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Q&A With Bob Levey
Washington Post Columnist
Tuesday, April 10, 2001; Noon EDT

"Levey Live" appears Tuesdays at noon EDT. Your host is Washington Post columnist Bob Levey. This hour is your chance to talk directly to key Washington Post reporters and editors, local officials and people in the news.

Today, Bob’s guest is Dr. Leon James, co-author of the book, “Road Rage and Aggressive Driving.”

Do you try to get where you’re going in the shortest time possible? Do you cuss at or retaliate against pushy drivers? Do you ever feel like giving tailgaters a “brake job”? Do you regularly take risks and exceed speed limits? Join Bob Levey and the author of “Road Rage” as they explore these aggressive driving maneuvers and how to avoid becoming victim to them.

Dr. Leon James

”Road Rage” examines the psycho-legal context of a growing social epidemic and provides instructions for putting the brakes on highway aggression by restoring civility and safety to our roads.

University of Hawaii professor Leon James is a co-founder of “driving psychology.” He is the nation’s foremost authority on road rage and aggressive driving and is co-author of the RoadRageous aggressive driving video course used in driving instruction. James also operates the DrDriving.org web site.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Bob Levey: Good morning, Dr. James (it is unquestionably morning in Hawaii!), and thanks very much for joining us. Let's begin with a question about remorse. Do those who give vent to road rage ever feel it? Do they ever apologize to their victims?

Dr. Leon James: Unfortunately anyone may uncontrollably explode, though the point at which we do this, and why, and how, depend on individual differences and background. But I have found in my research that all of us are at risk of rageful behavior, though most of us have strong inhibitions against expressing it as violence.

Bob Levey: Pet theory: We'd have far less road rage if people viewed their cars as machines, and not as extensions of their very selves. You agree?

Dr. Leon James: Yes, many drivers have unrealistic attitudes about their cars. This is something we all have to some extent since we're all raised on TV and its images.

Sterling, VA: Do you think the fact that many drivers are not paying attention to their driving because they are using cell phones, eating, reading, etc. is contributing to this rage? I know I get aggrevated by a person's inattention to driving that causes me to miss a light that will require a 3 minute wait. One of these is bad enough, but when it is two or three times per communte, it does get frustrating. I think it is time that drivers be ticketed for inattention to driving.

Dr. Leon James: Inatention or "distracted" driving is the cuase of many of the 6 million crashes we have in this country every year. I've always advocated that we train ourselves to use the new car equipment like phones and interactive services. If people won't take time to train themselves I think the government will have to step in with new licensing regulations, courses, etc.

Bob Levey: Isn't it true that in a trip of 20 miles, if you cut in and out of traffic and go 60 miles an hour instead of 55, you'll save only about two minutes and 30 seconds?

Dr. Leon James: I recommend that everyone who is a "rushing maniac" at the wheel (like I used to be before I became a "reformed driver") actually monitor their traffic time. Write down when you start and drive your usual way. Write down when you get there. Next day do the same but drive differently, I would say more peacefully and courteously, with less stress and pressure. Now compare the the two times. I predict no more than a ten percent difference. The average US commute is 30 mminutes (surpisingly short!) and so on the average it would make only a 3-min. difference on whether you rush like a maniac or drive peacefully.

Virginia: I drive a sporty, fast car and often find that people want to race with me. I'm not normally that type, but when someone challenges me, I find myself becoming competitive and I tend to play along.

Any suggestions on how to turn off these emotions and ignore the challenger?

Dr. Leon James: Good you asked that question--because, as you realize, you're at risk of ending up doing something that could be a disaster and the end of your enjoyment of riding around in your beloved car. Please read our book for actual exercises you need to do when you drive. These are "mental" exercises because the problem has to do with your, and everyone else's, habits and thoughts about cars and drivers. We get these mental and emotional habits from childhood onward through many things in our society.
Also, you can go to our Web site to see many of these exercises and "driving personality makeovers"--Web address is
http://DrDriving.org

NYC: You say that most people have strong inhibitions against violence. But do you think that as more and more incidents of violent road rage are reported that people start to think that it's ok to act out? An "everyone else is doing it..." kind of mentality? It used to be that we had inhibitions against being rude to others or saying rude things we were thinking, but those inhibitions seem to have been removed. I'm also concerned that most discussions about road rage seem to place blame on others, rather than questioning am I doing these things?

Dr. Leon James: Excellent way of putting it! Yes, this is the crux of most of the problem--which is:

**200 billion hostile warlike threatening exchanges in the US per day among the 125 million drivers on the road every day

**over 6 million major injuries (that's 40 million in ten years!!!

**42,000 deaths a year in this country alone (it's a worldwide phenomenon)

Driviing is the most dangerous thing we do on a routine basis--let's train ourselves seriously to cut most of the problem. This means training our attitudes--What is our contribution to this problem of highway warfare? It takes sytematic self-observation--as we explain in the book

Bob Levey: I have never cursed out a fellow driver (or taken a whack at him with a tire iron). But when I find myself "trapped" behind a slowpoke, I tend to root for him in an ironic kind of way. "Come on, babycakes, you can do it," I'll say, aloud, even when I'm alone in my car. Am I candidate for Dr. James's couch, or am I handling highway stress the way I should?

