Events & Issues
New Delhi, 13 May 2016
Increasing Road Rage
ROAD BELONGS TO ME, WHO ARE YOU?
By Vinod Sharma
The brutal killing of a 20-year old
boy in Bihar’s Gaya
town is the latest incident of road rage following an altercation over
overtaking. The culprit? The son of history-sheeter-turned-JD (U) MLA Bindeshwari
Prasad Yadav aka Bindi Yadav.
Sadly, this will not be last road
rage incident across the country. Examples abound: Delhi
dentist Dr Pankaj Narang was killed with iron rods by some youths after he
accosted two bikers for rash driving last month. In another occurrence a
40-year old man was beaten to death in front of his two teenage sons after his
motorbike grazed the assailants’ car in the midst of a wedding ceremony April
last year.
More shocking a DTC driver was
bludgeoned to death by a hysterical motorcycle-borne youth after the bus hit
his bike slightly from behind. His mother was pillion-riding when the
unfortunate incident took place. Instead of preventing her son from mercilessly
hitting the driver with his helmet, she instigated him by asserting “teach him
a lesson of life. He must know that we are from Mundka”. The driver died on the
spot in full public view, with nobody mustering courage to stop the attack.
Raising a moot point: Why are people
so angry and impatient on roads?
Notably, Indian drivers are angry
particularly the youth who are more susceptible to indulge in road rage. Psychologists
aver that young male drivers are three times more
risky given their proneness to untoward consequences than mature adults. Older drivers
seem to be more law abiding and less risk taking thereby decreasing chances of
anger and road rage.
Besides, reckless, fast
and dangerous driving is more prevalent among young drivers and increases the
chances of road rage. Thus, age is the most important factor in aggressive
driving confrontations with a majority of belligerent drivers being men between
18 and 26 who are sensation-seeking.
Other causes for anger
could be less experience in dealing with such situations, influence of
substance taking, peer influence as also a reduced attention span.
Undeniably,
the incidents of road rage are on the rise in India, resulting in increasing
crime in the form of arguments and assaults ending up in grievous injuries and
fatalities. According to Delhi Police, they receive 10-12 phone calls daily
about scuffles, trivial or big, on roads.
In addition, risky
driving is one of the most common causes of road accidents. In fact, the
prevalence of Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) has been drastically increasing
every year.
According to a study, it
is estimated that by 2020 road traffic disability-adjusted life years lost will
move from being the 9th to the 3rd leading cause in the world and 2nd leading
cause in developing countries. According to World Health Organization RTAs are
the sixth leading cause for hospitalization, disabilities, death and economic
losses in India.
Pertinently, there are
several factors responsible for rising road rage incidents in our country. One,
Escalation of Driving Anger Scale (DAS) is the root cause of this behavioral
problem. Two, traffic congestion, weather conditions, noise, time constraint
and underlying emotions of anger, frustration and irritation. Three, individual
characteristics like age, gender, socio-economic status and family leanings along-with
a person’s personality are other factors for road rage.
However, a narcissistic
approach and feudalistic mentality of off-springs of high and mighty people and
neo-rich also plays a major role in youths resorting to deadly road rage crimes,
that too, within a fraction of a minute. The Gaya case of a legislator’s son is an
offshoot of this feudalistic approach.
What is
road rage? An incident where an angry or impatient vehicle driver or passenger
intentionally attempts, threatens to injure, injures or kills another automobile
driver, passenger, or pedestrian in response to a traffic dispute, altercation,
or grievance.
It
includes verbal abuse, threats, obscene gestures, flashing headlights or high-beams,
honking, malicious braking, blocking other vehicles, threatening with weapons,
firing gun shots, hitting vehicles with objects, chasing a vehicle and trying
to run the car/van off the road.
Comparatively, on
assessment of DAS sub-scale scoring with other countries like US, UK and Australia
anger levels are high in India
in all the sub-scales. Alas, tolerance to anger and not provoking a situation
is decreasing day-by-day especially in developing countries like India due to a callous
attitude of both the driver and pedestrians to follow traffic rules.
Furthermore, overcrowding
of both vehicles and people leads to more of unauthorized parking and traffic
congestion. Alongside the long working hours and extreme hot weather conditions
in the country reduces the threshold of anger among drivers.
Studies
suggest that road rage is not an official mental disorder but a behavior
typically associated with road rage could be the result of a disorder known as intermittent
explosive disorder.
Interestingly,
one-third of Indian drivers acknowledge various forms of road rage, with the
majority being young and male. Contributory variables to road rage include
environmental inconsistencies such as crowded roads and high levels of traffic
density and psychological factors like displaced anger, illogical attributions,
and high life stress and bona fide psychiatric disorders.
Regarding
those with psychological malady those with road rage appear to have high rates
of alcohol and drug difficulties; elevated general psychiatric symptoms of
anxiety and depression These findings suggest that individuals with road rage
come from a variety of psychological substrates, all of which might culminate
in an event that not only places the victim at risk, but also the perpetrator.
In order to tackle this menace,
addressing people’s ability to deal with stress and anger and discouraging
risky driving behaviour is of paramount importance. There is also an urgent
need for effective screening and educating a driver to reduce the risk of driving
anger, accidents and road rage incidents.
Like India,
other countries, namely, US, Canada,
Australia, England, Ireland,
Japan and New Zealand are
taking steps to find some solution to this perennial problem. But, approaches
to the crisis vary according to the different cultural norms of each country.
Clearly, road rage is a serious
crime in India
and is ever-increasing. One of the best ways to avoid becoming a victim of road
rage is to stop responding, or making eye-contact, refuse to fight with the
offender and shun making driving a road competition or a show of speed.
The time to enact stringent
legislations to deal with road rage offenders has come. Undoubtedly,
unambiguous laws and penalties are also needed along-with proper education
given to road users about the legal consequences of such laws. Needless to say
that spoilt progenies of big-wigs often driving in inebriated condition who
consider roads as their father’s property must be dealt with sternly to reduce
the menace of road rage incidents in India. ---- INFA
(Copyright, India
News and Feature Alliance)
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