World’s angriest man—a driver

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32839, 12 February 1972, Page 11

World’s angriest man—a driver

(By

SIMON MARSH)

Your heartbeat has increased, and so has your pulse. Adrenalin, acids and sugars are pumping into your bloodstream, your face is flushed and your body tense. In other words, you’re hopping mad. But you’re not having a row with your spouse or laying down the law to your boss. You’re taking a routine drive in your car.

It’s hard to think of a worse place to lose your temper than on today’s overcrowded roads. Yet almost 40 per cent of drivers are regularly guilty of aggression and even violence while behind the wheel. No wonder a major car manufacturer, a petrol company and Britain’s Road Research Laboratory are to link up with researchers in seven other European countries to discover what can be done about “aggro” on the road. “I don’t think any of us are nicer people behind the wheel,” says Mr John Peyton, a former British Minister of Transport. “We show far more forbearance and tolerance just walking along the pavement.” Another former Minister of Transport, Mr Richard Marsh, agrees. “Only the other day I was late for an appointment and found myself overtaking dangerously and cursing everyone else on the road. I had to consciously calm myself down and drive more carefully.” But most of the anger on the road has less obvious causes. Meyer Parry, a psychologist and author of a book on the causes of dangerous driving, explains that in many cases the mildest man can be turned into a road-hog by anything from an unpaid bill to a cup of cold coffee at breakfast . . . He says: “Anything that upsets domestic well-being can lead to dangerous driving. If there is a row at breakfast, the husband should sit down until he has got over it Better to be late for work than to kill someone on the road.” A road safety officer, Mr Alan Bowles, has also found that a row with the wife over breakfast can make a man “emotionally disturbed, irresponsible and highly aggressive” when he gets into his car. Go by bus

He says: “The husband who drives off to work without giving his wife a kiss would be much safer travelling on the bus.” The trouble is that the strange rage that consumes us when we’re out on the road doesn’t automatically disappear when we get out of our cars. •< As a university lecturer, Mr Stanley Millward, recently told Britain’s Royal Society of Health: “We often continue to vent our aggression and impatience on our colleagues at work, and our wives and children at home.” Indeed, he declared, driving can make us inconsiderate, selfish and foolish to the point of destruction — traits we rarely show to the same extent when we are walking about on two legs as nature intended.

According to studies at the International Drivers’ Behaviour Research Association, baspd in Switzerland, our anger on the road usually takes one of several basic forms.

There’s the speeder. The more annoyed he becomes, the faster he goes. Out of his car he’s likely to be henpecked as a husband and browbeaten as an employee.

As soon as he’s got the irritation out of his system, by scaring everyone, including himself, he reverts to type and becomes meek and self-effacing again. There’s the noise-maker. He gets his rage out of his system by making everyone else angry. He will take a perverse satisfaction in thwarting others. He will drive slowly—and noisily—in a low gear taking his spite out on the gearbox and on the queue of drivers following him. And he will seldom use his brakes if he can blow his horn instead. There’s the crasher, whose car is scarred by countless minor collisions. He will never give way—he believes he’s as good as anyone else —if only he had the chance to prove it. Watch out Drivers who fell into this category felt that the world wasn’t giving them a square deal, that the police were often corrupt, and that anything could be rigged providing you had enough money. The Behaviour Research Association believes you can spot an angry driver just by looking at him. Apparently we should watch out for a tense, slightly crouching stance at the wheel, lips set in a thin line, hands grasping the wheel in the ten-to-two position—and the window wound down ready to shout at anyone who gets in the way. Hardly a man likely to extend to anyone the courtesy of the road! Is it any wonder that around 50 per cent of all car passengers are claimed to be concerned, tense, or nervous when being driven by someone else? The new eight-nation research programme probing the average driver—“undoubtedly the world’s most consistently angry man,” says a spokesman—will seek answers to these urgent questions:

How can drivers be persuaded to calm down? Why do they get into such a state in the first place? What are the best ways , of teaching roadcraft to angry drivers? How can accidents be prevented in “stress situations?” Perhaps we would be less ready to fall out with our fellow road-users if we realised just what happens to us when we get bad-tempered at the wheel. A recent survey sponsored by the United States Government has shown that motoring is one way of acting aggressively without actually using up much energy. As a result, adrenalin, acids and blood sugars are pumped into the bloodstream which are not burned off in physical effort and could

finally settle on the walls of the arteries—often an essential factor in heart disease. The short answer to this would seem to be: if you’re in a filthy temper, walk if you can, and leave your car in

the garage. Not only will the exercise bum off the deposits on the arteries, but it’s the only sure way of keeping your noclaims bonus intact.