The_Road_to_Rage

The Road to Rage Almost every day the media reports another horrible incident involving aggressive driving or in its most extreme form, road rage. Speeding, weaving in and out of traffic, following too closely, yelling and gesturing are actions that characterize the aggressive driver. Studies show an increase in these kinds of incidents over the past several years. Examining the phenomenon of aggressive driving, psychologists Lawton and Nutter (2002) survey a large collection of data to compare the levels and expression of anger in everyday and driving situations in hopes of testing the beliefs about aggression on the road. Lawton and Nutter (2002) posted a survey questionnaire on the internet over a three month period that consisted of 15 short scenarios that were developed in order to compare them as closely as possible to non-driving scenarios. The questionnaire consisted of four research questions that produced moderate reported anger overall. The scenarios provoked mild anger or slight annoyance. Repeated measures MANOVA revealed a significant interaction of level of anger, expression of aggression, and context, as well as showing an interaction of gender by expression. Reports also show levels of anger associated with the driving scenarios were not significantly different aggressive, anger, driving, scenarios, target, survey, road, research, levels, expression, drivers, aggression, very, traffic, study, state, situations, show, safety, reducing, rage, questions, questionnaire, over, nutter, measures, lawton, interaction, information, help, gender, everyday, enforcement, eliminate, developed