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By Jim Avila NBC NEWS July 3 — As Americans scramble to get a head start on the July 4th holiday, many will find rage growing on the American road. The numbers show overly aggressive drivers on the rise, with sometimes deadly results.

IT’S “getaway day,” and with more than 30 million drivers on hot summer roads, it’s prime time for road rage. A 1999 AAA survey found that 68 percent of aggressive driving incidents happen on hot, sunny days and 27 percent on Fridays, the traditional getaway day. “Road rage is like in the top five in regards to what the citizen concerns are in the state,” says Colorado State Patrol Sgt. Ron Woods. In Denver, Colorado State Patrol units began a Metro Aggressive Driving Team this week. Unmarked cars descend on rush hour hot spots in a road rage crackdown. “We are starting to see more road rage type incidents where there is really a lot of aggression to the point that they are forcing people off the road and maybe brandishing a weapon,” says Woods.

(...)

At least 1,500 drivers are victims of road rage each year. In Sacramento, Calif. in May, there was an incident where two men in their 50’s exchanged hand gestures and swear words, ending in death. Donald Bell was charged with shooting another driver to death. “Its the last thing in the world that I ever wanted to happen,” said Bell at the time. Distraught over his own road rage, Bell returned to the scene of the accident two weeks later and shot himself to death. “Its just not worth it,” says Sgt. James Lewis of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department. “The reality is, say what you have to say under your breath and let it go.” Advertisement

Who are the most aggressive drivers? Experts say younger drivers in any car. Men are more aggressive than women when behind the wheel of sports cars or pick-ups. Women more aggressive than men when driving SUV’s and luxury cars. Dr. Leon James, studies road rage at the University of Hawaii and says no driver is immune. “We discovered for the first time in human history, that every driver behind the wheel has murderous thoughts,” says Dr. James. It’s so widespread that the state of Georgia passed a new aggressive driving law that takes effect this week — weaving, cutting off or tailgating with the intent to annoy, harass, or intimidate can result in a 12-month jail sentence, $5,000 fine, and six points on the driver’s record. One tip to avoid anger behind the wheel comes from author Dr. Diane Nahl — to amuse yourself “Make funny noises,” says Nahl. “Once you start doing that, it’s incompatible with hostility.” It’s one suggestion for calming aggression on one of the nation’s busiest travel holidays and a hot getaway summer day.

original story here (with video)

Honolulu Star Bulletin

Illustration by Kip Aoki, Star-Bulletin

Road raging

Increased traffic and a competitive society has tempers
flaring on the highways

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Tim Ryan
Star-Bulletin

A man driving a pickup truck in Ewa Beach follows four teen-agers in a pickup after a verbal exchange, then rear-ends the youths' vehicle several times causing it to veer off the road and roll over several times. A 75-year-old Salt Lake City man peeved that a 41-year-old man honked at him for blocking traffic followed the man until he pulled off the road, hurled his prescription bottle at him, and then smashed the driver's knees with his '92 Mercury. In Potomac, Md., an attorney and ex-state legislator knocked the glasses off a pregnant woman after she asked him why he bumped her Jeep with his.

Throughout the United States, aggressive driving -- or "road rage" -- seems to be taking over the nation's roadways.

According to the American Automobile Association, the rate of "aggressive driving" incidents -- events in which an angry or impatient driver tries to kill or injure another driver after a traffic dispute -- has risen 51 percent since 1990. In the cases studied, 37 percent of offenders used firearms against other drivers, 28 percent used other weapons, and 35 percent used their cars.

There are several reasons for increases in road rage, according to Leon James and Diane Nahl, who have co-written the book "Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare."

By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Diane Nahl and Leon James are authors of Road Rage and Aggressive Driving.

"Part of our cultural inheritance is rigged for road rage from an early age," said James, a University of Hawai'i professor of psychology. "We grow up watching how our parents drive and how driving is portrayed on television and in the movies.

"What we observe from that young age becomes our cultural norm: being aggressive."

America's competitive society, with its "zero-tolerance mentality," also enters the picture, James said.

"We see driving as competition. Another driver's gain, like cutting in front, is our loss. It becomes a football game where you're not supposed to give your opponent an edge."

Because drivers are already inclined to road rage, all we need is "some trigger stimulus" said Nahl.

People have convinced themselves that driving requires survival skills because "other drivers are out to get us," James said. Aggressive drivers are seen as "strong and tough;" "polite drivers are wimps," he said.

"So we train ourselves to be aggressive and retaliatory when another driver cuts us off, tailgates, gives us the finger, or waves a fist," James said.

But for every action there is a reaction, James said. Overt actions are drawing response such as deliberate and sudden braking or pulling close to the other car.

One Honolulu man who asked that his name not be used said he keeps his windshield-wiper-fluid tank full so when someone tailgates, he turns on the wipers, sending fluid over his roof onto the car behind him.

"It works better than hitting the brakes," he said, "and you can act totally innocent."

Another contributing factor is living in "a culture of disrespect," where bigger has become synonymous with power and authority, Nahl said. "It's easier to act out in a big car like a SUV because you feel more protected surrounded by tons of steel," she said.

"A small person can suddenly be a big person."

Increased road congestion adds to the misery.

"More people are driving while road building has not kept up," Nahl said.

Since 1987, miles of roads have increased just 1 percent while the miles driven have shot up by 35 percent. According to a Federal Highway Administration study of 50 metropolitan areas, almost 70 percent of urban freeways today -- as opposed to 55 percent in 1983 -- are clogged during rush hour.

Demographic changes also have helped put more drivers on the road, James said.

Until the 1970s, the percentage of women driving was relatively low so many families only had one car. Then women entered the work force and bought cars, something highway planners hadn't foreseen. From 1969 to 1990 the number of women licensed to drive increased 84 percent. Between 1970 and 1987, the number of cars on the road more than doubled. In the past decade, the number of cars grew faster -- 17 percent -- than the number of people -- 10 percent.

The peak moment for aggressive driving seems to come not during gridlock but just before, when traffic density is high but cars are still moving briskly, James said. That's when cutting someone off or forcing someone out of a lane can seem to make the difference between being on time and being late.

"People have this value in their minds to spend as little time as possible commuting," Nahl said. "It's like the less time we spend commuting the more points we give ourselves.

"But if we leave as late as possible we set ourselves up for frustration; then anyone who slows us down or gets in our way becomes the enemy."

According to both authors, young drivers are more aggressive in all driving behaviors than older drivers; senior drivers are the least aggressive; men are more aggressive than women when they drive sports cars and light trucks like the S-10, Ram, Ranger, F-150, Silverado and Dakota; women are more aggressive than men when they drive SUVs and luxury cars.

"Women are catching up as aggressive drivers though they're less overt," Nahl said. "If they flip someone off, they might do it under the dash, or they verbalize with the windows up so the driver in the other car can't hear. Women are more seethers."

But road rage also can be passive-aggressive.

© 2000 Honolulu Star-Bulletin http://starbulletin.com

original here

(CBS) For those who prefer to do their driving on the information superhighway, where aggressive driving isn't quite as dangerous, the Web has a wealth of information about driving, and driving safely.

Dr. Driving Teaches You Driving Psychology: Created by a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii, this site is a compendium of information on safe driving. It includes a section on the symptoms of road rage, a collection of interviews he's done with the media, hints on how to avoid highway confrontations, and statistics about automobile-related injuries.

SUPERIOR COURT DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Rufus King III, Chief Judge

March 23, 2001

Administrative Order No. 01-07 It is hereby ORDERED that in cases where a violator is convicted in traffic court the person will be required to complete educational programs from the American Institute for Public Safety. This referral process does not change any court administrative procedures. Records will be electronically transferred for processing the violator through the educational programs. Violators who are convicted in traffic court of a coded offense that carries 2-3 points against their driving record are required to take the "Aware Driver" Defensive Driving Course. Violators who are convicted in traffic court of a coded offense that carries 4 to 8 points are required to take the aggressive driver course, "RoadRageous". Violators who are convicted in traffic court of a coded offense that carries more than 8 points will be required to take both courses. This order applies to violators who are residents and non-residents of the District of Columbia. This order shall be effective May 1, 2001.

original here

I had to write and tell you how incredible your book is. After having written to you about a month ago and getting your supportive and helpful replies, I ordered your book through Amzon com. I found it extremely useful and chock full of practical suggestions. It has not only helped me as a spouse of rageful driving husband, but he agreed to read it!! His agreement followed your recommendation of asking all the family members to write him a letter of what his problem has cost us emotionally. My son of 26 choose to tell him directly rather than write, but the talk was also very effective.

