Book Review: Road Rage and Aggressive Driving

By Dr. Leon James and Diane Nahl

Psychology 409 a

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The topic in the book, Road Rage and Aggressive Driving is quite relevant to the public concern today. The authors have done an excellent job in discussing Road Rage (RR) and other types of rage in great lengths; from the Psychological aspects, child concerns, to self-witnessing techniques. Here in Hawai’i for instance, we often hear about accidents and incidents regarding RR through the media. In October 2001, a driver shot a lady while she was on the road. It is important for all of us to educate ourselves about different types of Rage and dealing with them in positive ways.

There are many problems and solutions offered in the book. For instance, different types of rage are introduced, such as "Parking lot Rage", "Customer Rage", and "Work place Rage" just to name a few. Then, the author talks about the emotional intelligence, which is explained as having a self control while driving. Then, stories and solutions are provided throughout the book, such as the "Three Step Driver Self-Improvement Program". These programs are provided in the book for the readers to recognize the importance of consciously modifying their negative behavior. Some of the examples used in the program are, "Assessing Myself as a Driver", "Witnessing Aggressive Driving Using Check List", and "Modifying by Breaking the Goals into Small Steps".

The overall idea of the book is to look at Rage from different aspects in order to eliminate them from this society. For example, "Driving Psychology" looks at RR from the "Emotional Intelligence" (EQ) point of view. EQ deals with the question of how affectively people can find solutions to their problems. This is not only important, but also interesting to consider. In everything we do in our lives psychology is involved, so looking at RR from the Psychological aspect makes sense. Another example is, "Supportive Driving". Supportive driving is simply considering and understanding different aspects of other drivers. The forms of consideration and understanding are supportive to all the drivers and even pedestrians.

RR is closely related to stress because rage comes from a situation where a person feels/is out of control. The authors talk about the importance keeping control in order to help others be eliminating unnessesary accidents and other incidents. Being or feeling out of control most often leads to stress and other unwanted situations in life. More importantly, being out of control and feeling stress often lead to serious psychological and biological problems, such as eating disorder, anxiety disorder, insomnia, alopecia (hair loss), asthma, migraines, and other serious problems.

RR seems to be the hot topic these days. There have been many incidents regarding RR on the news. Media should provide programs and solutions to RR through TV and radio because awareness is important. Unfortunately, the media often promotes RR by showing violent acts through TVs and movies. Recent movie called "Fast and the Furious" was a controversial movie about car theft and street racing. In fact the movie was so popular among young racers that they had to make announcements through TV and radio shows about driving with care. The actors from the movie were asked to announce that professional drivers did many of the driving scenes, and they were not to be repeated by ammatures.

As a Psychology major, RR was not as much of a concern until I took this class. However, rage has always been closely related to my back ground as a Psychology major because I grew up in an atmosphere that was culturally diverse. I noticed that many people that I met in high school in the Mainland had problems with rage. Often, those experiences had to do with racial issues, where many of them had problems with my race (Japanese). So, I wanted to learn about different aspects of human behavior to make some sense out of their ignorance.

I enjoyed reading about the self-improvement program. It is helpful to go over it once in a while to be aware of the driving habits. I also learned to control some of my RR by reading the book and taking the class. It is true, as is mentioned in the book awareness is very important and also helpful.

I enjoyed the fact that the book covered many aspects of RR and other types of rage. I also thought that steps in dealing with RR were helpful. The weakness of the book is that I felt some of the information was repeated, therefore became somewhat dull. The information in the book are all indeed valuable for all the readers, however, I personally felt overwhelmed with the thoughts of rage by the time I finished reading the book. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that I am constantly thinking about rage and RR by taking two classes regarding rage.

I would recommend this book to anyone because RR is a great concern, and the book touches on many different aspects of it. I would also recommend it as an anger management class reading material, so that the people in the class could benefit from the strategies introduced in the book.

Another interesting part about this book is that the authors dedicated a whole chapter to RR and children. It briefly talks about an interesting aspect of rewarding children for being good passengers. I thought that was original and also important because children rarely ever are recognized as good passengers. Most often children are exposed to RR by their caregivers.

This book is also relevant to education, especially for those studying Psychology. The book offers many stories regarding rage, so that the students could incorporate the information with the theories they learn in class.

As a conclusion, I thought that the book was easy to read and understand. This was a new type of book from anything else that I have read so far. Some of the information provided in the book was very creative and useful in everyday life. I wonder why more people do not use this book in class or other programs, for instance driver’s education class.

Quote from the book

"The first step is to acknowledge that ever driver, including you, needs traffic emotion education" (James and Nahl 133).

This is worthwhile because it is a truth many of us ignore or do not realize.

Other reviews (Please click to see the sites)

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2) Interview

3) Book review