A fellow named Scott was doing about 60 in the “fast” lane of the Eisenhower Expressway one evening when he came up behind a driver poking along at less than 50.
Scott gave a quick flash of his brights to let the other guy know he wanted to pass.
Which sparked an incident that got very ugly very quickly.
“Not only did he not move into the next lane, but the moron actually slammed on his brakes,” Scott recounted.
So Scott hit the brakes and then moved into the adjacent lane to pass. As he went by, he tossed a little kerosene on the flame in order to let the other guy know “what I thought of his driving abilities” before returning to the fast lane.
That’s when the other driver veered onto the shoulder and–unsuccessfully as it turned out–tried to pass on the left.
“The rest of the trip westbound was spent constantly checking for this idiot in my mirror to make sure he didn’t try another pinheaded move,” Scott said.
The story doesn’t end here.
Scott exited the Ike at Austin “and found to my great displeasure that my new best buddy had done the same,” he said. “As we waited on the exit ramp for the light to turn green, I looked in my mirror just in time to see this caveman approaching my car on foot with some type of club or bat in his hand.
“Luckily, the light had turned green, and I was able to take off before he reached my vehicle,” Scott said. “However, I was forced to go the wrong way down a one-way street.”
Scary stuff. But, alas, streets and expressways have become tinderboxes and confrontations such as this are everyday happenings. It’s the highway as war zone.
At one end of the spectrum are crimes of the worst magnitude: people shooting and stabbing other people–the things that make it into the newspaper and onto the 10 o’clock news.
Then there are the physical assaults: drivers punching other drivers, spraying them with disabling sprays, whacking them or their cars with blunt instruments kept at the ready, using their vehicles as battering rams or tossing missiles toward their antagonists.
In California, police have recorded incidents in which everything from a bowling ball to a grenade (though there’s no record that the thing exploded) have been launched out of car windows at fellow motorists, according to research by Raymond Novaco of the University of California at Irvine, who has studied aggression on the highway.
That’s not to mention motorists who brandish weapons in dustups that fall just short of violence.
On top of all this is something apparent to everybody who drives: a simple loss of courtesy on the road and a deterioration of manners.
It’s almost as if one person’s respect for another diminishes when both are behind the wheel of a car or truck.
Consider drivers who:
– Force their way ahead of others into long lines of vehicles waiting to turn or merge;
– Refuse to let motorists into traffic from side streets or parking lots;
– Don’t bother to signal a simple thanks when another driver lets them into traffic or extends some other common courtesy;
– See no need to signal a turn to those behind them;
– Feel free to change lanes at will, cutting off other motorists;
– Hit the horn at the slightest provocation;
– Use bright lights to vent hostility;
– Shout the vilest obscenities;
– Make nasty gestures.
Regarding that last point, what is it about the single-finger salute that’s made it such a popular form of highway communication?
A 1989 survey of more than 2,000 Southern California residents found that 38 percent admitted having made obscene gesticulations to other motorists. In two surveys of university students, one in 1988, the other in 1993, Novaco found that more than 5 percent reported making such gestures weekly.
(More troubling, perhaps, was the finding that nearly 21 percent of students said they had chased another driver–including 11.3 percent of female respondents.)
“The thing about obscene gestures is you have an opportunity to escape,” Novaco said. “You’re in your car, somewhat protected, and you can drive away. You have people doing things on the road they would not do in a bar, for example, or on the sidewalk.”
(But gestures can lead to tragedy, too. Obscene signals were exchanged between the occupants of two cars in a traffic flare-up on the Stevenson Expressway early one January morning in 1989. A man in one of the autos rolled down his window and fired a pistol at the other car, fatally wounding a passenger.)
The anonymity that automobiles provide removes another barrier to aggression, experts say.
“People in an anonymous situation are more likely to engage in rude behavior and unscrupulous behavior,” doing things “they never would do if their mother were there,” said Patricia Waller, director of the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute.
Some of this facelessness is linked to the loss of community in many city neighborhoods and suburbs, she said.
People are more mobile than in earlier times, when they tended to live for years in the same place, and they’re more isolated from one another. Neighbors don’t know one another.
Thus, there is less hesitation to flip the bird to another driver who, in the past, just might have turned out to be a local clergyman or teacher .
The possibility of knowing the other guy makes a difference.
Just ask the west suburbanite who was heading to work downtown on Congress Parkway one day when he and another motorist found themselves jockeying for a spot in the same lane. The driver in the second car blew his horn and appeared to be getting ready to shout and issue the usual gesture when the first motorist smiled and waved.
“Obviously, he couldn’t place me,” the driver of the first car said later. “But he was not confident enough to flip off somebody who he might have to deal with in real life.”
Experts believe that a variety of other factors contribute to the increase in highway hostility.
They cite the “road warrior” mentality popularized on television and in movies; the stress and increased opportunity for conflict that comes with growing traffic congestion; frustration stemming from job loss and increased stress for those who’ve been able to remain on the employment rolls; the growing view of the automobile as personal territory to be defended; and an erosion of law enforcement on the road (when’s the last time you saw traffic obeying the speed limit on the Dan Ryan Expressway or the Tri-State Tollway?) that has led to the perception that it’s easy to get away with doing something wrong.
“It’s a vicious cycle. . . . Discourtesy breeds more discourtesy.”said F. Scott Geller, professor of psychology at Virginia Tech and head of the school’s Center for Applied Behavior Systems.
What to do?
Using public transportation instead of the car whenever possible is one avoidance strategy.
But for those who aren’t about to abandon their autos for the bus, Geller believes the answer lies in a conscious effort by motorists at “active caring.”
“It’s the notion that people have to go beyond the call of duty for the safety of others,” he said. It’s the concept of being courteous so other motorists, in turn, will be courteous to drivers they subsequently encounter.
Such behavior carries the prospect of substituting the cycle of aggression with a cycle of respect, Geller believes.
“We need to say, `Look, it’s repairable,’ ” he said. “We are not going to win the battle in one day, but if we believe it takes everybody adding their small part, we can really make a difference.”
“It may sound trite,” said the University of Michigan’s Waller, “but there is something to be said for this concept of practicing `random acts of kindness.’ “
For those who consider this approach too saccharine, perhaps the best strategy is just to take a deep breath when confronted by a highway maniac, then another. And get out of the way.
Illinois motorists, incidentally, have a way to make a tangible statement in support of tranquility on the road. For $88–with a portion of the money earmarked for violence prevention programs–they can purchase a special new license plate.
It depicts a dove in flight carrying an olive branch.