We are also utilizing your idea in contracting before riding together, and he is using the more of "the supportive" driver techniques (rather than being oppositional and so arrogant).( Progress not perfection!!) We both have a long road ahead of us- no pun intended- but your help was a phenonmenal series of tools to aide in ameliorating this life threatening problem. I have to add that I myself am a licensed psychologist in private practice in Ohio and I am now recommending your book in recurrent cases where wives (usually) complain of this concern.

Again, my massive thanks for a fantastic and much needed book.-

Marilyn - Ohio

(...)

"The conference features seven papers which cover topics ranging from emotional intelligence to actual studies of aggressive behavior in traffic. A literature review brings visitors up to date on what science has to say about aggressive driving. A study of complaints about bad driving on freeways around San Diego received by the California Highway Patrol attempts to get the measure of who's doing what and how to catalogue behaviors. An Australian researcher looks at attitudes towards speed and differences between the sexes in this regard. Belgian researchers submitted a report on a special educational program they developed for drivers caught in a tough crackdown on aggressive driving in that country.

University of Hawaii psychologists Leon James and Dianne Nahl see aggressive driving as "emotionally impaired" driving. The paper they've submitted for discussion views driving style as a cultural phenomenon in which a stalemate now exists between, on the one hand, the best efforts of traffic engineers, law enforcement, policymakers and auto manufacturers to make driving safer, and on the other a competitive environment in which individual drivers accept a level of risk in order to achieve their goals.

Driving, say Nahl and James, "is emotionally challenging because unexpected things happen constantly." Emotional intelligence is a critical factor in safe driving. The reason that U.S. traffic fatalities stubbornly resist efforts to bring them below the some 40,000 per year they've been sitting at for the past decade is, they believe, due to cultural-environmental factors that work to maintain risk levels. A competitive society which values individual aggressiveness helps to sustain the friction level on our roads. In addition to this, the authors suggest that driving is not supported by a training and education system that adequately prepares people for the volatile and potentially deadly mix of traffic and emotion. As well, they write, attitudes such as badmouthing other drivers and acting aggressively towards them are passed on from parents to children.

For the two psychologists, car advertising is adding to the problem by emphasizing power and speed as selling points. A recent report from the Virginia-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) supports this view. Since 1981, states the report, the percentage of new car buyers who say that safety features are "extremely" or "very" important to them has increased steadily—from 64% to 84% in 1999. But over the same period, the makers of car ads have pushed safety more and more into the background. As a theme, it generally appears in fewer than 10% of advertising and has been replaced by themes that emphasize power and performance. "Even when performance isn't front and center in a commercial it's present on some level in about half of all the ads," says IIHS vice president of research, Susan Ferguson.

As if to drive the point home, a recent TV advertisement for the new BMW M5 model describes it as "The fastest sedan on the planet." The ad depicts it as faster than an FXE rocket car blasting across the desert—presumably in search of a new land speed record.

As countries, states, and provinces around the world struggle to mount campaigns against aggressive driving and support them with various programs and even laws, the definition of aggressive driving is crucial. As James and Nahl point out, there isn't much agreement. Laws proposed are often fusize="3y and amongst the public there is confusion. One of their studies indicated that between 20% and 70% of respondents did not agree on whether specific violations should be considered aggressive. In a Los Angeles survey, for example, "50% did not agree that speeding up to a yellow light, honking or blocking the passing lane are aggressive." And drivers typically saw others as more aggressive than themselves."

(...)

original here

Oct 16th to Nov 30th, 2000

Sponsored by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation.
In partnership with the Traffic Safety Village

Aggressive driving is America's car sickness du jour. But is there a cure for thinking everyone else on the road is an idiot?

By Andrew Ferguson

It's a jungle out there. well, not really: it's worse than a jungle. It's a stretch of roadway anywhere in America, and in place of the ravenous tigers and stampeding rhinos and slithery anacondas are your friends and neighbors and co-workers, that nice lady from the church choir and the cheerful kid who bags your food at the local Winn Dixie--even Mom and Dad and Buddy and Sis. They're in a hurry. And you're in their way. So step on it! That light is not going to get any greener! Move it or park it! Tarzan had it easy. Tarzan didn't have to drive to work. It may be morning in America--crime down, incomes up, inflation nonexistent--but it's high noon on the country's streets and highways. This is road recklessness, auto anarchy, an epidemic of wanton carmanship. Almost everyone from anywhere has a story about it, as fresh as the memory of this morning's commute. And no wonder. Incidents of "road rage" were up 51% in the first half of the decade, according to a report from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

(...).

More often the new ethos of road anarchy manifests itself in the mundane: the unsignaled lane change by the driver next to you, the guy who tailgates you if you go too slow, and the person ahead who brakes abruptly if you go too fast--each transgression accented by a flip of the bird or a blast of the horn. Sixty-four percent of respondents to a recent Coalition for Consumer Health and Safety poll say people are driving less courteously and more dangerously than they were five years ago.

And the enemy is us. (...).

Anne has a clean driving record with scarcely even a fender bender to her name. But when she takes to the highway, even her kids join the fun. "Make him move over!" they shout as she bears down on a 55-m.p.h. sluggard in the fast lane. She flashes her headlights. The kids cheer when the unlucky target gives in and moves aside. Back in town, Anne specializes in near misses. "Jeez, I almost hit that woman," she chirps, swinging the Suburban into the right lane to pass a car turning left at an intersection. She makes the game two minutes late. "I don't think I'm an aggressive driver," Anne says. "But there are a lot of bad drivers out there."

Too true, too true. But the example of Anne--prosperous, well-adjusted Anne, loving wife and mother--raises the overarching question of road anarchy. Residents of late 20th century America are arguably the luckiest human beings in history: the most technologically pampered, the richest, the freest things on two legs the world has ever seen. Then why do we drive like such jerks?

The most common answer: What do you mean we, Kemo Sabe? Of course, you don't drive like a jerk. Neither does Anne--just ask her. Very few drivers admit to being an obnoxious road warrior. There seem to be only three types of people on the road these days: the insane (those who drive faster than you), the moronic (those who drive slower than you) and...you. But this merely confuses the issue. Surely someone is doing all that speeding, tailgating, headlight flashing and abrupt lane changing, not to mention the bird flipping and horn blasting. There's enough in the phenomenon of road rage to keep a faculty-loungeful of social theorists thinking deeply for years--or at least until the grant money runs out.

That won't be any time soon. With millions of victims and hardly any confessed perpetrators, road recklessness has become the car-related sickness du jour, deposing (for the moment) drunk driving from its long-standing reign. Like drunk driving, the issue has energized America's vast machinery of social concern. The Federal Government is spending money on research, Congress has held hearings, law-enforcement authorities have held seminars and developed special enforcement programs, and psychologists are treating it as a genuine, stand-alone disorder.

(...)

Aggressive driving, of course, has been around since the early decades of this century, from the moment when the average number of automobiles on any given roadway rose from 1 to 2. It is partly a matter of numbers. There are 17% more cars in America than there were 10 years ago, while the number of drivers is up 10%. More to the point: the number of miles driven has increased 35% since 1987, while only 1% more roads have been built.

But as the quantity of cars has risen, the nature of the problem has changed qualitatively as well. Maybe the congestion is making everyone cranky. Americans are famously attached to their cars; it's just the driving they can't stand. "Driving and habitual road rage have become virtually inseparable," says Leon James, a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii who specializes in the phenomenon. In the most comprehensive national survey on driving behavior so far, a Michigan firm, EPIC-MRA, found that an astounding 80% of drivers are angry most or all of the time while driving. Simple traffic congestion is one cause of irritation, but these days just about anything can get the average driver to tap his horn. More than one-third of respondents to the Michigan survey said they get impatient at stoplights or when waiting for a parking space; an additional 25% can't stand waiting for passengers to get in the car. And 22% said they get mad when a multi-lane highway narrows.

So not only are roads more crowded than ever, but they are crowded with drivers whom science has now discovered to be extremely touchy. Modern life offers plenty of ready-made excuses for bad driving, and here as elsewhere time seems to be of the essence: there's just not enough of it. When police departments in the Washington area launched a program to crack down on aggressive driving last year, cops handed out some 60,000 tickets in 28 days for offenses ranging from tailgating to passing on the right. The most common excuse: "I'm late."

(...)

Other road warriors are unrepentant. Alan Carter, 43, a computer specialist from North Carolina and a self-described "aggressive driver," has his own vision of a perfect commute: one with no other cars in sight. "I don't want anyone in front of me. Any time. I think maybe this type of thinking has its roots in the minutiae of territorial rights and typical American individualism. But I don't really think about the deeper meanings. I just know that someone else is in my space or in the space I want."

