You’re a well-put-together person. You’re kind to strangers, hold the door for the person behind you at the shopping mall entrance, always tip well, and love your spouse and children. People just really like you.
All that changes when you get behind the wheel of an automobile. Have you ever stopped to wonder why?
How is it that you can be such an amazing human being off the roads, and then turn into either a) a selfish monster from hell — willing to mow down grandma in order to get a thirty foot advantage over the next car, willing to endanger the lives of a sweet, little family in a minivan just so you can get to your destination four minutes earlier — or b) a quivering ball of cowardly jelly?
Let’s say that early one Saturday morning, you decide you want to surprise your still-sleeping family with breakfast. Happy and hopeful for the day, you jump in the car to take a quick jaunt down to your favorite local donut shop. You don’t get a quarter mile from the house when some bozo in a jacked-up Ford F-350 decides that, of all the open spaces on the quiet streets of your little neighborhood at 6:30am, he likes the space about 48 inches from your rear bumper. Instantly, your mood goes from happy and hopeful to furious or scared. Or both.
Why do you respond this way? Why do we respond that way? The simple answer is that the threat represented by the jerk in the Ford causes an autonomic, physiological, biochemical response called “fight or flight.” Those are the two possible responses to such stress: anger and aggression, or fear and the need to quickly get away.
Fight or flight comprises the great messy stew that are the roads. Somebody cuts you off, you get angry, so you cut the next guy off. Somebody scares you by pulling up on your tail, so you speed up and tailgate the next guy. Next thing you know, you’re either fearfully pulled over to the far lane driving 30 when everyone else is doing 70mph, or you’re the one in the F-350, terrorizing good people.
It seems an inescapable cycle. But it is possible to decide to check out of the game and find peace on the roads. In the next post, I’ll tell you how.