Basically the above; what drives people to behave in a way that is sometimes outright murderous? Who are offenders and do they have certain traits in common?
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I can’t speak as to the why, as it’s not something I understand at all, but anecdotally, I’ve ridden in cars with some of the calmest, most level-headed people who turn into psychopaths behind the wheel. It’s impossible for me to tell who will turn into a road rager, even amongst people I’ve known for my entire life.
There’s a TED talk by an anger researcher who talks about how if he wanted to design a situation to make people angry it would look a lot like driving. You’re trying to achieve a goal, people are doing things that get in the way of that, and the people getting in your way and breaking rules, often without any consequences, are nameless faceless others.
In a lot of ways, driving is a constantly high stress activity. You’re moving at high speeds, you’re interacting with the decisions of a bunch of other people that you don’t know and can’t always predict, the consequences of failure can be pretty extreme, there’s a steady stream of information that you have to process and react to. It can just be mentally draining, and many people just get irritable when they get tired.
Add to that the fact that often times people who are driving are in a hurry to get wherever they’re going, and dealing with traffic that slows them down can be very aggravating.
I think part of it is that you can’t see intent or communicate with other drivers so some people assume the worst. If someone cuts you off while driving, it can feel like they’re selfish.
Whereas if someone gets in your way walking, you both say “oops, sorry” and go about your day.
Making it easier for people to say sorry or thank you while driving would help a lot I think.
I forget where I read it, but there was some research showing two things:
first, on top of some of the other factors that other comments have already mentioned–people in cars tend to view cars *as an extension of them as a person*. So an affront to a car becomes linked in our minds as an affront upon our person.
second, being in cars adds social distance, in other words our capacity for empathy for the other person in the other car is reduced (edit: basically, we become less capable of seeing the humanity in the other person and start treating them more like an “other”). When a pedestrian accidentally walks too close to another pedestrian, the two people will basically apologize to each other, give each other more space, and then continue walking. When a car gets too close to another car, you can easily devolve into a road rage incident.
edit: what’s important to recognize is that these are not things that are the fault of the driver *per se*. these are things that are inherent to driving, at least the way cars and driving are set up right now. some people will cope better with emotions and anger. some people will not. but you can take an otherwise pleasant person and put them in a car and all of these factors combined can turn them into a barely constrained rageball. some people in urbanist circles talk derisively about “car brain” or “windshield perspective” and in a way it’s true. the physical form of cars and how we arrange our driving spaces just mess with our brains. some countries and cities and cultures do better than others in coping or arranging the built environment to lower the temperature of driving.
It’s the lack of human empathy. The same reason people leave nasty comments or get into juvenile arguments on the internet. You can’t put a face on these people, so you dehumanize. Put that into a driving situation where certain decisions may result in injury or death, and you’ve got the ingredients for limitless rage.
Im no psychologist or MD, this is an observation from someone that tries to practice mindfulness.
Most of us process all of our sensory information through an extra layer that doesn’t exist. Instead of processing experience as is, we filter it through a concept of self, as if we were living behind our heads and watching the movie about our lives. This ‘Self’ is the added layer that burdens us with misery of things past and things yet to be.
In the context of road rage, this ‘Self’ feels wronged when someone cuts in traffic or does something that seems like an attack, when it may be the case that the offending driver truly didn’t notice and is profoundly apologetic about their mistake. Some people’s ‘Self’ consume their lives, and when faced in such situations, instead of noticing their nonsensical thoughts that lead to violence, they filter the experience through that self and ask, “ they can’t do this to me! It’s so unfair” and rage out. These are the same people who allow their insecurities to consume them. All experience is filtered through “ what would people think of myself if they witness this and knew I didn’t respond” “people are gonna think I’m a bitch.”
My 2 cents
so, in addition to the other answers here, theirs a psychological element at play of distancing, whereby both the offenders car and the victims car act as a layer of “distance” from it being direct person on person violence. the offender isn’t running up to someone and punching them in their very human face, their using a metal box to cause damage to a metal box. The fact that metal box hold a human who might be injured is basically glossed over in the offenders mind, they just think they are casing property damage, no worse than, say, a jilted ex keying your car.
its just self-serving justification for the offender to rationalise away the harm they might be doing, but its very much a part of their thought process in many cases.
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