Carter doesn't have to search for deeper meanings; that is a job for paid professionals, of whom, in America, there are many. Their theories range from the sociological to the psychological to the quasi political. "There is a greater diversity of road users now than at any other time in history," says Hawaii's James. "Therefore streets are not reserved for the optimum, skilled driver but accommodate a variety of driver groups with varying skill, acuity and emotional control"--jerks, in nontechnical lingo. And unlike in previous generations, the willingness to be a jerk on the road is no longer confined to a single sex.

Ed Sarpolus, the head researcher for the Michigan study of driving behavior, was struck by the gender breakdown of aggressive drivers: 53% of them are women. "There is a tremendous cultural shift taking place," he says. "Men still outnumber women in pure numbers, but women are not only increasing, they are not falling off as they get older. Women have fought to be equal in the workplace and in society, and now they're fighting to be equal behind the wheel. [Our] data are full of soccer moms."

This democratization of the highway has occurred simultaneously to a decline in traditional driver's education, once a near universal part of the curriculum in America's secondary schools--and a course beloved by generations of high schoolers, since the only way you could fail was by running over the instructor's cat. According to Allen Robinson, CEO of the American Driver and Traffic Safety Education Association, 15 years ago, nearly 90% of all new drivers had taken an official driver's education course. With budget cuts chopping the course out of many public schools, that figure is down to 50%, perhaps as low as 30%.

And Robinson questions the use of the courses that are still in place. Having simplified the instruction of reading, writing and arithmetic, the American educational establishment may have finally managed to do the impossible: it has dumbed down even driver's ed. (What's next? Dodge ball?) Some states have backed off mandatory driver training altogether, and elsewhere most courses demand no more than six hours behind the wheel. In what was no doubt an exceptional case, last September a North Carolina driver's ed teacher allegedly told his trainee to chase a driver who had cut them off, then got out and punched the offending driver. The teacher (who later denied he had urged the student to step on the gas) was arrested. The student was not ticketed, and the assault charge against the teacher was dropped. "Our driving schools teach the mechanics of driving," says John Larson, a psychiatrist who lectures at Yale Medical School, "but they teach almost nothing about the psychology of drivers."

Driving is a curious combination of public and private acts. A car isolates a driver from the world even as it carries him through it. The sensation of personal power is intoxicating. Sealed in your little pod, you control the climate with the touch of a button, from Arctic tundra to equatorial tropic. The cabin is virtually soundproof. Your "pilot's chair" has more positions than a Barcalounger. You can't listen to that old Sammy Davis Jr. tape at home because your kids will think you're a dweeb, but in the car, the audience roars as you belt out I've Gotta Be Me. Coffee steams from the cup holder, a bag of Beer Nuts sits open at your side, and God knows you're safe. The safety belt is strapped snugly across your body, and if that fails, the air bag will save your life--if it doesn't decapitate you. Little bells and lights go off if you make a mistake: don't forget to buckle up! Change your oil, you sleepyhead! The illusions--of power, of anonymity, of self-containment--pile up. You are the master of your domain. Actually driving the car is the last thing you need to worry about. So you can pick your nose, break wind, fantasize to your heart's content. Who's to know?

(...)

Road-rage experts have come up with various solutions to the anarchy of our streets and highways. We could legislate it (lower speed limits, build more roads to relieve congestion), adjudicate it (more highway cops, stiffer penalties), regulate it (more elaborate licensing procedures) or educate it away (mandatory driver's ed). Others suggest an option perhaps more typical of America circa 1998: therapize it.

"The road-rage habit can be unlearned," says James of the University of Hawaii, "but it takes more than conventional driver's ed." He advocates teaching "emotional intelligence" as part of any thorough driver training: how to "deal with hostility expressed by drivers" and "how to be accepting of diversity and how to accommodate it." He calls for a new driver's ed program from kindergarten on--to teach "a spirit of cooperation rather than competition"--and grass-roots organizations called Quality Driving Circles. These, he told a radio station, would be "small groups of people meeting regularly together to discuss their driving problems and help one another do driving-personality makeovers."

Will it work? A better question might be, Do we want it to? Road-rage therapists come perilously close to calling for a transformation of the national character--remaking our rough-and-tumble, highly individualistic country into a large-scale version of a college town where everyone recycles kitty litter, drinks latte, listens to Enya and eats whole grains. Is that really what we want? For all its dangers, road rage may simply be a corruption of those qualities that Americans have traditionally, and rightly, admired: tenacity, energy, competitiveness, hustle--something, in other words, to be contained and harnessed by etiquette and social censure rather than eradicated outright. Until then, alas, anyone braving the streets and highways of America would be well advised to employ a technique older than therapy: prayer.

--Reported by Sally B. Donnelly /Washington

original here

KENT -- Road rage and aggressive driving are not simply byproducts of traffic congestion. Gridlock isn't the only affliction that turns good drivers into frustrated, vindictive, dangerous drivers.

Were it only that simple, say two leading researchers on the causes of road rage.

The growing national habit is directly and indirectly responsible for perhaps one-third of the 40,000 deaths and 3 million injuries each year on our nation's highways, say Dr. Leon James and Dr. Diane Nahl.

The husband-and-wife psychologists from the University of Hawaii have been studying road rage for years. James, himself a reformed aggressive driver, has testified before a congressional subcommittee on the subject.

Their new book, ``Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare,'' is hot off the presses. Together, they also maintain DrDriving.org, a Web site devoted to understanding road rage and offering solutions to it.

James and Nahl see the real causes of road rage as rooted deep in our culture. They say it will take more than laws, enforcement and additional highways to deal with the problem.

``As a culture, we share certain experiences,'' James said in a recent interview. ``We observe other drivers. We watch and absorb television and video-game violence. Our parents show levels of emotions behind the wheel. As toddlers, we absorb this.

``By the time we are 16 or 17 and start driving, we are rigged for road rage.''

That rage, they say, simmers below the surface for most drivers, many of whom blame congestion for their aggressive driving habits.

``Congestion is a factor,'' Nahl acknowledged. ``It's not the only factor, and we don't know the degree of influence. People like to say congestion is the cause.''

But road rage and aggressive driving happen worldwide and on two-lane rural roads as well as on freeways.

Other factors have contributed to the dramatic increase in road rage: emotional impairment, higher stress and a greater diversity of drivers with different levels of skill.

The authors also contend there is a ``culture of disrespect'' in America that condones anger as a response to most any perceived threat or insult on the highway.

Speeding, tailgating, changing lanes without signaling, yelling or swearing at other drivers and trying to teach other drivers a lesson have become accepted behaviors.

``As a society, we need to change the symbolism of the car and symbolism of driving,'' James said. ``It is still focused on independence, superiority, freedom.

``These kinds of emotions continue this symbolism of aggressiveness. As a society, we need to change that symbolism to driving as teamwork, not as individuals.''

Most bad drivers, however, are in denial about their aggressive driving tendencies.

Even some of James' family and friends quit reading the new book when they encountered their own bad driving habits, he said.

In surveys conducted through DrDriving.org, only 30 percent of the respondents acknowledged that they were aggressive drivers, Nahl said. Those same drivers, however, said that 70 percent to 80 percent of other drivers are aggressive.

``We call this the awareness gap,'' James said.

Change on our highways will come one driver at a time, James and Nahl say. Like a problem drinker finally admitting to alcoholism, an aggressive driver must take the first and most difficult step by saying: ``I acknowledge that I need to retrain myself as a good driver.''

Sometimes a spouse, a child or another family member can provide the impetus for change. Those are the people who often endure the fear of riding with an aggressive driver.

James said he didn't change his bad driving habits until his wife and grandmother finally confronted him. Then he did change his driving personality, and along the way he decided to explore the problem as a social scientist.

In their book, James and Nahl offer a three-step driver improvement program that starts with admitting the problem.

Next comes self-observation -- recording out loud one's thoughts and feelings while driving. Writing them down in a driving diary allows a driver to review them later and discover his or her ``true driving personality.''

The final step is modifying that personality. Taking it step by step, by working on one specific habit at a time, is less daunting, James and Nahl said.

The book tells of one young man whose plan for changing his behavior included staying in the right lane most of the time, staying at least four car lengths behind the car ahead on a fast-paced highway, repeating that ``pedestrians always have the right of way'' whenever one was seen, and fighting his bad mood when congestion occured.

The ultimate goal, the researchers said, is to replace the culture of disrespect on the highways with a culture of support, where all drivers give up battling for position and try to help one another get where they want to go.

Checklist: Your road rage tendencies

For each statement, circle ``yes'' if it applies to you reasonably well, ``no'' if it doesn't.

