One of the first blogs I ever wrote for Psychology Today back in 2013 was
on road rage. It has become the most popular subject I’ve ever posted, not
based on the number of page views, but on its attraction to the U.S. and
international media. After seven years, not a month doesn’t go by when I
don’t get a call or an email from a radio or TV producer or a newspaper
reporter, here and abroad, who wants to interview me about what they all
call the “new phenomenon of road rage.”
Every media interview starts the same way: first a horrible story of road
rage in that city or country, which ended with either serious injuries or
deaths (of course, always of the non-aggressive participants), arrests,
police chases, vehicle damage, and public outrage. Then secondly, the
sudden media interest. The first question I always get is just as predictable:
why? On this week’s Crime Time, I’ll answer that question for you and talk
about how you can keep yourself and your family safe on the road.
The answers are many, as I said on this site in 2013 and now: the ability to
be anonymously aggressive, testosterone or estrogen poisoning (both men
and women can exhibit road rage, though certainly not in equal
proportions), no concern for consequences (at least in the moment), the
desire to exert unnecessary and stupid influence over what they perceive
as “their territory” on the road or highway, and “lizard-brain thinking,” as
opposed to “big-brain thinking.”
This “amygdala hijacking” compels some people to do things under the
hazy rage of uncontrolled anger that they often regret later, but simply
cannot see at the time they’re trapped in the event. Many people who got
arrested for hitting someone on the side of the road with their fists, or
smashing into their car, or using a baseball bat, knife, or gun and doing
something that causes them to sit in their jail cell and wish they hadn’t done
it. It is often in those “too late now” moments that insight rears its ugly,
knowing head, too late to have stopped the person from ruining their lives
and the lives of others.
Join me for Crime Time, on Tuesday, September 22, 2020, from 1000 to
1100 CDT, on the Acts Media Group Facebook and YouTube pages.
English 
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