Type the words “road rage” into any search engine and the number of cases
worldwide is staggering. It is a social phenomenon that seems to have left
no country untouched and around the globe the amount of road-rage incidents
ending in murder is growing. Recently, Highway 138 in California was closed
after workmen widening the road were subjected to death threats and
ball-bearing gun shootings.
Respondents to the annual motoring survey by Saga said that they were as
afraid of being a victim of road rage as they were of having an accident
and, if a report from Drivesafe, an independent road safety organisation, is
to be believed, they are right to be worried.
Drivesafe’s Courtesy on the Road report, conducted and analysed by Aston
University, threw up the figure that 16 per cent of motorists admit to
initiating a road-rage incident, which does not seem a huge amount until you
consider that, according to the DVLA, there are 34.5 million driving
licences held in the UK and 16 per cent of that is more than 5.5 million.
If my experience a couple of weeks ago is anything to go by, when I became one
of the 43 per cent on the receiving end of road rage, some putative
licence-holders think that the best form of defence is attack.
Turning right out of a junction at traffic lights, I edged forward because
there was a young female learner in a Red Driving School car stranded in the
middle of the main road trying to turn right into my road. But because her
lights were red, she had decided to wait in the middle of the road. I
motioned for her – no hooting, no irritation – to complete the turn because
she was way beyond the lights and had blocked the junction. My
three-year-old and I did not even break from our singing until she then
started giving me nonHighway Code hand signals and a mouthful of abuse.
Fay Goodman, Drivesafe’s founder, believes that education is the key to
changing attitudes behind the wheel and that is echoed by David Henry, the
managing director of LVG, Red’s parent company. “As a driving school, under
no circumstances would we condone that behaviour. It is against all our
principles,” he said.
Henry was as surprised as I at the events, given that learners are usually on
the receiving end of such behaviour. “They are quite regularly ‘saluted’,”
he said. “And people can be quite reckless in their need to pass a learner.
There are some saints, though, who wait patiently while a car stalls 18
times in front of them.”
As experienced drivers, we are supposed to give learners time and space to
carry out manoeuvres – which is supposed to be for their protection, not
ours – but maybe if we extended that courtesy to all road users, our roads
would be a safer and less combative place to be.
I don't know if this is a general impression, but from what I have seen, the people most likely to come up with the rude signs and gestures seem to be the ones who have just done something really careless, and obviously know it.
Returning from a long trip last Friday I saw two incidents in 200 yards of drivers who tried to overtajke in the left hand lane of a slip road, then abruptly pulled over to the right, causing harsh braking and possibly harsh language from the following drivers who were forced to screech to a halt.
In both cases the "offending" driver waved the finger (or similar gestures) then sped away, in one case running a red light.
Do others see this frequently?
Steve Graham, Wokingham, UK
I was interested to know the real definition of the bird or the one finger salute-as reading in the local press here in the UAE - a South African a pilot has just lost his job and been deported from Dubai -as a result of allegedly using the one finger salute - after an incident and was spotted by a traffic policemen-no re-offending here for him!!.
Is there a true definition except the one from Top Gun with TC. - eg the naval handbook of signals-where did it come from and what does it mean-in any universal language ??
there ought to be a handbook of rude hand signals -and what they actually mean:-))
Dr.Keith Skelton, Dubai , UAE
For your information, I've never experienced "road rage" in Japan. Be rash to say it never happens, but it isn't anything like as common as it is in the UK. But then we have a polite, well ordered society.
So how are them anger management classes going?
Andrew Milner, Yokohama, Kanagawa