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You accidentally cut off someone while driving and suddenly there is a crazy person who wants to kill you. Or someone cuts you off and suddenly you are a crazy person who wants to kill somebody. Road rage.

Rage is defined as sudden and extreme anger, or an outburst of strong anger. I would define Road Rage as an inappropriate, sudden and extreme angry response by one driver, to a real or perceived slight by another driver. The key word is "inappropriate". The response is just nowhere near being in line with the slight, whether perceived or actual. It makes an "eye for an eye" look pretty darn good. Someone cuts me off, do I want to cut them off in return? No, I want to kill them. This is road rage.

In light of this, what can we do? The answer is we must be careful. We must be careful that we do not provoke people. When we live in a time when someone will kill you for a slight, whether perceived or real, it would seem prudent to be careful.

What if the slight was real, but accidental? Whether the slight is real or not the answer is the same, the answer is to apologize. Even while driving a car it is possible to make known your regret. Regardless of what they do, you can humble yourself. Any action on your part that can be perceived as hostile will escalate things. You do not know who this other person is. You know nothing about this person's life or their problems, and perhaps you don't want to know.

How do we know who the road rager is? The answer is you don't. That is why you do not want to escalate things by acting hostile or showing false bravado. There is something that happens when we get behind the wheel of a car. Perhaps it is being separated from the people in the other cars by all that steel, perhaps it's the power of the vehicle itself. Whatever it is, it can make people into something they would never be outside of the car.

Could I be the road rager myself? The answer is I don't know, and maybe you don't know either. If someone caught me on the wrong day at the wrong time, who knows? I don't want to believe that, but then I don't want to believe anything negative about myself. This is why we all have to start being more civil and polite with each other. We are all capable of anything given the right circumstances.

Road rage is symptomatic of the times we live in. It is an expression of the anger that lies just beneath the surface, just waiting for an excuse. Ultimately the answer to angry people in general and road rage specifically, is for people to have happy, productive lives and to have meaning and purpose in life. Until that happens, be careful.

Learn more about this author, Dr. Stephen D..
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