Road Rage
Can you imagine being shot and killed with a razor sharp 29-inch arrow from a crossbow just because you may have accidentally cut someone off while driving? This actually happened to a 42 year old man from Massachusetts who got involved in a dispute with an angry driver on the Interstate back in February of 1994. This is one very extreme case that illustrates how out of control people are becoming. People are allowing minor incidents to escalate into vicious acts that some would call Road Rage. The phrase Road Rage entered the Englis
Whether it was an escalated incident as I described earlier, or from someone tailgating to prove a point and causing a fatal accident. The act of Road Rage is a learned cultural habit of retaliation. Many of the more minor incidents such as use of the car horn, come from driver frustration than anything that comes close to a "rage" and it would be unimaginable for most of these drivers to take this frustration further and engage in more violent acts. When we are frustrated in heavy traffic we have a choice as to how we are going to respond. Barry Elliot, a Research and Communication Psychologist, states that there is no scientific definition of Road rage, but that it is a term coined by the media to describe a range of anti-social behaviors and/or acts of aggression which occur on the road. Linking these two very different behaviors under the same category only promotes the idea that the frustration that many drivers feel could easily become more violent. " This definition is not entirely accurate. The range of behaviors can range from minor instances such as gestures and use of the car horn, to more serious violent acts such as assault or even murder. The Oxford English dictionary defines Road Rage as "a violent anger caused by the stress and frustration of driving in heavy traffic. A recent study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration revealed road rage to be responsible for 66% of all annual traffic fatalities. Road rage is not necessarily caused by traffic, no matter how heavy.
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Acceptance Essays