1. I swear a lot more in traffic than I do elsewhere. Yes No

2. I normally have critical thoughts about other drivers. Yes No

3. When a driver in a parking lot tries to steal the space I've been waiting for, I get furious. Yes No

4. I fantasize about doing violence to other drivers (e.g., using guns, blowing them up or sweeping them aside), but it is just fantasy. Yes No

5. When drivers do something really ``stupid'' that endangers me or my car, I get really furious, even aggressive. Yes No

6. I think it's good to get your anger out because we all have aggressive feelings inside that naturally come out under stressful situations. Yes No

7. When I'm very upset about something, it's a relief to step on the gas and give my feelings an outlet. Yes No

8. I feel that it's important to force certain drivers to behave appropriately on the highway. Yes No

9. Pedestrians shouldn't have the right to walk slowly in crosswalks when cars are waiting. Yes No

10. Pushy drivers really annoy me, so I bad-mouth them to feel better. Yes No

11. I tailgate when someone drives too slow for conditions or in the passing lane. Yes No

12. I try to get to my destination in the shortest time possible or else it doesn't feel right. Yes No

13. If I stopped driving aggressively, others would take advantage of my passivity. Yes No

14. I feel unpleasant emotions when someone beats me to the light or when someone gets through and I'm stuck on red. Yes No

15. I feel energized by the sense of power and competition I experience while driving aggressively. Yes No

16. I hate speed bumps and speed limits that are set too low. Yes No

17. Once in a while I get so frustrated in traffic that I begin to drive somewhat recklessly. Yes No

18. I hate large trucks and I refuse to drive differently around them. Yes No

19. Sometimes I feel that I am holding up traffic, so I start driving faster than feels comfortable. Yes No

20. I would feel embarrassed to get ``stuck'' behind a large vehicle on a steep road. Yes No

Give yourself one road rage point for every ``Yes'' answer.

Score:

1-4: You are not an aggressive driver; your road rage is manageable.

5-10: You have moderate road rage habits.

11 and up: Your road rage tendency is out of control, enough to compromise your ability to remain calm and fair in certain routine but challenging driving situations.

Source: ``Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare'' by Dr. Leon James and Dr. Diane Nahl, published by Prometheus Books.

ASSESSING YOUR RANGE OF ROAD RAGE HOSTILITY

How far down the road rage path do you go?

Unfriendly Zone

1. Mentally condemning another driver.

2. Verbally denigrating another driver to passengers in your vehicle.

3. Closing ranks to deny someone entry into your lane because you're frustrated or upset.

Hostile Zone

4. Giving another driver the ``evil eye'' to show your disapproval.

5. Speeding past another car or revving the engine as a sign of disapproval.

6. Preventing another driver from passing because you're mad.

7. Tailgating to pressure a driver to go faster or get out of the way.

Violent Zone

8. Fantasizing physical violence against another driver.

9. Honking or yelling at someone through the window to indicate your displeasure.

10. Making a visible obscene gesture at another driver.

11. Using your car to retaliate by making sudden threatening maneuvers.

Lesser Mayhem Zone

12. Pursuing another car because of a provocation or insult.

13. Getting out of the car and engaging in a verbal dispute on a street or parking lot.

14. Carrying a weapon in the car in case of a driving incident.

15. Deliberately bumping or ramming another car in anger.

16. Trying to run another car off the road to punish the driver.

Major Mayhem Zone

17. Getting out of the car and beating or battering someone as a result of a road exchange.

18. Trying to run down someone whose actions angered you.

19. Shooting at another car.

20. Killing someone.

NOTE: The majority of drivers tested said they have gone as far as number 13.

Source: ``Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare'' by Dr. Leon James and Dr. Diane Nahl, published by Prometheus Books.

Daily newspaper content from http://www.eastsidejournal.com

© 2000 Horvitz Newspapers Inc.

found it here

By LEON JAMES and DIANE NAHL
Special to Newsday

Today there are two kinds of drivers -- sports utility vehicle owners and haters. SUV owners love the vehicle, while SUV haters passionately despise everything associated with SUVs, especially their arrogant and selfish drivers.

Then came the great tire-recall debacle that shook many SUV owners to the roots.

SUVs came to our attention while we were researching the aggressiveness of drivers in general. We wondered why SUV drivers confessed to significantly more aggressive acts on a daily basis than the rest of the population. For instance, in comparison to economy- or family car owners, SUV owners rate themselves higher on aggressiveness, admit to more speeding and driving through red lights, yelling and swearing more, and feeling less compassion for other drivers. This pattern of results reveals the two kinds of drivers on the road today, those who drive "tough" cars like SUVs, light trucks and sports cars, versus the rest who drive "soft" cars like economy and family cars and minivans.

But there are new signs that some of the toughs are in trouble, their self-confidence shaken by the tire betrayal. Already disturbed by the rollover threats, SUV owners are showing a newfound caution springing from prudence and their broken trust in the tires. Suddenly, they feel vulnerable instead of strong, act carefully instead of aggressively and are slowing down. This incident makes it clear that SUV drivers are capable of a less assertive driving style that is safer for everyone.

If they can hold on to this more accommodating driving style long after the tire recall, they may be able to rehabilitate their reputation.

Drivers of other cars regularly complain that they feel threatened by the size and weight of SUVs towering above them in traffic, bearing down on them on freeways, weaving to gain the advantage, pushing into lanes and parking spaces, forcing others to yield, taking up too much space and blocking visibility, crowding parking lots, straddling lanes, blasting headlights into rearview mirrors of smaller vehicles and blinding the driver. SUV drivers are seen as overbearing, inconsiderate, inattentive, pampered and arrogant. SUVs are also assailed for gas gusize="3ling and polluting the environment.

While SUV drivers have become the poster children for aggressive driving, our research shows that the majority of drivers are aggressive, no matter what they drive. One positive outcome of the tire scare is that everyone is reminded of how fragile our highway survival is, and that we all need to tone down, to become more tolerant, and give each other latitude instead of attitude.

Many SUV drivers do not fit the negative stereotype, but they have to live with it and try to compensate for their size by keeping greater distance between vehicles, slowing down, letting others in and using other accommodating gestures. They can't afford to ignore their physical impact on others, otherwise SUV haters might act on their negative fantasies.

One confessed SUV hater wrote: "Commuting on Highway 101, I have a recurring vision of myself, a 30-year-old woman who tries to avoid killing ants and spiders, smashing the windshields of random cars or trucks with a baseball bat. Like TV darling Ally McBeal, who is haunted by a dancing baby, a symbol of her ticking biological clock, I am taunted by this bat -- a symbol of my deep-seated anger toward bad drivers, cell phones and SUVs."

But a vigilante mentality creates a problem for both SUV owners and the vigilantes because it is unhealthy to hate passionately and to routinely vent anger.

The new era for SUV drivers was initiated by the Firestone recall affecting 1 million SUVs and 6.5 million tires. News articles report that many SUV owners are changing the way they drive. They keep both hands on the wheel, watch the speedometer and watch out for rising temperatures that make a tire failure more likely. One driver said, "I think, oh my God, I'm going to fall to the freeway below. I'm holding onto the steering wheel where it's digging into my hands." What the rollover issue couldn't accomplish, the tire scare did.

Who could have imagined that SUV drivers would voluntarily choose to slow down at a turn that mere economy cars zoom around? People are scared enough to cancel trips or leave the SUV in the garage and cram the kids into the subcompact. Another driver still goes 65 to keep up with the flow but turned off cruise control to avoid a rollover when she hits the brakes during a tire failure. With a shortage of replacement tires, people feel trapped because they're driving on "death tires" that are impossible to replace immediately.

Owners are so committed to these vehicles that they are willing to separate the tire debacle from the car. Despite hesitations expressed by some motorists, Ford Explorer sales remain robust. We predict that the passion SUV owners have will increase rather than decrease under the latest attack from the tire recall. A well-known phenomenon in social psychology -- called the "when prophecy fails syndrome" -- predicts that passionate believers strengthen their faith after a damaging revelation comes to light about a weakness or untruth they didn't know about. SUV owners will rally behind the vehicles, change tires and hope against hope that their trust will not be broken again.

The good news is that SUV owners are discovering their softer side and integrating themselves into the rest of the driving community. A kinder, gentler SUV driver is aware and cares about the concerns of all who share the road. The tire crisis provides an opportunity to repair relationships and calm the fears of other drivers.

James and Nahl are professors at the University of Hawaii and are the authors of "Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare."

original here

Today, Bob’s guest is Dr. Leon James, co-author of the book, “Road Rage and Aggressive Driving.”

Do you try to get where you’re going in the shortest time possible? Do you cuss at or retaliate against pushy drivers? Do you ever feel like giving tailgaters a “brake job”? Do you regularly take risks and exceed speed limits? Join Bob Levey and the author of “Road Rage” as they explore these aggressive driving maneuvers and how to avoid becoming victim to them.

