Hello, and welcome to my blog. You might be wondering how and why I got about making this blog site… Or maybe you’re not, but I’d like to tell you anyway. I’m a 29 year old man living in one of the world’s most congested cities. A city with little or no control over it’s roads and highway infrastructure. By day, I’m a freelance architect, by night, I’m a lunatic driving through congested city streets as fast as my Toyota hatchback will go with little or no regards to my own safety or that of those around me. I’ve been driving since I’ve been 15 or 16 and am an avid driver as well as a keen automobile enthusiast. So, why road rage? Well, because I have it. I have it bad.
A couple of days ago, with a little bit of [then unwelcome] encouragement from my most prominent passenger, I made a promise to myself: to rid myself of road rage once and for all. To not let any events that occur on the road trigger my instinct to go into a boiling rage and to teach pretty much everyone on the road how to drive. Of course it’s not like I’m under the delusion that I’m the best driver on the road. I make mistakes every now and again, as I’m sure everyone does. But more often than not, I’m inclined to make sure that someone else is punished when something unbecoming occurs. This is the very nature of rage… Any kind of rage, not just road rage. Anger isn’t exactly the most rational of emotions; it replaces the very sense of compassion and understanding that makes us human with a sense of urgency to vindicate yourself to the point where you’re ready to do something that you normally would never think of doing.
So, do you have road rage? Of course you do! Maybe not always, but from time to time almost everyone who drives suffers from bouts of road rage. Therein lies the problem: defining road rage itself. How would you define aggressive driving? Where would you draw the line between being a typical driver and someone who has road rage? It can be anything ranging from shaking your head at someone else’s mistakes, to flipping someone off, all the way to chasing down another road user just to try to run them off the road. And while I’m not proud to admit it, I have done it all – and then some. You would be surprised to learn how much of this rage bleeds into the other compartments of your life, affecting everything from your health and well-being to your relationships with loved ones. I need to stop. We [aggressive drivers] all do. Before we wind up hurting (or even killing) someone.
I intend to continue posting my successes, failures, lessons learned and anything that I feel that has helped me progress through my efforts to be a kinder driver, with the hopes that sharing my experiences will help myself as well as others who tend to succumb to road rage as I so often do.
So with that, thanks for visiting, please share your views on the information posted here – you might wind up helping someone else, and of course, drive safe.
Road Rage Diaries 