Dr. Leon James: When we start monitorin ourselves behind the wheel--we call it "self-witnessing myself as a driver"--we discover that we were raised to be aggressive behind the wheel. This includes competitive and hostile, even denigrating. It's a mental habit, automatic, almost unconscious. It's a cause of stress and negativity--both very bad for our health and happiness. The challenge is to change this mental set from negative to positive. We say from being an "aggressive driver" to a "supportive driver."

Bob Levey: As a major non-fan of SUVs, I have to ask..... Do you see more road rage episodes that involve drivers of these hugh machines, as opposed to people who drive smaller vehicles?

Dr. Leon James: Up to last year our research about the attitudes of drivers showed that SUV drivers saw themselves as more aggressive and described themselves on the polls as doing aggressive things more often than drivers of other cars (except sports cars--their drivers also described themselves as more aggressive). But now this may be changing since so many more people drive SUVs and since SUVs have had problems aired in the media. Tos ees some of the results, look in this article:
http://www.aloha.net/~dyc/surveys/survey2/interpretations.html

DC: Dr. James,

You live in Hawaii. Do you see less evidence of road rage there, or is the problem just as bad as it is elsewhere? The reason I ask is because Hawaii is known to be more relaxed and laid back.

Dr. Leon James: Yes, Hawaii is indeed a paradise. But unfortunately we can be in emotional torture and stress anywhere. When Hawaii drivers sit in traffic for one hour on their way to work, and then something unexpected happens to make it worse, they are emotionally challenged in the same way as all drivers everywhere. It's the same emotional dynamic. Our news media regularly cover road rage duels in our paradise. Some of these you'll find on my site at:

http://www.aloha.net/~dyc/reviews.html

Bob Levey: My favorite road rage story: a man approaches a four-way stop at the same time as a car to his right. He motions to that driver to go ahead. The other driver slams his car into "Park," hops out, angrily approaches the man who was trying to do him a favor and accuses him of making an obscene gesture!
Comments?

Dr. Leon James: We discuss in our book the need for "emotional intelligence" as a driver and we have some exercises that help you improve your Emotional IQ. Your story exemplifies the general tendency we all have of misreading cues. We are in a rageful state when we drive--seething with anger and frustration underneath, or in the open. In this mentality, our thoughts are skewed or biased, even irrational. So one exercise to improve your Emotionl IQ as a driver is to try to think of all sorts of reasons why somebody is doing something that you think is strange or offensive. Flipping me off or:

**Exercising his finger (he's got a cramp in it) (he's a magician and needs his fingers to stay quick)

** You give the next one (if you make it funny your rageful mood could depart from you for a while...)

Arlington, Va.: We currently medicate children that act out aggressively in school. Do you think we should start doing the same thing for chronic road rage "problem children"?

(Providing we could catch them, tie them down, and jam the pills in their mouths, that is.)

Dr. Leon James: We can all give in to all sorts of fnatasies--it's a symptom of rage. We delight in them--that's another symptom. We laugh at them and like to tell them to others--that's a symptom of rage. The point is: there is no benefit to all this--it's negative. We've got to take charge of our thoughts and emotions--clean things up. Why not reduce stress, be a civil person, feel connected to others on the road like it's ahighway community? OK, it's not easy, but it's worth the national effort. It's worth it.

Bob Levey: One of the tips you offer in your book is to budget extra time before a car trip so you won't get upset if someone or something slows you down. But oh-so-often, this is impossible and impractical. What then?

Dr. Leon James: Yes, it's difficult--but not impractical, not impossible. It's just another habit we need to break, and we must remember that this takes time and persistence. People who are busy and then more busy and then start not managing and losing control--when they finally change their approach and decide to follow scheduling rules, what do they find: more free time than they thought they had. (So they can be more busy--or take time out to relax and enjoy positive spaces.)

Tysons VA: Hi. I'd like to suggest a solution to easing the stress of driving. It works for me sometimes. The next time someone cuts you off, gives you the finger, drives to the front of the exit lane and then butts in line, gives you a dirty look, tailgates you, drives the speed limit in the left lane, turns into your lane and then slows down or goes half the speed of traffic, just think of someone in your family that is known for terrible driving habits. Would you want someone retaliating and cussing at your 99 yr old grandma in the left lane just because she gave them a dirty look and the finger? Didn't think so. [edited for space}

Dr. Leon James: Good advice.

Alexandria, Va.: Any thoughts on how to avoid tailgating? Often times I don't even realize that I'm doing it as I have so much on my mind. My husband is the one who often brings it to my attention when he's riding as a passenger.

Dr. Leon James: You've got the solution of how to retrain yourself if your husband is a passenger and is willing to remind you without getting mad or impatient or harsh in his tone--these things are so automatic. Id did for years to my poor wife when I was driving and she was trying to tell me about "passengers have rights too." So I had to change--as we describe in our book.

