Navigating the anger
Traffic is today’s urban quagmire and many of us can’t stand it. But what causes some of us to express our frustration as road rage? Let’s take a Deep Dive.
🚙 Aggressive driving refers to behaviour that carelessly endangers another driver, but road rage involves a purposeful act or intent to harm.
🙋🏻♂️ Research suggests that age may play a part, with younger drivers being more likely to experience road rage than their older counterparts, especially younger men.
💥 Drivers who experience road rage report more near-accidents and amass more speeding tickets than low-anger drivers.
🧘🏻♀️ Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and common relaxation techniques such as deep breathing have been shown to effectively decrease road rage.
QUOTABLE
“Road rage is the expression of the amateur sociopath in all of us.”
- Robert Breault, opera singer
BY THE NUMBERS
500% There’s been a 500 percent increase in road rage-related fatal car accidents in the US between 2006 and 2015.
75% The most common form of “abuse” for the average person—leaning on the horn—stands at 75 percent.
72,000 According to the Metro Manila Development Authority, most of the region’s 72,000 road crashes in 2022 are due not to human error but to road rage.
QUIZ
Which generation most often experiences road rage?
A. Baby boomers
B. Millennials
C. Gen Z
Scroll to the bottom for the answer.
DID YOU KNOW?
While speeding is among the top behaviours manifested by aggressive driving, the average amount of time saved on an 8km trip while driving 104km/h on a 72km/h posted road is only 1.9 minutes.
GEN.T x INNOPARK
Raymond Mak is an indoor farmer who doesn’t own any farms. Instead, his company Farmacy empowers other people to grow food everywhere. He realised that the vegetables he ate were substandard when he had the chance to discover what good ones tasted like during a volunteer trip to Jiangxi, China. Read how Farmacy is integrating farming with data.
THE EDIT
🤖 Smarter and calmer than us. Automotive engineers and designers are using artificial intelligence to curb road rage.
👩🏻⚖️ Law and order. Countries around the world such as the Philippines and Japan are taking measured steps to penalise road rage.
👣 Take a hike. Public transportation is less stressful than driving but pedestrians are typically the least stressed group.
WATCH
What should you do when you encounter a driver with road rage? Here’s how to stay safe in a confrontation.
THE FULL PICTURE
Heavy traffic is frustrating, but getting cut off and tailgating are what sets people off the most when they’re on the road.
KEY PLAYER
Uri Levine
The co-founder of Waze, Uri Levine understands that driving can be difficult. Acquired by Google in 2013 for $1.3 billion, Waze has now collaborated with the popular meditation app, Headspace, to create a newer, more mindful navigation system meant to help drivers “find more joy and meaning on the road”.
HONOUREE TO KNOW
Jason Yuen
While in university, Jason Yuen was struck by the unpredictable schedules of the minibuses that took him to the campus. His answer was Socif, a smart transport and mobility company that has been engaged by the Hong Kong government’s Transport Department to provide ETA (estimated time of arrival) solutions to the city’s entire minibus industry.
ONE FINAL THING
When it comes to man versus car, the now-retired Olympian, Usain Bolt, may not be able to beat the Ferrari’s 300km/h top speed. But with the Ferrari accelerating at 8.17 m/s2 and Bolt at 9.5 m/s2, the greatest track athlete accelerates faster than all cars in comparison.
