Helping Cooler Heads Prevail

Even today, you can hear the pride in Joe Edmonds’ voice as he speaks about his son Jason. A gifted athlete and aspiring actor, the 21-year-old was one of five passengers in a car whose driver played a dangerous game of chicken with the driver of another vehicle on Jan. 29, 2000, near London, Ont. They travelled for miles down the road, swearing, bumping, and cutting each other off. The driver of Jason’s car lost control, hopped a median, and was T-boned by a minivan in oncoming traffic. Jason and two of his friends died instantly. The driver lived.

A couple of days later, Edmonds sadly read the headline in a London newspaper: “Road Rage Leads to Fatal Crash.” Flipping over to the opposite page, another headline over an advertisement for an SUV caught his eye: “Give the Mountain Goats Road Rage,” the ad read.

“I called the newspaper and demanded they have it removed, and they agreed right away,” Edmonds tells a group of driver trainers at a recent Transportation Health & Safety Association of Ontario meeting. “That taught me that I, just a regular guy from London, Ontario, could make a difference.”

Edmonds will tell anyone who’ll listen about the consequences of an emotional reaction to aggressive driving. Those consequences are real. All those in the room listen attentively. As professionals who train drivers to handle themselves safely in traffic, they know that chasing vehicles isn’t thrilling, and it doesn’t always end happily.

The message isn’t lost on Mark Diacur, THSAO director of provincial operations. Like Edmonds, part of his job is to help safety supervisors and trainers teach drivers how to keep their emotions from interfering with skill and common sense. Surprisingly, it’s something a lot of defensive driving programs don’t include.

One reason, Diacur says, is that road rage is often confused with aggressive driving. Road rage is a criminal behavior. “It infers vehicular or physical assault,” he says. “The term ‘rage’ is defined as violent and uncontrolled anger.”

Diacur says safety managers and driver trainers need to know what triggers this behaviour, what makes Mellow Marvin turn into Mad Max. Noise, tight schedules, congestion, a feeling of invincibility, territoriality — most truck drivers experience some or all of these elements every day, suggesting that truckers may be more prone to road rage than other drivers.

“That’s not to say truck drivers commit more acts of road rage than anyone else,” Diacur says. “We don’t record those kinds of stats. In fact, the opposite is likely true. That just shows you how professional most drivers are, considering they are more naturally exposed to these factors than anyone else every day.”

Nick Nicholson, corporate safety manager of Airways Transit, a passenger transport company in Dundas, Ont., says trainers not only need to prepare their drivers to manage their own anger and frustration, they should help them learn to cope with being targets of violent acts. Large, slow-moving vehicles contribute to frustration and stress among four-wheelers. The flip side, however, is that professional drivers sometimes see themselves as driving experts, and are easily annoyed by those who don’t follow the same rules.

“There seems to be this attitude from professional drivers, and it’s a scary one, that they’re infallible and can handle what’s in front of them better than anyone else,” says Nicholson, who’s drivers have been both victims and instigators of road rage. “In most cases that may be true. But with that comes this intolerance for people who don’t travel the highway as often as they do.”

With the help of Edmonds’ presentation, Nicholson hopes to attach a definition to road rage, as well as teach his drivers new ways to view those who they share the roads with.

“If there was just one thing I could take from Joe, it would be to teach my drivers to consider the person who has just wronged you, not as a person, but as an abstract piece of metal,” he says. “If a rock fell from a cliff and hit your truck you wouldn’t get mad at the rock, but when a vehicle cuts you off, you get mad at the person driving as if they are taking out some personal persecution against you. I like the idea of making that vehicle an abstract piece of tin, which is just another object you have to avoid.”

Moreover, by clearly illustrating the line that separates aggressive driving and road rage, Nicholson hopes to make it easier for his drivers to disengage from a dangerous situation before things spin out of control. On the road, a driver really has control of only two things: himself and the vehicle.

Humans don’t have an internal mechanism to turn off anger, says Diacur, but it can be learned.

– Ask yourself if the situation is worth getting angry over. “It sounds easier said than done,” says Diacur. “You need to remind yourself of what the consequences may be, and that they are very real.”

– If an incident has already been triggered, and a sort of confrontation ensues, Diacur says to first avoid eye contact, and do not gesture in any way. “For some strange reason in our culture, eye contact is confrontational. The same goes for gesturing. Even if you don’t mean anything by it, it can be taken the wrong way if not delivered properly.”

– Never get out of your vehicle, no matter how well you think you can handle yourself. “One of our staff saw this first hand,” Diacur recalls. “A truck driver and another driver stopped on the side of the road. The trucker got out of the cab. He didn’t even get a chance to say anything. He got whacked right in the face. Then the boots started flying.”

– Finally, say you’re sorry. Eight-five percent of convicted road ragers have said they would have disengaged if the other person just apologized. “Sometimes, if the other driver doesn’t look like he’s going to back down, you might want to suck in your pride and apologize, even if you’re right,” says Diacur. “It could save someone’s life.”

If just one person involved in that deadly crash in London would have apologized, Jason Edmonds would very likely be alive. His father Joe plays with that idea in his head every single day.

The room in which Edmonds is speaking is silent as he winds down his presentation. He concludes with one more story. A long time ago, a young man was travelling down Hwy. 401, when he was suddenly cut off by another vehicle. Infuriated, the young man pinned ahead and cut in front. The other vehicle copied, and eventually they paced side by side, while the young man waved a starter’s pistol out the window. The other vehicle continued to chase, and finally the young man, wanting no more of it, escaped at the last second by darting up the off ramp.

“That young teenager was me,” Edmonds laments quietly.

Luckily, Edmonds chose to disengage and no one ended up hurt. He may not have said it then, but Edmonds is truly sorry. Now more than ever.

RESOURCES:

Transportation Health and Safety Association of Ontario. The association’s Web site (www.thsao.on.ca) details model safety programs on various transportation issues and road rage. Or phone 416/242-4771.

Dr. Driving. A comprehensive and authoritative site hosted by Dr. Leon James, world authority on road rage, offers studies, surveys, and research. www.aloha.net/~dyc

Drivers.com Managed by Toronto-based PDE Publications, this site includes printed articles and resources on aggressive driving, road rage, and driver training. www.drivers.com