Also, do this exercise from our book:
At the start of your trip remind yourself you're going to monitor your following distance. Do so throughout the trip--your husband can help write it down or you can dictate to a tape recorder, or take notes at the end of your trip. So keep track of what happens:

**When you follow too close
**When does your attention wander
**What is your reaction

Then remind yourself and think of things like this to help you stay focused:

**Is this dangerous?
**What would happen in a chain reaction?
**What is my responsibility to keep the driver behind from crashing in to me?
**etc.

This will bring results in just a few trips of doing the exercise--and it will generalize to other aspects of your driving that may need modification.

Good luck. Let me know what happens:
DrDriving@aloha.net

DC: At the risk of sounding like Pollyanna... the thing I've found that will calm me down when someone does something particularly stupid or annoying when I'm driving is to take the next opportunity to do something nice for someone, like let them in or wave them on. Otherwise I just get more and more annoyed.

Dr. Leon James: Ecellent advice! And you can extend this your thoughts to encourage having positive thoughts about people (compassion, tolerance) rather the automatic negative ones we now have (intolerant, derogatory, over critical).

Pittsburgh, PA: Dr. James-

What are some of the solutions for better enforcing aggressive or distracted driving laws- unlike speeding, these things are hard to catch (there's never a cop around when you need one....) and hard to prove.

Dr. Leon James: Our society is struggling with this issue--how to go about it, how to stay in the middle road between too much governmental control and electronic surveillance and not keeping up with problems we are facing every day relating the dangers of aggressive driving, road rage, distracting driving, hostility and stress. In our book we review some of the new aggressive driving laws and their language--the problem, as you point out, of proving the aggressive driving offense in court.

We conduct workshops for law enforcement to help them understand what is "behavioral" language in describing offenses and what is "judgmental" language that cannot be proven. Some of these are also reviewed on our site here:

http://www.aloha.net/~dyc/police/teecards.html

Bob Levey: What strikes me about road rage is not that it exists, but that it exists among so-called "nice people."
You might expect a guy who wears chains and has 132 tattoos to be violent behind the wheel. But what we're seeing now is doctors, lawyers, housewives threatening to kill their fellow motorists.
Comments on this apparent sociological puzzle?

Dr. Leon James: Yes, it's a sociological puzzle but we understand it now. This is what we call being "rigged for road rage." It's how we are brought up: parents, other drivers, TV, commercials, car talk, car symbols, time pressure expressed in rage, and so on. Yes we are all at risk of exploding into rage when the right combination of circumstances occur. But we can change this, fortunately. It's something we can do on our own.

Arlington, VA: Despite efforts by our Dr. Gridlock and others to get truly aggressive drivers to explain why they drive like they do, noone seems to come forward to say - I'm an agressive driver and proud of it. Are people in denial?

Dr. Leon James: Yes. At our booksignings people would pick up our book and add "It's not for me. It's for..." And when you read the stories people tell about driving things happening to them, you can see that they enjoy and are proud of being aggressive--when circumstances happen that they can define as outrageous. They, and most of us, feel that our rage is justified and the other bad person deserves to be punished, or at least, should be taught a lesson for the sake of their amendment. This is what we call "automotive vigilantism" and one in three drivers is proud of being one. But we think this is not to their benefit or to the benefit of other drivers.

Bob Levey: Road rage seems to have become a huge issue just in the last 20 years. In that same period of time, the nation's population has grown by about 40 million, but the number of superhighways has grown by only a very small amount. Could this be the cause--just a simple matter of more rats in the same-sized maze?

Dr. Leon James: This is what I call the "occasion" for road rage. We are not rats and we don't do things for the same reasons as they do. So if we act like they act, we are doing so by choice. So we use any "occasion" or opportunity to perform our rage behavior, and we all have our favorite opportunities. But we can retrain ourselves and be safer, happier, more community oriented. Why not turn the highway into a community from what it is now--warfare.

Arlington: Great topic. I am a very impatient driver and often yell at other cars during my 35-min. commute along Rte. 7 ("oh, you idiot!" is a common refrain). Even now, outside the car, I am firmly convinced that THEY ARE ALL TERRIBLE DRIVERS, not me. I hate seeing that angry, selfish side of me and would LOVE to be able to walk to work every day.

My question: With more cars on the road every year and congestion just getting worse, is it realistic to think road rage will subside any time soon? Improving individual driver well-being may be possible but restoring civility to our roads overall? Not likely.

Dr. Leon James: Not likely if we just let it continue. Congestion and construction are not going away for the next 20 years, or ever, according to experts. So we have got to learn to live with it. We can. It's better, much better, to manage and control our emotions as drivers, then to just let it spat and destroy and kill.

Bob Levey: Many thanks (and happy motoring) to Dr. Leon James. Be sure to join us a week from today, April 17, when our guest on "Levey Live" will be Vance Peterson, president of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. That show will begin (as "Levey Live" always does) at noon Eastern time.

washingtonpost.com:

Thanks to Leon James, and to everyone who joined us.

Frank Ahrens: Radio Talk at 1 p.m. EDT
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Modern Meat Part II: Dr. Temple Grandin at 1 p.m. EDT
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Investing Live: Mutual Funds at 2 p.m. EDT
Health Talk: War on Drugs at 2 p.m. EDT

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