”Road Rage” examines the psycho-legal context of a growing social epidemic and provides instructions for putting the brakes on highway aggression by restoring civility and safety to our roads.

University of Hawaii professor Leon James is a co-founder of “driving psychology.” He is the nation’s foremost authority on road rage and aggressive driving and is co-author of the RoadRageous aggressive driving video course used in driving instruction. James also operates the DrDriving.org web site.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

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Bob Levey: Good morning, Dr. James (it is unquestionably morning in Hawaii!), and thanks very much for joining us. Let's begin with a question about remorse. Do those who give vent to road rage ever feel it? Do they ever apologize to their victims?

Dr. Leon James: Unfortunately anyone may uncontrollably explode, though the point at which we do this, and why, and how, depend on individual differences and background. But I have found in my research that all of us are at risk of rageful behavior, though most of us have strong inhibitions against expressing it as violence.

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Bob Levey: Pet theory: We'd have far less road rage if people viewed their cars as machines, and not as extensions of their very selves. You agree?

Dr. Leon James: Yes, many drivers have unrealistic attitudes about their cars. This is something we all have to some extent since we're all raised on TV and its images.

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Sterling, VA: Do you think the fact that many drivers are not paying attention to their driving because they are using cell phones, eating, reading, etc. is contributing to this rage? I know I get aggrevated by a person's inattention to driving that causes me to miss a light that will require a 3 minute wait. One of these is bad enough, but when it is two or three times per communte, it does get frustrating. I think it is time that drivers be ticketed for inattention to driving.

Dr. Leon James: Inatention or "distracted" driving is the cuase of many of the 6 million crashes we have in this country every year. I've always advocated that we train ourselves to use the new car equipment like phones and interactive services. If people won't take time to train themselves I think the government will have to step in with new licensing regulations, courses, etc.

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Bob Levey: Isn't it true that in a trip of 20 miles, if you cut in and out of traffic and go 60 miles an hour instead of 55, you'll save only about two minutes and 30 seconds?

Dr. Leon James: I recommend that everyone who is a "rushing maniac" at the wheel (like I used to be before I became a "reformed driver") actually monitor their traffic time. Write down when you start and drive your usual way. Write down when you get there. Next day do the same but drive differently, I would say more peacefully and courteously, with less stress and pressure. Now compare the the two times. I predict no more than a ten percent difference. The average US commute is 30 mminutes (surpisingly short!) and so on the average it would make only a 3-min. difference on whether you rush like a maniac or drive peacefully.

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Virginia: I drive a sporty, fast car and often find that people want to race with me. I'm not normally that type, but when someone challenges me, I find myself becoming competitive and I tend to play along.

Any suggestions on how to turn off these emotions and ignore the challenger?

Dr. Leon James: Good you asked that question--because, as you realize, you're at risk of ending up doing something that could be a disaster and the end of your enjoyment of riding around in your beloved car. Please read our book for actual exercises you need to do when you drive. These are "mental" exercises because the problem has to do with your, and everyone else's, habits and thoughts about cars and drivers. We get these mental and emotional habits from childhood onward through many things in our society. Also, you can go to our Web site to see many of these exercises and "driving personality makeovers"--Web address is http://DrDriving.org

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NYC: You say that most people have strong inhibitions against violence. But do you think that as more and more incidents of violent road rage are reported that people start to think that it's ok to act out? An "everyone else is doing it..." kind of mentality? It used to be that we had inhibitions against being rude to others or saying rude things we were thinking, but those inhibitions seem to have been removed. I'm also concerned that most discussions about road rage seem to place blame on others, rather than questioning am I doing these things?

Dr. Leon James: Excellent way of putting it! Yes, this is the crux of most of the problem--which is:

**200 billion hostile warlike threatening exchanges in the US per day among the 125 million drivers on the road every day

**over 6 million major injuries (that's 40 million in ten years!!!

**42,000 deaths a year in this country alone (it's a worldwide phenomenon)

Driviing is the most dangerous thing we do on a routine basis--let's train ourselves seriously to cut most of the problem. This means training our attitudes--What is our contribution to this problem of highway warfare? It takes sytematic self-observation--as we explain in the book

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Bob Levey: I have never cursed out a fellow driver (or taken a whack at him with a tire iron). But when I find myself "trapped" behind a slowpoke, I tend to root for him in an ironic kind of way. "Come on, babycakes, you can do it," I'll say, aloud, even when I'm alone in my car. Am I candidate for Dr. James's couch, or am I handling highway stress the way I should?

Dr. Leon James: When we start monitorin ourselves behind the wheel--we call it "self-witnessing myself as a driver"--we discover that we were raised to be aggressive behind the wheel. This includes competitive and hostile, even denigrating. It's a mental habit, automatic, almost unconscious. It's a cause of stress and negativity--both very bad for our health and happiness. The challenge is to change this mental set from negative to positive. We say from being an "aggressive driver" to a "supportive driver."

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Bob Levey: As a major non-fan of SUVs, I have to ask..... Do you see more road rage episodes that involve drivers of these hugh machines, as opposed to people who drive smaller vehicles?

Dr. Leon James: Up to last year our research about the attitudes of drivers showed that SUV drivers saw themselves as more aggressive and described themselves on the polls as doing aggressive things more often than drivers of other cars (except sports cars--their drivers also described themselves as more aggressive). But now this may be changing since so many more people drive SUVs and since SUVs have had problems aired in the media. Tos ees some of the results, look in this article: http://DrDriving.org/surveys/survey2/interpretations.html

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DC: Dr. James,

You live in Hawaii. Do you see less evidence of road rage there, or is the problem just as bad as it is elsewhere? The reason I ask is because Hawaii is known to be more relaxed and laid back.

Dr. Leon James: Yes, Hawaii is indeed a paradise. But unfortunately we can be in emotional torture and stress anywhere. When Hawaii drivers sit in traffic for one hour on their way to work, and then something unexpected happens to make it worse, they are emotionally challenged in the same way as all drivers everywhere. It's the same emotional dynamic. Our news media regularly cover road rage duels in our paradise. Some of these you'll find on my site at:

http://DrDriving.org/reviews.html

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Bob Levey: My favorite road rage story: a man approaches a four-way stop at the same time as a car to his right. He motions to that driver to go ahead. The other driver slams his car into "Park," hops out, angrily approaches the man who was trying to do him a favor and accuses him of making an obscene gesture! Comments?

Dr. Leon James: We discuss in our book the need for "emotional intelligence" as a driver and we have some exercises that help you improve your Emotional IQ. Your story exemplifies the general tendency we all have of misreading cues. We are in a rageful state when we drive--seething with anger and frustration underneath, or in the open. In this mentality, our thoughts are skewed or biased, even irrational. So one exercise to improve your Emotionl IQ as a driver is to try to think of all sorts of reasons why somebody is doing something that you think is strange or offensive. Flipping me off or:

**Exercising his finger (he's got a cramp in it) (he's a magician and needs his fingers to stay quick)

** You give the next one (if you make it funny your rageful mood could depart from you for a while...)

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Arlington, Va.: We currently medicate children that act out aggressively in school. Do you think we should start doing the same thing for chronic road rage "problem children"?

(Providing we could catch them, tie them down, and jam the pills in their mouths, that is.)

Dr. Leon James: We can all give in to all sorts of fnatasies--it's a symptom of rage. We delight in them--that's another symptom. We laugh at them and like to tell them to others--that's a symptom of rage. The point is: there is no benefit to all this--it's negative. We've got to take charge of our thoughts and emotions--clean things up. Why not reduce stress, be a civil person, feel connected to others on the road like it's ahighway community? OK, it's not easy, but it's worth the national effort. It's worth it.

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Bob Levey: One of the tips you offer in your book is to budget extra time before a car trip so you won't get upset if someone or something slows you down. But oh-so-often, this is impossible and impractical. What then?

Dr. Leon James: Yes, it's difficult--but not impractical, not impossible. It's just another habit we need to break, and we must remember that this takes time and persistence. People who are busy and then more busy and then start not managing and losing control--when they finally change their approach and decide to follow scheduling rules, what do they find: more free time than they thought they had. (So they can be more busy--or take time out to relax and enjoy positive spaces.)

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Tysons VA: Hi. I'd like to suggest a solution to easing the stress of driving. It works for me sometimes. The next time someone cuts you off, gives you the finger, drives to the front of the exit lane and then butts in line, gives you a dirty look, tailgates you, drives the speed limit in the left lane, turns into your lane and then slows down or goes half the speed of traffic, just think of someone in your family that is known for terrible driving habits. Would you want someone retaliating and cussing at your 99 yr old grandma in the left lane just because she gave them a dirty look and the finger? Didn't think so. [edited for space}

Dr. Leon James: Good advice.

