Road Rage

ROAD RAGE

by Antonio C. Antonio

July 31, 2014

This video of a man in a Mercedes Benz SUV pulling a gun and a knife on a taxi driver went viral on social media in the past few days.  The incident happened last July 25, 2014 along EDSA in Quezon City and it reminds us of the Rolito Go-Eldon Maguan case where Go shot dead Maguan in July 2, 1991.  Go had an earlier fight with his girlfriend, entered the opposite direction of a one-way street (Wilson Street in San Juan), bumped into the car of Maguan, alighted from his car, an altercation ensued and, in a classic case of road rage, shot Maguan in the head.

What is “road rage”?  This term was coined in 1988 when a string of shootings happened along Freeways 405, 110 and 10 in Los Angeles, California.  Road rage is the aggressive display of an angry behavior by a vehicle driver against other vehicle drivers on the road which often results to accidents, injuries and deaths.  Road rage often occurs when a driver carries a weapon in his/her car as these represent a measure of advantage and superiority over others in an adversarial situation.  More often, this confrontational behaviour results to vehicular accidents and subsequent altercations with other drivers before or after the actual vehicular accident.  Verbal altercations often results to physical assault.  Road rage includes offensive and aggressive driving, unsafe driving maneuvers or a series of maneuvers, rude gestures, verbal abuse, excessive honking, and other manifestations of anger.  The use of firearms is also called “gun totting”.

What causes “road rages”?  Aside from the ones already mentioned, road rage could be sparked by a lot of other situations and events, ranging from the sublime to the stupid, such as:

1.     When you’re stuck in traffic after a bad day at work or elsewhere and hungry or nature suddenly calls.

2.     When you’re driving in the rain with on-coming vehicles with their headlights on high beam.

3.     When you’re Traffic Enforcers (who doesn’t drive at all and understands nothing about the dynamics of driving) becomes the reason for traffic mismanagement.

4.     When very slooooooow-moving vehicles insist on staying on the “overtaking lane” or when someone cuts into your lane from the left or right without any signal whatsoever.

5.     When tailgating drivers keep honking and their head lights are on high beam.

6.     When drivers of high-end vehicles violate traffic regulations and act as if they owned the world.

7.     When you are stuck in a gridlock because the “yellow box” is full of go-signal beaters and your green light returns to red without moving an inch.

8.     When pedicabs, pushcarts, pedestrians and slow drivers (in general) have no regard for your time.

9.     When the driver of a public utility vehicle violates traffic rules and still has the nerve to look back at you with menacing gestures.

10.  When a car pulls next to you playing obscenely loud rock music.

These are but a few of the situations that could trigger road rage.  I believe there are still much more you could add to this list.

Going back to the July 25^th incident along EDSA… What we saw on the video was the actual confrontation between the gun and knife-wielding juvenile and the opportunistic taxi driver.  And why would I use “juvenile” and “opportunistic”?  Given the ordinary course of things, the taxi driver could have initiated the confrontation and saw the opportunity to make money from the apparently rich fellow in a Mercedes Benz by irritating him enough to pull a gun...  or the gun totting juvenile was just showing off his Lito Lapid shooting stance in public (that violated safe and responsible gun-handling procedures).  Who really knows what the antecedent event was?  We have no idea whatsoever what caused both of them to be in that situation.  But we could all learn from this EDSA action movie scene.  Traffic and irritating road conditions are here to stay in Metro Manila.  As Ted Failon would say: “When you’re stuck in traffic, relax and enjoy the view!”  This is a far better option to road rage.

Just my little thoughts…

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Note:  I wrote this item yesterday.  ABS-CBN carried a news item on TV Patrol today (August 1, 2014 at around 7 pm) that the taxi driver and man with a gun have amicably settled.  The alarm and scandal they created should now be considered as “nothing”.  The “juvenile” got away and the “opportunist” got something, I suppose.  What do you think?