The one Achilles heel I still have within me is children. If I see an adult male abusing a child, I find it hard to contain the rage I feel for the abusive parent. It’s the age old bully association from childhood.
[quote=xevious]
Way I see it, I rather that they're in front of me than behind me. Let them fight with each other. Since I got my carry permit 5 years ago I learned something called tolerance and courtesy. Carrying a deadly weapon made me a responsible man.
I gotta say, here in NYC, I rarely if ever see “road-rage”† incidents.
I do see plenty of stoopit, though. But most “rage” is the passive-aggressive type, eg, parking your ass in the left lane and dropping dead, so everyone and his grandmother has to pass you on the right to get around you, playing games by driving slowly in front of someone, then speeding up to keep him from passing, then slowing down again, etc.
† “Road rage” is nowadays such a misused and abused term. It (now) includes any showing of emotion or “expressing your displeasure”, eg, flicking your brights, giving someone the finger, yelling (even behind closed windows), etc. Someone cuts you off or does something stoopit/dangerous, and even Spock would give ’em the finger.
To me, “road rage” is true rage, eg, intentionally cutting off someone “back” after they do it to you, chasing them in your car, trying to put ’em into the rail, etc. Ie, rising to the level of vehicular assault. But today, you have sissy-pansies crying about “road rage” when someone flicked their brights at ’em. Boo-hoo. It waters down the term to being meaningless.
(Same as nowadays in school, grils getting catty and talking about someone in private is now called “bullying”, or shunning or not wanting to associate with someone, etc. Uhhh, no. Shoving someone’s head into a toilet and flushing, that’s bullying. Not going well out of your way to invite the new gril to sit with you at lunch… that’s not bullying.)
Anyway, point is, how the term “road rage” is used needs to be defined, spelled out, because it means different things to different people.
True dat. Road rage is akin to 'roid rage. That term is over used alright. In most cases the correct word is miffed.
Maybe the topic should be taught in driver training. That and put your fricken phone away.
The drivers around here are terrible.
It's much worse when the weather is nice, so it's most likely snowbirds that don't know how to drive.
My sister gets angry behind the wheel, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it road rage.
Luckily the rest of my family doesn't get all that pissed off over minor stuff.
My experience with snow birds is opposite to yours RC. The slob drivers I see in Florida when I visit are rush hour drivers going to and coming home from work. The natives like to blame the out of staters and elderly but most are young people with Florida plates cutting in and out of traffic. Tailgaters seem to be universal. That and distracted drivers.
Distracted drivers are the worst.
“A man using a mobile phone while horseriding has faced court - because he didn’t have a hands-free device fitted to the animal.” 
Yes, that’s a good point about qualifying what is road rage. There are many different degrees of it. Thankfully I’ve not seen the “get out of vehicle” or “waving a knife or gun out the window” kind of rage in many years now.
My worst experience ever was in Connecticut. But it was more or less random chance. I brake checked the wrong guy who was tailgating me & he decided to terrorize me. Swerved around me, and despite my closing the gap with the vehicle in front of me, he forced his way in front then slammed on his brakes… on a highway no less. I almost hit him. He got out of his car & started lumbering towards me. I got away, only by tucking myself into a line of cars & ignoring him as he paralleled me with an arm stretched out—wasn’t sure if it was a gun or a shaking fist as I didn’t look. Kept my eyes forward and he eventually left. I won’t ever forget it. I still see his face, like this without the hat:
Seeing road rage is of course very subjective. It depends upon where you’re going. Do you drive the Major Deegan (87) in the Bronx? I’ve found there’s a lot of rage trigger happy people on that road when traffic is dense.
Haven’t been near the Deegan in ages, thankfully. I tend to stay on Duh Island anyway.
A few years ago, and to this day I have no idea what sparked it (didn’t cut off anyone, wasn’t tailgating anyone, etc.), but someone in a black Mercedes started following me. He started cutting off cars and trying to pull alongside me (in the oncoming lane of a regular 2-way street, yet, when everyone in “our” lane was stopped at a light), and so on. I saw it but “played dumb”, etc. Decided to give him a grand tour of Queens before I finally had enough and “stopped to ask for directions” and struck up a nice chat with a guy ’til Mystery Stalker got impatient and drove away.
Was funny ’cause I asked if he knew a street which I knew didn’t even exist, and he helpfully pulled up a map on his phone and we both looked for it! 
Meanwhile, MS was hanging back, waiting for me to get going again. Now, you’d think he’d take the opportunity to roll down the window and yell, “Hey, jackoff! You know what you did back there??”, but nope.