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Alexandria, Va.: Any thoughts on how to avoid tailgating? Often times I don't even realize that I'm doing it as I have so much on my mind. My husband is the one who often brings it to my attention when he's riding as a passenger.

Dr. Leon James: You've got the solution of how to retrain yourself if your husband is a passenger and is willing to remind you without getting mad or impatient or harsh in his tone--these things are so automatic. Id did for years to my poor wife when I was driving and she was trying to tell me about "passengers have rights too." So I had to change--as we describe in our book.

Also, do this exercise from our book: At the start of your trip remind yourself you're going to monitor your following distance. Do so throughout the trip--your husband can help write it down or you can dictate to a tape recorder, or take notes at the end of your trip. So keep track of what happens:

**When you follow too close **When does your attention wander **What is your reaction

Then remind yourself and think of things like this to help you stay focused:

**Is this dangerous? **What would happen in a chain reaction? **What is my responsibility to keep the driver behind from crashing in to me? **etc.

This will bring results in just a few trips of doing the exercise--and it will generalize to other aspects of your driving that may need modification.

Good luck. Let me know what happens: DrDriving@DrDriving.org  

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DC: At the risk of sounding like Pollyanna... the thing I've found that will calm me down when someone does something particularly stupid or annoying when I'm driving is to take the next opportunity to do something nice for someone, like let them in or wave them on. Otherwise I just get more and more annoyed.

Dr. Leon James: Excellent advice! And you can extend this your thoughts to encourage having positive thoughts about people (compassion, tolerance) rather the automatic negative ones we now have (intolerant, derogatory, over critical).

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Pittsburgh, PA: Dr. James-

What are some of the solutions for better enforcing aggressive or distracted driving laws- unlike speeding, these things are hard to catch (there's never a cop around when you need one....) and hard to prove.

Dr. Leon James: Our society is struggling with this issue--how to go about it, how to stay in the middle road between too much governmental control and electronic surveillance and not keeping up with problems we are facing every day relating the dangers of aggressive driving, road rage, distracting driving, hostility and stress. In our book we review some of the new aggressive driving laws and their language--the problem, as you point out, of proving the aggressive driving offense in court.

We conduct workshops for law enforcement to help them understand what is "behavioral" language in describing offenses and what is "judgmental" language that cannot be proven. Some of these are also reviewed on our site here:

http://DrDriving.org/legislation/tee_cards.htm

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Bob Levey: What strikes me about road rage is not that it exists, but that it exists among so-called "nice people." You might expect a guy who wears chains and has 132 tattoos to be violent behind the wheel. But what we're seeing now is doctors, lawyers, housewives threatening to kill their fellow motorists. Comments on this apparent sociological pusize="3le?

Dr. Leon James: Yes, it's a sociological puzzle but we understand it now. This is what we call being "rigged for road rage." It's how we are brought up: parents, other drivers, TV, commercials, car talk, car symbols, time pressure expressed in rage, and so on. Yes we are all at risk of exploding into rage when the right combination of circumstances occur. But we can change this, fortunately. It's something we can do on our own.

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Arlington, VA: Despite efforts by our Dr. Gridlock and others to get truly aggressive drivers to explain why they drive like they do, no one seems to come forward to say - I'm an aggressive driver and proud of it. Are people in denial?

Dr. Leon James: Yes. At our book signings people would pick up our book and add "It's not for me. It's for..." And when you read the stories people tell about driving things happening to them, you can see that they enjoy and are proud of being aggressive--when circumstances happen that they can define as outrageous. They, and most of us, feel that our rage is justified and the other bad person deserves to be punished, or at least, should be taught a lesson for the sake of their amendment. This is what we call "automotive vigilantism" and one in three drivers is proud of being one. But we think this is not to their benefit or to the benefit of other drivers.

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Bob Levey: Road rage seems to have become a huge issue just in the last 20 years. In that same period of time, the nation's population has grown by about 40 million, but the number of superhighways has grown by only a very small amount. Could this be the cause--just a simple matter of more rats in the same-sized maze?

Dr. Leon James: This is what I call the "occasion" for road rage. We are not rats and we don't do things for the same reasons as they do. So if we act like they act, we are doing so by choice. So we use any "occasion" or opportunity to perform our rage behavior, and we all have our favorite opportunities. But we can retrain ourselves and be safer, happier, more community oriented. Why not turn the highway into a community from what it is now--warfare.

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Arlington: Great topic. I am a very impatient driver and often yell at other cars during my 35-min. commute along Rte. 7 ("oh, you idiot!" is a common refrain). Even now, outside the car, I am firmly convinced that THEY ARE ALL TERRIBLE DRIVERS, not me. I hate seeing that angry, selfish side of me and would LOVE to be able to walk to work every day.

My question: With more cars on the road every year and congestion just getting worse, is it realistic to think road rage will subside any time soon? Improving individual driver well-being may be possible but restoring civility to our roads overall? Not likely.

Dr. Leon James: Not likely if we just let it continue. Congestion and construction are not going away for the next 20 years, or ever, according to experts. So we have got to learn to live with it. We can. It's better, much better, to manage and control our emotions as drivers, then to just let it spat and destroy and kill.

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Bob Levey: Many thanks (and happy motoring) to Dr. Leon James. Be sure to join us a week from today, April 17, when our guest on "Levey Live" will be Vance Peterson, president of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. That show will begin (as "Levey Live" always does) at noon Eastern time.

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washingtonpost.com:

Thanks to Leon James, and to everyone who joined us.

original here

By Annette Santiago/AviationNow.com

10-Aug-2001

From regulators to flight attendants and passengers, everyone is responsible for passenger safety. But when it comes to air rage, no one is quite sure how to keep everyone safe.

Following the much publicized Global Zero Air Rage Day in July, there has been much discussion about the how and why of in-flight violence, but little agreement.

(...)

The FAA's new leaflet on bad behavior - "Safety Is Everyone's Responsibility" - came out almost a month after the U.S. flight attendants' union accused government agencies of failing to protect them, and airline passengers, from "the dangers of air rage."

But even flight attendants, on the front lines of air rage, think Feinstein is missing the mark. Limiting the amount of alcohol that can be served on flights could be potentially more damaging, and a few flight attendants cite its ability to calm the nerves of some airline passengers.

"Carriers need to adopt responsible alcohol policies," says Candice Colander, a spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) Air Safety and Health Dept. "The airlines should train flight attendants to recognize drunken behavior and how to effectively cut off passengers who have had too much."

(...)

United was the first airline to distribute the FAA leaflets at hubs across the country.

The AFA points to figures from United for air rage incidents - higher than those kept by FAA - as evidence that air rage incidents, while still freak occurrences, are growing.

"We think the issue [air rage] is prevalent," says United's Meagher. "It's an industry issue and affects our flights and crew."

(...)

A sampling of ASRS reports from cabin crewmembers between October 1999 to February 2000 showed that 16 of 50 reports involved incidents of unruly passenger behavior. Three of the sixteen were alcohol-related, two of the sixteen were alcohol/tobacco-related, and one was solely tobacco-related. There was also a drug-related incident involving PCP and two bomb threats.

If alcohol is not a factor in all cases of air rage, then what is it that causes law-abiding citizens to act in a way that not only endangers themselves but others?

"We are living in the age of rage, where more of the 'me' generation times the millions of travelers equals explosive situations," says Leon James, Ph.D., a professor of traffic psychology at University of Hawaii and co-author of Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare.

"Air rage is so common that most travelers are unaware that they have it. It's just part of the background feeling that goes along with the stress of travel and transportation," James says.

The AFA, in its air rage report card, pinpointed many of these stresses: oversold flights, crowded planes, small seats, frequent delays, and flight cancellations.

James believes the airlines should, among other things, provide a continuously updated stream of accurate information and elevate the importance of the travelers' comfort.

"Apologize if you can't provide decent seating," he recommends.

James and his colleague Diane Nahl are members of a small community of scholars studying traffic psychology. In 1997 he testified before the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee about aggressive driving and road rage. He believes that the government can approach air rage the same way it has approached road rage, by giving grants to airlines and airports for proper crowd control management training.

"Air rage, like road rage, is the inability to cope with the challenges of congested traffic," he says.

The FAA does not have any immediate plans for action in the fight against air rage, but hopes that the leaflet is a first step in educating the public about the penalties for crew interference.

(...)

original here

Behavioural scientists Dr. Leon James and Dr. Diane Nahl of Hawai maintain that Road Rage - the aggressive driving epidemic - has already become the number-one transportation problem in the US. They have warned South Africans and drivers in other countries that it is now a world problem - and getting worse.

