the lights right hand lane going straight ahead and turning right at the second set of lights a few hundred yards further on, a taxi pulls up next to me on the left and the lights change we both pull away and about 20 yards from the right turn he swerves infront of me and turns right he then slams on and gets out swearing at me for not letting him in there where no other cars about and i wasnt particularly going slow, or fast even for that matter. im a fairly big fella as my name suggests so when i got out of the car he got back in his and drove off.
i drive a tatty old polo around and it seems fair game to intimidate smaller cars i know this because i also have a bigger vw and im a hgv driver so i get to see a lot of "interesting" styles of driving i think it is just indicative of this country and the attitude of taking no s**t of anyone.
And i do think driving standards are absolutely terrible in general with poor basic knowledge of the highway code for most drivers.

It's not just smaller cars that are "fair game" for intimidation, it also happens to people who ride "small" bikes as well.

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?