Despite its real, devastating impacts across the United States, road rage is only explicitly penalized in a few states, like Utah. The scarcity of not only legal but also clinical treatment guidelines is unsurprising when research remains limited. As a psychiatrist, for example, I have met patients with histories of such behaviors, but not yet colleagues in my profession with expertise on this issue. One thing appears clear, however: Road rage is multifactorial and not traceable to any single cause or diagnosis.
It's 5 p.m. and you're trying to make dinner. Before you turn on the oven, your phone starts pinging , and your 8-year-old pleads for screen time. Meanwhile, your 4-year-old pulls the cat's tail and starts screaming. "Mom!" your oldest child yells, as if they have a megaphone. Suddenly, your blood starts to boil, and your heart starts pounding. "Be quiet! Can't you see that I'm busy?"
One morning, playwright Vivienne Franzmann was queueing for a coffee when an argument broke out. A customer absolutely lost it, says Franzmann. She was demanding her drink, shouting and swearing, and the rest of us stood there not knowing what to do. When Franzmann got to the rehearsal studio, she shared the story with Frauke Requardt, a choreographer she had just started working with.
Anger is a bad habit that people tend to pick up from their parents. When a child who was raised at Plato's house was returned to his parents and witnessed his father shouting, he said, 'I never saw this at Plato's house.'