"Road rage simmers below the surface for most drivers," they say. "This emotional state is a habit we acquire in childhood while we're being driven by parents and other adults. This hostile and rebellious attitude behind the wheel is further reinforced by watching years of television where we're exposed to daily scenes of drivers behaving badly or dangerously, and having fun at it and getting away with it without consequences.

"This simmering road rage shows itself in many ways, if you care to observe yourself behind the wheel.

"Do you swear and cuss and feel like flipping others off? Do you feel gleeful when you make it across the lights, but depressed when you don't and you're 'stuck' on red? Do you break the speed limit every time you drive? Do you enjoy fantasies of revenge on another driver? Do you drive and drink? Do you party in the car while driving? Do you think only of yourself when thinking about being in a crash?

"We recommend you keep a Driving Diary. You can take notes at the end of each trip, or you can think aloud while driving and recording yourself, then listen to it later. It will show you where and when you have road rage simmering under the surface. Another useful activity is 'partnership driving' where you have your driving partner or passenger tell you what makes them feel comfortable or uncomfortable about your driving.

"This way you can have a realistic assessment of yourself as a driver, and not leave it to your own reputation or fantasy of yourself as driver."

The Hawai researchers have written what is being hailed as the definitive book on road rage. You can find out more, complete self-tests of your own driving habits and find out a lot of other driver behaviour and accident prevention information by going to http://DrDriving.org

Tips from around the world on how to avoid becoming a road rage victim - and preventing your own anger at the wheel getting out of control

Road rage is now such a serious problem that the Internet is a rich resource of advice on how to protect yourself from it.

Subject: New Book

Hello Dr. Driving,
The new book is great!

I have a comment on chapter 8. In the motorist to motorist communication section, the slowdown, danger ahead piece makes some good recommendations. Here's one that I use often, and seems to work fine. When I see debris in the road or traffic ahead of me stops suddenly, in addition to tapping my brakes, I also turn on my hazard lights (emergency flashers). This is what they are for, no?

I'll keep reading the book until it's as close to automatic as I can get it!! Still some room for improvement from all of us out there!

Best Wishes,
PL
Airport Security Tech
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Thanks for the good advice, Mr. Lubbers. Turning on the emergency flasher shows your concern for others--supportive driving, as we call it. That's the best--congratulations. Remember, the way you drive is contagious!

As an airport security technician what issues do you see happening in terms of aggressive drivers or pedestrians?

Aloha,
Leon James
DrDriving.org

By Deborah Kreuze

Peaceful coexistence between human beings and machines requires clear communication. The best systems convey information so elegantly that we hardly think about the power they give us—boundaries dissolve and we become one with our technologies. The editors of TR picked 10 of the most ingenious and important.

Loudspeaker
Touch-Tone Telephone
Steering Wheel
Magnetic-Stripe Card
Traffic Light

When African-American businessman Garrett Morgan patented the traffic light in 1923, trains had been using automated lighted signals for some time. But trains run on set schedules, in single file, and it’s no small task to stop; therefore, the default message from a train signal is “proceed.” Traffic lights for automobiles have a quite different task, and more often than we’d like, it’s to tell us to stop.

We hate being told to stop. Road-rage expert Leon James, professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, says we link self-esteem to the gas and brake pedals. “If you see a light turning yellow, you have to accelerate. If you have to stop because the light turned red, you feel crestfallen.” James calls the intersection a “psychodynamic zone.” If so, it’s a zone increasingly under the dominion of the superego rather than the id. Some new traffic lights can take pictures of the license plates of cars that run red lights. The offender later receives a ticket in the mail—or a printed driving lesson. Others show drivers their current speed. At a traffic light, says James, “a lot can be done between the city transportation department and the driver. It’s a communication hotspot.”

We are a nation of aggressive drivers. How long can we continue as a society when we kill each other on highways at an annual rate five times greater than wars have killed our soldiers since the beginning of the century? This year at least 40,000 people will lose their lives on our highways and more than 3 million will go the hospital with injuries and economic losses of over 200 billion dollars, according to the American Institute of Public Safety. Psychologically, motorists are at war with each other. In 1999 more than a dozen states passed aggressive driving laws and law enforcement around the country has stepped up various initiatives to curb aggressive drivers, and psychologists are now starting to view road rage as a very real disorder.

Leon James, PhD, and Diane Nahl, PhD, are the founders of "driving psychology" and the nation's foremost authorities on road rage and aggressive driving. They are the authors of the RoadRageous aggressive driving video course and a related book, Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare. Check out their web site, at DrDriving.org.

Chris Huffman is chief operating officer of the American Institute for Public Safety. The institute recently collaborated with such experts as James and Nahl to produce the nation's first comprehensive course devoted to changing the attitudes and behavior of aggressive drivers.

original here

WebMD Live Event Chat Transcript with Moderator Jon Roig

Event Date: 9/28/2000

Moderator: Welcome to WebMD Live. Our guests today are Leon James, PhD, Diane Nahl, PhD, and Chris Huffman. Dr. James and Dr. Nahl are the founders of "Driving Psychology" and the nation's foremost authorities on road rage and aggressive driving. They are the authors of the RoadRageous aggressive driving video course and a related book, Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare. Check out their web site at: www.DrDriving.org. Chris Huffman is chief operating officer of the American Institute for Public Safety. The institute recently collaborated with such experts as Dr. James and Dr. Nahl to produce the nation's first comprehensive course devoted to changing the attitudes and behavior of aggressive drivers. If you don't mind, I'd love it if you could tell us a bit about yourselves and your backgrounds in all of this.

Dr. Leon James: I am Dr. Leon James. I am a professor of social psychology at the University of Hawaii. A few years back, I became interested in driving personality makeovers, so that is when I realized that driving is a very deep habit, that it is reflective of one's personality; it is difficult for individuals to become aware of what kind of driver they are and what their driving personality is. So our work has to do with discovering what people think and feel behind the wheel. With that information, we are going to find better ways for people to learn how to modify their driving personality.

Dr. Diane Nahl: I am a professor at the University of Hawaii in information science. I have been interested in this since 1980 professionally, but I have also been interested in this area for most of my life, as I was raised by aggressive drivers. I was very afraid to drive myself, and I noticed that, among the people I had to drive with as a young person, they were very unwilling to take my fears into account. I got a degree in psychology and later in communications. I wanted to focus on this problem because I saw it as a public health issue.

Chris Huffman: Well, my background is, I spent the first 22 years making cars (AMC-Jeep for 11 years, Rolls Royce and Bentley Motor cars for 11 years). I lived in England, building cars for people to drive, the safest car being the Rolls Royce. Then, I went to work for the Cunard Cruise line. In the maritime industry, safety is the top point -- making it safe for passengers. For the past two years, I have been with the American Institute of Public Safety, saving lives and saving taxpayer dollars, focusing on the success of road rage courses. The American Institute for Public Safety has a web site at: www.AIPSNews.com.

Moderator: What are the most common misconceptions that you encounter about your work?

Dr. Diane Nahl: People think we're driving instructors, but actually we're driving psychologists, so we're much more concerned with how people think and problem solve and respond emotionally while they're driving. The other most common misconception is that nobody thinks that they are an aggressive driver, when really we all are, to some degree. A very common misconception is that driving aggressively is comfortable, that it's better to vent your anger than to hold it in, which isn't true, because if you vent your anger, it becomes intensified, so the effects of it become even more negative. Another misconception would be that you can teach someone a lesson and control the way they drive. This is what we call the 'vigilante spirit.' This is wrong because you can't control the behavior of other drivers, only your own behavior.

Chris Huffman: Another common misconception that we have to deal with as an educational company is that aggressive driving and treatment education is not the same as a defensive driving course, meaning, aggressive drivers require behavior modification education, which is very different from teaching defensive driving skills. When we talk to the prosecuting attorneys, we emphasize this: In order to change behavior, you need a behavior modification approach. It's about changing your attitude. One other misconception is that DUI's (driving under the influence) are the No. 1 problem on the road today, but they're not. There has been a lot of progress made in that regard. According to Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), aggressive driving is responsible for two-thirds of driving fatalities. DUI's are responsible for one-fourth of the deaths on the roads today. Aggressive driving kills four times more people than driving under the influence, so something needs to be done about it.

burtt_msn: When I was a driving student, there was not education or training on driving courtesy or "rules of the road." Is that changing for young drivers?

Chris Huffman: Virginia is the first state to pass a law requiring that driver's education classes contain education on aggressive driving behavior. I believe that this trend will expand across the country as the recognition of the size of the problem grows.

Dr. Diane Nahl: Chris is right, and there are many states now adding these components on aggressive driving to their aggressive driving laws. The California State Assembly recently passed a bill requiring an aggressive driving component in all driving education courses. This trend will continue, because the solution to this problem is education.

