Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare

By Leon James and Diane Nahl

Book Overview

Do you drive with stress and frustration? Do you frequently complain about other drivers or get involved in hostile interactions with other motorists? Are you afraid for your teenage drivers in this climate of highway warfare? We're in the midst of an escalating epidemic of aggressive driving, which eats up 250 billion dollars a year in economic cost and causes the misery associated with 6 million injuries every year. Now the government has declared war on road rage with tough new laws that can land people in jail for behaviors they're used to doing every day.Traffic psychology educators Dr. Leon James and Dr. Diane Nahl trace the aggressive driving problem to its roots in childhood when child passengers imbibe their parents' aggressiveness towards other motorists and their cynicism towards regulations and the law. By the time teenagers begin to drive they've been exposed to years of media portrayals of the fun and excitement of aggressive driving with no serious consequences. The authors argue that road rage and aggressive driving are common traffic emotions experienced by the vast majority of drivers.This authoritative book-the first to synthesize the subject of aggressive driving-presents conclusions of recent studies, highlights citizen activism, and summarizes legislative and police initiatives. Besides vivid anecdotal evidence and personal stories of typical road rage incidents that we have all experienced, James and Nahl present self-tests that readers can use to estimate their own road rage tendency, and they prescribe activities to help every driver learn self-improvement and self-awareness skills behind the wheel. The authors outline their innovative three-step program to help people transform themselves from aggressive to supportive drivers.This book redefines driver education for all drivers, including commercial drivers and truckers. Our traffic emotions need to be trained, the authors stress, and they provide the explanations and activities needed to strengthen critical thinking about road events.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1573928461
• ISBN13: 9781573928465
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Prometheus Books
• Length: 298 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Invaluable reading for anger management studies.

What are the symptoms of road rage and how can aggressive driving patterns and encounters be halted? In Road Rage and Aggressive Driving, the authors trace these problems to childhood roots and attitudes toward the law: they argue that road rage is experienced by most drivers, and tell how to use self-tests to estimate personal road rage tendencies. A three-step program to transform drivers from aggressive to supportive drivers is included.

Driving You Crazy

Road Rage is a winner! It will resonate with readers who have been threatened on the road, trapped in a car with an irrational driver, or who want to shake off learned habits of driver aggression. It gives us a peek at the distorted reasoning behind driver aggression, as well as larger implications for our auto-centered culture. It is a fascinating, accessible, and well-documented look at the rapid and sometimes bizarre evolution of our experience on the road.

Book saved our family

Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 From:BaxBell81@aol.com To: DrDriving@aloha.net Subject: Thank you for your Book Dear Dr. James-I had to write and tell you how incredible your book is. After having written to you about a month ago and getting your supportive and helpful replies, I ordered your book through Amzon com. I found it extremely useful and chock full of practical suggestions. It has not only helped me as a spouse of rageful driving husband, but he agreed to read it!! His agreement followed your recommendation of asking all the family members to write him a letter of what his problem has cost us emotionally. My son of 26 choose to tell him directly rather than write, but the talk was also very effective. We are also utilizing your idea in contracting before riding together, and he is using the more of "the supportive" driver techniques (rather than being oppositional and so arrogant).( Progress not perfection!!) We both have a long road ahead of us- no pun intended- but your help was a phenonmenal series of tools to aide in ameliorating this life threatening problem. I have to add that I myself am a licensed psychologist in private practice in Ohio and I am now recommending your book in recurrent cases where wives (usually) complain of this concern.Again, my massive thanks for a fantastic and much needed book.-Marilyn - Ohio

SAVE YOUR SANITY, AND MAYBE YOUR LIFE

If you want to be good to yourself and be happier, calmer, more truly in control of your universe, read this book. It could change, not to mention save, your life.The authors guide you to understand your driving self and show how to change highway stress, fear, anger, and assault into enjoyable time on the road. This book offers a different approach - linking checklists and exercises to explanations of specific emotions and behaviors so you can understand your particular driving attitudes and actions. There are many practical suggestions for avoiding road rage and transforming your driving experience, all supported by real-life examples and scholarly research.The book deals with all kinds of drivers and driving situations, with special attention to how we can teach our children and be good examples for them so that there won't be a new generation of road ragers. It addresses multitasking to handle dashboard dining and the new technologies that add to driving distractions - cell phones, on-board computers, TVs, and global positioning systems.Decreasing road rage and aggressive driving would be a huge benefit to society. But go ahead and be selfish - read this book for your own benefit, to change your road rage to driving delight. If enough people do the same, society will reap the rewards too.[N.B. I created the index for this book]

a crash course in driving psychology

If you know someone who becomes aggressive when they get behind the wheel, BUY THEM THIS BOOK! This is the ultimate treatise on road rage. Dr. James and Dr. Nahl are the world's #1 experts on road rage, and they have spent years researching the causes, consequences, and cures of aggressive driving. Here they tell the real story of why we love to rage behind the wheel. They show us how to protect ourselves from aggressive drivers, and more importantly, how to achieve emotional self control.Check out the authors' web site: http://drdriving.org