Raging against machines

Interesting ongoing article about bikes vs cars road rage :

http://www.velonews.com/article/83093/legally-speaking-with-bob-mionske---more-rage

Incidents are often triggered by one party trying to teach the other a lesson to pay for their transgression. For example a car buzzing a cyclist after the driver perceived the cyclist breaking some road rule. Previously, I would confront the driver aggressively, give them the finger, etc. But this usually only serves to continue the cycle of violence, escalating the aggression of the disturbed individual, and perhaps causing them to act even more violently against other cyclists. This type of response could be deemed selfish then, in that it makes you feel better for letting off steam, but endangers other cyclists in the long run. But then is a completely passive response the best option for society as a whole ? Won't the sick freak persist in endangering others, and therefore might it be somehow your duty to mitigate the dangers of this behaviour ? Well it's not your job to provide psychiatric treatment, so inaction is possibly the best thing, in that it is better for cyclists as a whole. Just hope the cops will nail the person for some other act which they commit due to the dark evil processes swirling around in their diseased brain. But now how to you dissipate that feeling that someone has 'gotten the better of you', if in fact you choose the selfless response of inaction ? Well the article describes how not letting the dark side take hold of you and escalating the conflict with a violent response, is in fact a victory. Here's some quotes :

My goal is to stay in control of my emotions. When a bad driver cuts me off because he is not paying attention or checking his mirrors, I am able to stay cool. Let someone else ‘teach him a lesson’-whatever I have to tell myself to get through those first critical moments without reacting. In those cases where it seems the bad and dangerous driving was intentionally directed at me-it is very difficult for me to control my knee jerk response to retaliate immediately. It feels like I am ‘giving in’ or in some other way ‘losing’. In order to change my reaction I had to change my perspective. If I lose my temper and escalate an antagonistic situation- what I am really doing is losing control. I try to equate losing my temper with being defeated, with ‘losing’. For me this is often enough to deter my dark side from emerging.

This kind of reframing of our interpretation and reaction to another is exactly what Dr. James recommends as a way of escaping the road rage trap—a trap that begins when we are endangered by another person, particularly when that endangerment is followed by an insult. At that moment, we are vulnerable to what Dr. James refers to as an “emotional hijacking,” with our rational mind being overwhelmed by our emotional limbic brain. The trick to be learned is to reduce your anger by reappraising the situation:

“Despite the seductive persuasiveness of self-righteous justification, you can compel yourself to reframe the anger-provoking event. Emotional intelligence provides you with an understanding of how anger escalates, how venting keeps it going, and how to deflate it through rational counterarguments. Negative emotions slowly dissipate as you force yourself to think positively and expect positive outcomes. The power of positive thinking lies in its ability to attract positive emotions such as empathy and forgiveness. These interpersonal and cooperative emotions in turn facilitate reappraisal of the anger-provoking event.”

Although there are immediate personal benefits to be gained by cultivating one’s “emotional intelligence”—a reduced likelihood of road rage escalation—there are other, long-term gains, both personal and social that are perhaps even more important. At the personal level, anger sustained over long periods has severe deleterious effects on our health; cultivating emotional intelligence helps us to let go of that anger, and thus, to avoid the negative impacts it would otherwise have on our health. At the social level, the gains are nothing less than the transformation of our driving culture—and with it, our cycling environment—, one driver at a time, from one that is anti-social (aggressive driving) and negative (defensive driving) to one that is pro-social, cooperative, and supportive.