Most of us driving these days have experienced a scary encounter with road rage. On a minor level, such as a person making hand signs or cursing at you through the window, to a person chasing your car or trying to drive you off the road. It is so weird and terrifying when a stranger picks you out of the crowd to focus their insanity on. A few years ago I passed a man on the highway traveling at a normal speed. For some reason it tripped some trigger in him. This man chased me, pulled up beside me and tried to run me off the road and continued to follow me to my driveway. I knew not to drive into my driveway and drove into a fire department near our home. It took me a long time to get over the experience of this road rage. I mean these people really kill other people they don’t know.
I was sick with the recent images in the media of the New York family traveling in their Range Rover who experienced a terrifying experience of road rage. The Range Rover was surrounded by motorcyclists who followed their car until it stopped in traffic. The moment the car stopped, motorcyclists attacked the car and drug the driver out of the car and beat him horribly. His wife would have been beaten as well if a stranger did not intervene to stop this atrocious act of road rage. There was a 2-years old child in the car as well.
In just the last week an Atlanta woman was chased by a relentless raging driver into her gated apartment home and was shot. This was such a senseless tragic result of road rage. Recently near Atlanta, police arrested a man who threatened another driver with a gun in a road rage incident. I was horrified when I heard that a fast driving driver became enraged when a mini van driver was moving slowly. This driver got so angry he shot into the mini van hitting a 4-years old toddler in his car seat. This pandemic is not just in the United States. A recent BBC Wales survey shoes more than 50% of drivers in Wales claim to be victims of road rage.
Doctors are now suggesting that the perpetrators of road rage have a condition called intermittent explosive disorder. Intermittent explosive disorder is when a person has multiple outbursts of anger that are not proportion to the situation. These angry outbursts include threats or aggressive actions.
Each of us needs to take these people very seriously. They are ticking time bombs just waiting to explode on someone. If this type of road rage happens to you, call 911 immediately, don’t make eye contact, and get your smart phone to find the nearest police station or fire department to drive to. Please take these lethal drivers with this condition seriously. I never want anyone to ever experience the terror of the recent event, and what I went through as a crazed man tried to literally kill me on the road.