Madame Suzanne, a retired federal director and Abuja resident said, she was driving on a hold up, and suddenly noticed a young man swerved past her by the side and blocked her, and started screaming, “take this thing off the road.”
Not sure of what was really the problem, Madame Suzanne said she wound up all her windows, and just sat in her car, baffled! After a few minutes, she noticed that another man, in his middle ages came down from his car and commanded the youngman harassing her to vamoose, “don’t you have respect? This woman is old enough to be your mother,” hi the man said. He was the one who saved the situation. He helped to clear the way, letting her pass, and then traffic continued to move from there on.
That was road rage!
Madame Suzanne didn’t start one, but she experienced it firsthand. Whatever may have caused the young man to exhibit such anger at Madame Suzanne, she didn’t know, but said she felt so disrespected and shocked at the same time.
We’ve all felt frustration while driving at some point. Perhaps someone cuts you off, runs a stop sign next to you, merges or overtakes you improperly. But the line between irritation and road rage is whether or not retaliatory action is taken or not. But road rage is pls something that endangers the lives of everyone around, both those driving and not.
Road rage is explosive anger caused by inconveniences and incidents that occur while driving. It is most often wielded in a retaliatory fashion, the raging driver believes that they have been wronged in some way, anger gets the better of them, and they take revenge on the perceived wrongdoer.
The most common forms of road rage include: Yelling, Honking, Tailgating, Following the perceived wrongdoer, Blocking traffic or preventing drivers from changing lanes, Purposely cutting off other cars, Initiating confrontation outside of the car, Intentionally ramming, Speeding, Weaving, Driving on sidewalk or median among others.
While most instances of road rage result in shouting expletives and nothing more, this is not always the case.
Road rage causes deaths, injuries
Road rage, according to researchers has, in some cases, led to violence. In fact, around 12,610 injuries and 218 murders have been attributed to road rage globally in the past seven years. An estimated 37 percent of aggressive driving incidents in the United States involve firearms. It is in fact, a factor in more than 50 percent of all car crashes that end in fatality, according to studies.
In a separate year-long study, road rage resulted in about 30 deaths and 1,800 injuries per year.
A recent study by the Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC) shows that around one-third of Abuja road users are involved in drunk driving. Road users who were married engaged in more frequent drink driving than road users who were single, and the association was statistically significant.
A high percentage of Abuja road users also admitted to using mobile phones while driving. However, while examining the core causes of road rage, it is important to note that attitude is a major factor in causing road rage.
These statistics are not meant to alarm, but to illustrate the realities and possibilities of taking action against strangers on the road.
So, what kind of road rage have you ever experienced or witnessed? 21st CENTURY CHROCICLE put this question out to some residents of Abuja. The responses were quite interesting.
Instances of road rage
Usman Musa, a man of about 40 said his friend one day gave him a ride from work home. Somewhere along the way, at a traffic hold up, his friend became infuriated at the constant honking of the car just behind them. In response, his friend just stopped the car in the middle of the road, switched off the engine, and popped his hand out the window and was waving at the vehicles behind to ‘fly, fly’’. Musa said, he felt so embarrassed, seen that there was a quick line up of cars behind them and no one could move. He ‘begged’ his friend to just let it slide and move. But his friend was too angry to calm immediately, and so stayed there for up to three minutes. Of course you would expect, there was a lot of cursing and swearing.
Linus Matthew, a road user in Abuja, said he has been driving for over 25 years. And in all these years he has never been involved in any road rage. However, he caught himself yelling at someone who hit his car for not just cause one day from work. He said the Keffi -Abuja road is a very busy road with people using their bravest maneuvering skills, especially during the rush hours. Matthew said, that evening he found himself in the middle of about five lines formed by drivers on a road originally designed to accommodate two cars and a road shoulder that should accommodate motor cycles and pedestrians. But cars occupied everywhere, making traffic to stand still. This gridlock took more than thirty minutes to start clearing up.
Matthew said, however, when he made to move, a car in front of him, while trying to change lanes, rolled back on reverse and rammed into him. Just as ‘’I made to come out of my car, the same car zoomed forward and hit the man in front of him. At this point, anger welled up in me, and I yelled at the man, ’you hit my car, Man!’’. Matthew said, his trainings over the years were just what helped him to calm himself in this situation. He said, he believed that the man driving that car was not licensed to drive, or had drunk alcohol on his way from the office.
What psychologists say
Psychologists at the Department of Psychology in University of Ibadan, said personality traits and job stress are considered as independent variables in drivers’ angry behaviors on the roads.
A research conducted on a group of 341 commercial drivers and 372 non-commercial drivers in Ijebu Ode, using Anger Driving Behavior and Job Stress Scales shows that participants with high extraversion significantly reported higher driving anger behavior than those with low extraversion.
Also, participants with high level of job stress significantly scored higher on the measure of driving anger behavior than those with low level of job stress. This implied that jobs stress and anger behavior are major factors in road rage cases.
Asked whether Road Rage is a form of mental disorder, Wantor Terngu Torkula, a psychologist in Abuja said, “not really. Just a bout of overwhelming anger takes people over, and they lose control of themselves.”
What FRSC is doing
In an effort to stem the spate of road crashes resulting from road rage, the Zonal Commander, Zone 7 of the FRSC, Mr Jonas Agwu, in a recent statement, blamed road rage on recklessness.
Mr Agwu noted that Abuja had become an unsafe place for road users because of recklessness from drivers. He also warned that the Corps would in this year 2021, strengthen enforcement and prosecution of road traffic offenders with active collaboration of police and judiciary. The zonal
He said the corps will soon embark on educational training programmes and psychotherapy for both commercial and non-commercial drivers
Although there is no known established road traffic legislation against rage rage, the FRSC offences list has fines for offenses like road obstruction, dangerous driving, drunk driving and mobile phone violations while driving.