It takes all kinds, though. Some people imagine all kinds of sleights and offenses.
What was funny, though, was going back quite a ways, I’m on the 495 service road going home, windows down, stuck at the light, and some guy pulls up on my right and rolls down his window. Instead of some insults or whatever, he smirks and with a big thumbs-up (and extremely thick Slavic accent), tells me, “You good driver! You good driver!”. And I had no idea why. Just smiled, shrugged, and said thanks.
Kind an anti-road-rage.
Some idiot turned onto the highway failing to yield to me as i had the right of way. I leaned on my horn and flashed my lights to alert him but he didn’t care and I had to swerve to avoid him. He then brake-checked me, then threw a bottle of snapple at me (I think it was peach iced tea). The speed limit was 50 and i almost slowed to a stop to let him go about his business. He slammed on his brakes and ran me off the road. Just because I flashed my lights?People like that don’t deserve to be ignored. I corrected him.
I'm like that with dogs. I really love them... if I ever saw someone abusing one God knows what I'd do. My wife knows full well that our dogs are the one thing I'd go to jail for. Anybody messes with them, they die, period. Slowly and inexquisite pain.
Don't even get me started on Pa. drivers... I lived in nj and drgove a vcab (keyboard mind of its own, too damn lazy) and I felt less nervous driving to Nerwark airport and Manhattan than I do driving here. People are just stupid and oblivious and pull out right after they look at yoku. Already had one Jeep totalled. It takes everything I have to not gbet out of the car and beat someone to death... thank God fbor yoga and deep breathing! I even watch youtube road rage videos to keep "scared stgraight."
I said the hell with it and installed a white strobe in the windshield. I don't give a shit for the laws... if it avoids another totalled vehicle it's fine with me. Gets used at a couple really bad side road T intersections... kind of like a super DRL.
And the guy could not remember why he told you that ? Well, it seems that you’ve just met one of those famous next-mode-memory drivers 
.
Helps (minus that last part :laughing: ) to have a camera rolling, catch the idiot in all his idiotic glory, and call 911 (on speakerphone, and recording the operator number, etc.). Also mention the video and how you’ll be posting it online if they don’t do anything about it.
Unrelated, but twice I called in a drunk driver. I don’t like being a rat, but don’t think I could look myself in the mirror if said driver took out a family of 4 coming back from gramma’s house, y’know?
First one was a real Ghetto Queen operator, with IQ to match. Didn’t even know the 495 is the Long Island Expressway. :person_facepalming: I gave all the info in realtime, and after getting absolutely nowhere with that idiot, got back a snotty “So what do you expect us to do about it?”, “Uhh, your job??”, “I’m terminating this call…”.
Second time, the Suffolk operator was a real pro, transferred to Nassau, also a pro, then Nassau Highway Patrol who called me back, I gave ’em a blow-by-blow where I was, etc., and when I was just about getting to the Queens border and thinking, “Forget it, no one’s gonna do anything… again.”, yep, a Caprice (knew the headlight pattern; drunk was behind me the whole time) got into the left lane, paced the drunk for all of 5sec to see him almost scrape the concrete berm, then into the HOV lane and flicked on the lights, so I actually got to see the takedown.
So yeah, sometimes it depends on the 911 operator you call, so be damned sure to record it all (they do). And first chance you get, make a copy of the video (so in case you never see the original again, you can still post it and embarrass the department).
If you have to rat on someone to save a life you're getting a pat on your back from me. I'm sure everyone here agrees.
I use breathing techniques a lot. Prescription meds (no choice being blessed with schizophrenia). Going for walks, armed with a torch for night walks of course LOL. Therapy sessions with a really good therapist. Group therapy meetings regarding how to deal with emotions/anger.
I have always been mellow, not showing much emotion either way. But anger is natural, so that’s how I deal with it for the most part.
For extreme anger, get a bat and go beat up a tree.
I have an image of my massive well built body, squeezing your throat. Just kidding. I love you bad brad. The weird thing is, i do have poor self image…I don’t see myself as angry. I went to a weeklong narcotics interdiction course. We already had a reputation as the darth vaders from New Jersey. So DEA agents role played the bad guys and we used techniques we learned to figure out who was who, get to the top level dealer & build a case. A guy from another department was alone in the class and we adopted him into our crew. He was quiet and didn’t talk much, and he was a huge, unnatural looking human, with muscles that would make a bodybuilder jealous. We got to a mid level dealer and i was charming him into being my informant. He was being difficult, so our adopted teammate pushed past me, grabbed the guy by the throat lifting him off the ground and demanded the info. I would never see myself as doing that