According to a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, there are more than 1,200 incidents of road rage on average reported per year in the United States. These rates rose yearly throughout the six years of the study.[2] Studies have found that individuals with road rage were predominantly young (33 years old on average) and 96.6% male.[3]
To protect yourself against road rage you should:
- Don’t look at other drivers. If you make eye contact with someone, that can provoke a situation. It could make your road rage build if you see them make a gesture or hear them yell at you. Just ignore drivers
- Leave on time. Sometimes road rage gets going because people are in a hurry. Leave on time so you don’t feel rushed. If you feel less rushed, then you will have less of a reason to get upset by other drivers.
- Allow for mistakes. If someone honks at you, don’t honk back. If you get cut off, don’t try to cut them off. Reacting is the worse way to deal with someone with road rage. Realize that people do stupid things. People talk on their cell phone, eat, and put on make-up while they are driving. Just realize that they do stupid things and move on. This could also be said that drivers are only human. You will do stupid things on the road too, so keep that in mind.
- Don’t make eye contact. Act like your oblivious to the situation. Someone with road rage wants to get a rise out of you. If they see that you didn’t react to their actions at all, they will move on to their overly aggressive driving only don’t let yourself be distracted. Someone with road rage will react if they see you distracted by talking on a cell phone, or doing something else other than driving. Just focus on your driving to give them less of a reason to be upset at you. https://axleaddict.com/safety/How-to-Handle-Road-Rage
