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Fuming behind the wheel
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Road rage is the new disease to have struck our metros. Hardly anyone is immune to it. Blame it on stress and our chaotic traffic.
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Road rage: An urban legend we can do without. — Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.
THE LADY was a picture of decorum. But what she has to say is anything but that. "There was some VVIP movement and we were held at Trinity Circle for over 15 minutes. The sun was high and my head was getting hotter by the minute under my helmet. I was quite grumpy by the time I reached my work place. There was this car double-parked. The parking boy asked the driver to move forward so that I could park my scooter. But the fellow didn't budge.
"So I got off my scooter and knocked twice on the hood to catch his attention. You won't believe it, he snarled at me, asking how dare I touch his car! Something snapped in my head and I let loose a stream of four-letter words at him. He returned in kind. But he did move his car. If he had not, I tell you, I was ready to hit him. This is not something I would normally do. But, as I said, something snapped in my head."
"Last evening, when the green lights came on at the pedestrian crossing at the Brigade Road-M.G. Road junction, my friend and I stepped on the road to cross over. In a split second, a sleek car whizzed past us at breakneck speed, violating basic traffic rules. We screamed at him. But, he, the monster in fashionable clothes, screamed back, uttering unprintable words and drove off. We could have been knocked down. If the place were a rocky ground I would have hurled a few stones at him. Unfortunately it was M.G. Road," says a thoroughly shaken Kavitha Ranganathan.
Road rage is the new disease, sometimes fatal, often debilitating, peculiar to our urban lives. It turns a perfect saint into a fire-breathing monster. The victim can be a priest, usually known for his geniality. It can be a lawyer, profoundly patient in the nastiest of courtroom dramas. Or it can even be a doctor, skilled at saving lives. These men and women become unpleasant, rude, aggressive, and even murderous the moment they get behind the wheel. Inconsideration, impatience, and callousness combine into a deadly cocktail to turn roads into ugly battlegrounds.
If the person trying to overtake you is not honking to let him pass, he is flashing his headlights in an attempt to bully you. Should you not let him have his way immediately, he showers you with the choicest of abuses, uses vulgar gestures, and drives away with a maniacal intensity, posing a threat to his own and others' lives.
"The most galling part," says an exasperated driver who still observes all rules even when no one is looking, "is that even when we are in the right, we get all the dirty looks and rude behaviour. No one thinks twice before overtaking from the left. And there is no such thing as someone having the right of way. I really don't know how long I will be able to drive. Already my car is dented in so many places for no fault of mine."
But why does all this happen? Could it be ego, or juvenile oneupmanship? According to a well-known psychologist in Bangalore: "When we overtake another car, we look at it simply as another vehicle. We do not think that there maybe a woman in a hurry to (get to) her dying father. This partial status information is what gets us unnerved and edgy."
Pandey, a doctor in NIMHANS, feels that "road rage is the frustration from not reaching one's destination on time and you begin to overtake. Such people are made up of an explosive personality, wherein their reaction is adverse at the slightest of provocation. It is a form of giving vent to the pressures of urban living where there is a wide gap between expectations and its fulfilment." But what is more disturbing is the fact that such belligerence may be connected to societal violence.
Societies with the greatest amount of violence in their structure will show this by externalising some of this brutality in the form of dangerous and defiant driving.
No one can deny that there is considerable tension not just in cities, but even the towns where widening economic disparity fuels rancour in victims of street chaos. Traffic in the metros is, to say the least, crazy.
Srikala Barath, Associate Professor of Psychology at NIMHANS, says: "With increasing urbanisation, road safety is becoming less of a priority and is taking a backseat.
There is an urgent need for more stringent enforcement of traffic rules, which is relaxed most of the time due to corruption, red tapism, etc. The system is corrupt. Road safety must be internalised into one's personality at the very start. It's all within the mind."
"Why have the authorities not woken up to this problem?" asks Snehalatha Oommen, an engineer. "Life, it seems, is not a priority to them. People must be more sensitive towards one another."
"With the road space remaining constant in most parts of the City, despite a sharp rise in the number of vehicles, there is bound to be greater antagonism and animosity, unless the traffic police make a concerted effort to ensure that the rules are followed. There is no fine as such for those who give in to road rage... If steps are not taken to prevent it, driving will continue to be not just as lethal as it is today, but also fraught with diabolic destructiveness," said Koshy Mathew, a publisher.
A retired schoolteacher, now settled in Bangalore says: "One of the reasons for the intolerable and rude behaviour on the part of the motorists in our city is the failure of the traffic cops in penalising the erring drivers. The people who drive in the City have no regard for other people. There is a scarcity for courteousness on the roads."
The hallmark of civilised behaviour is concern for human life.
On that score, at least as far as the regular mayhem on our roads is concerned, we have a long way to go before we can call ourselves civilised.
NINA BENJAMIN
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