Dr. Leon James: George Washington is known to have copied, collected, and written up a bunch of rules that he called "rules of civility in life." This has now been reprinted on the web, so I just want to point to one statement he made, which is: "Civility is the glue which holds the nation together." So what has been happening on our highways is warfare, that is, highway warfare, which, by the way, is the subtitle of our book: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare. So unless we get civility or driving courtesy back into the expected behavior of drivers, we will weaken the bonds of our nation.

Dr. Diane Nahl: I'd like to add that we have to practice civility to be good at it. We have to flex our "civility muscles" to get good at it. It has to become a new norm.

Chris Huffman: I would like to add that for any parents or students who want to take the road rage courses, we have a distant learning home version that can be ordered by contacting us through one of our web sites at either www.DrDriving.org, or the American Institute for Public Safety at www.AIPSNews.com. There are a lot of states that have graduated drivers licensing for teenagers. In some of those states, there is ongoing driver's education training outside of the schools, meaning the parents are responsible.

Moderator: How did things get so bad on our roads?

Dr. Diane Nahl: Our most general answer is that aggressive driving is a learned habit, and that we learn aggressive driving from our parents and others who drove us as children. Children are not passive agents in the car. They actively learn and internalize the behavior and attitude of the driver. They don't realize they're learning these things. When they get their license at age 15 or 16, then they act as aggressive drivers without realizing where it came from; in other words, it's normal to be an aggressive driver.

Dr. Leon James: Another aspect of this question is to ask, "Why is it so difficult not to be aggressive?" This goes deep into the meaning and symbol that our culture has for cars and driving. For example, we acquire competitive ways of keeping track of what's going on around us on the highway. For instance, how many cars pass us by? Oh, that feels bad. How many cars did we pass? Oh, that feels good. So we acquire automatic habits of keeping track of competitive incidents, and we gunnysack so that we become angrier than the incident itself could explain. It's a boiling over of accumulated aggressive exchanges with other drivers. So we are cocked to be triggered by some unimportant incident.

Chris Huffman: In the last 15 years, there are 35 % more miles driven with an increase of road capacity of 1%, and as Dr. Nahl said, there are a slew of reasons, including the sense of anonymity one has when they are behind the wheel of the car. Dr. James refers to the driving community, but when you feel anonymous and protected by 4,000 pounds of metal, most of us don't consider the roadway a community; we consider it our sole territory, that "Only I have the right to the space ahead of me."

Moderator: mflint asks: "I have heard a lot of anecdotal information about studies done on aggressive driving behavior. I have also reviewed your web page with its 1,000+ citations, yet I still haven't seen or read a lot of quality research-based studies done on the topic. Do you know of any?"

Dr. Leon James: That's partially true in the sense that organized research hasn't really tackled the problem. It's very difficult to do research on the thoughts and emotions of the live driver in traffic. There are driving simulators, and quite a bit of research has been done using simulators. In fact, they are also now beginning to use these simulators in high schools for their driver's education classes. There is a greater recognition on the part of society in general that driver education needs to address, specifically, the issue of the driving responsibility. The RoadRageous video course is unique in this respect, because it focuses directly on what the driver's responsibility is and connects it to the driver's conscience, giving the driver the capacity to develop and strengthen the positive community aspects of driving.

Dr. Diane Nahl: The study of driving behavior, like any social behavior, is very complex and must address multiple factors. One set of studies by George Wilde addresses the issues of driver's risk management, and these are important because he discovered that while engineering can make safety improvements in the vehicle and on the highway and with law enforcement activities, to the degree that the road and car are made safer, to that degree people just increase their level of risk to their comfort level. So this means that people need to actually unlearn those comfort levels of risk, because safety improvements will not increase their risk aversion.

Chris Huffman: As safety equipment is added to automobiles such as antilock brakes, you may actually have people thinking they can take greater risks. We actually have a paradox. The safer the cars, the more risks people take.

burtt_msn: Personally, I have observed the two most common driving faults to be: failure to stay to the right in multilane roads, and just plain inattentiveness. Both of these may be linked to the use of cellular phones. What are your views on cellular phone use and legislation?

Dr. Leon James: First of all, some research that has become well-quoted in the last couple years has shown that drivers who use cellular phones behind the wheel aren't training themselves for it. They become four times more dangerous to themselves and others. In other words, they get into more crashes when they are using the phone. My reaction to this research, and it is quite preliminary right now, is that it applies to drivers multitasking when they don't appropriately train themselves. So what I recommend is not legislation against the use of cellular phones, as some countries have done, (including many states and counties). I would say that instead, what we need to take more seriously is the idea that you cannot start using communication devices in cars while moving until you train yourself appropriately.

Dr. Diane Nahl: The whole notion of inattention and distraction are very serious, and the questioner is right, those are the two most frequent complaints that we receive. However, cellular phones are not the only or most significant form of distraction. There are many distractions: passengers talking incessantly; children throwing a fit; or even controversial talk radio topics. The other day here, a woman bent down to pick up her wallet that had slid onto the floor of the car. Before she came up, she had hit another car and killed someone. There are many such incidents, besides cellular phone use. So we can't legislate against all of these devices. They do add value to the car and to the driving experience. People want to use them and often need to use them for work, so training and education are the only solutions.

Chris Huffman: I agree that legislation is not the answer; it lies in education. In regards to aggressive driving and cellular phones, there are two components that I want to address. One is my personal experience using a cellular phone. When I am having a normal conversation in the car using the cellular phone, I believe I am still a relatively safe driver. When I begin to get emotional in that conversation, I believe I become a dangerous driver. When I am behind someone who is using a cellular phone and is driving erratically, I become mad and aggressive. One of the key messages in the aggressive driver's course is to acknowledge, witness, and modify our own behavior. What saves me from riding up the escalator of emotions is that I have learned from the course to see myself getting emotional, and then I am able to modify my behavior and emotions. Without the education and training, people cannot modify their behavior and recognize what they are doing to others and themselves.

Moderator: Well, it's certainly been a pleasure having all of you here today. Do you have any closing thoughts?

Dr. Diane Nahl: I'd like to say one basic thing about aggressive driving, and that is that aggressive drivers are aggressive because they are imposing their own preferred level of risk on others. It doesn't matter how good they are at driving, others may not be as skilled and may not be able to handle maneuvers the aggressive drivers impose on them.

Chris Huffman: Just a couple of messages: acknowledge, witness, and modify. You have to tell yourself it's just not worth it. It's not worth putting your own well-being at risk by reacting to someone else's erratic behavior. The choice is yours!

Moderator: Our guests today have been Leon James, PhD, Diane Nahl, PhD, and Chris Huffman. Dr. James and Dr. Nahl are the founders of "Driving Psychology" and the nation's foremost authorities on road rage and aggressive driving. They are the authors of the RoadRageous aggressive driving video course and a related book, Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare. Check out their web site at: www.DrDriving.org. Chris Huffman is chief operating officer of the American Institute for Public Safety. The institute recently collaborated with such experts as Dr. James and Dr. Nahl to produce the nation's first comprehensive course devoted to changing the attitudes and behavior of aggressive drivers. You can find the web site for the American Institute for Public Safety at www.AIPSNews.com.

Enjoy!

Stan McWilliams
Manager Safety Information Systems
M.S. Carriers Inc.

Assault With a Deadly Steering Wheel

by Ron Corbin, PhD - Crime Prevention Specialist

The rapid population growth in Las Vegas, which brings in more vehicles, which creates the need for more street construction, which causes more congestion, all contribute to more impatience on the part of drivers. As impatience intensifies, tempers shorten and "driving courtesy" becomes non-existent. Safe driving habits become forgotten and are replaced by reckless ventures in tailgating, speeding, running stop signs and red traffic signals, excessive lane changes, all of which are many times preceded by a hand wave from the driver using only "one finger". Worst case scenarios are when tempers lead to high speed chases, or the shooting of a handgun from one vehicle towards another.

This problem goes even deeper in the psychic of a person. More people today are acquiring an arrogance of "To 'Hell' with everyone else, I've got mine,"... or a "Me first" attitude. Leon James, a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii (USA Weekend, Sept 5-7, 1997), states that the root of the problem for people's reaction to these type traffic disturbances is caused when a "...person's anger is triggered by their own self-righteous indignation."

According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, "Aggressive Driving" can be defined as "an angry motorist attempting to intentionally injure or kill another driver because of a traffic dispute." However, many accidents are caused by those drivers who really don't intend to injure or kill others, but allow their "Road Rage" mentality to override their common sense.

original here

Newspaper Stories of Road Rage Quoting Dr. Leon James

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