"Beep Beep" Road Rage in Hawaii by Marissa Muraoka, PSY 409b, Fall 1999

"Beep Beep"
Road Rage in Hawaii

by Marissa Muraoka

It is the first official day of summer in Hawaii and the temperature is on the rise. A parking lot of cars is slowly inching its way on the freeway, and a voice in your head tells you that you should have fixed the air conditioner in your car. People around you have their windows rolled up and you believe that they are talking about you not having air conditioning. With gallons of perspiration dripping down from your forehead and a wet, clingy tee shirt, you brave the uncomfortable conditions with the "Hawaiian air conditioner".

This is not a great way to live in paradise you think, and there on the freeway, in the center lane, your car stutters and dies. No! Not the radiator! It can't be -- I just had a radiator check yesterday. The cars ahead start to move forward and now people behind are honking madly on their horns. Dangerously, cars begin to speed by and drivers are flipping the bird to other drivers that nearly collide into their car. Road rage!

Road rage is like a deadly bacterial disease that can affect anyone behind the wheel. If symptoms are left untreated it can kill and spread to passengers and nearby people. Hawaii freeways are not enough to transport millions of cars everyday. Poor designs and the lack of a better "mass transit system" leads to an increase in road rage in Hawaii. Honolulu's freeways have too many merges and bottlenecks where it goes from four lanes on each side of the median to two and then to three. On-ramps are too short, and their locations are placed ridiculously close to the off-ramps. A major traffic area is the Middle Street merge and the insane H-2 to H-1 merge. The people of Hawaii should have listened and supported Frank Fasi's proposal of a mass transit rail system many years ago. He had sufficient funds gathered to make the transit system a reality. If we had the rail system today, I believe that there would be less congestion of the freeway during rush hour and there would be fewer reports of accidents due to road rage. One less car on the road means one less road rager driving.

Hawaii is not the only place affected by road rage accidents.

Reports of traffic incidents that turn violent are increasing nationwide, according to a recent study sponsored by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. Since 1990, incidents have increased nearly seven percent a year (Barayuga).

This is disturbing. What cause it? Why should we be concerned of the increase? Road rage is learned at a young age, Leon James, Ph.D. says. Children learn from their parents and others behind the wheel. These older people are setting bad examples by getting mad and saying obscenities to another driver. When these children get old enough to obtain their driver's license, they will behave similarly and apply what they learned to their driving experiences. "More cars means more traffic. More traffic leads to more frustration. More frustration brings on more stress. Stress causes more anger, which leads to more hostility, and eventually to more violence" (James).

The increase in traffic during rush hour does fuel road rage in Hawaii. People are tired, perhaps stressed from work, and they have to fight hours of traffic before they can relax at home. When people get impatient, think only of themselves, and try to zigzag through traffic, they put themselves and others around them in jeopardy. This reckless behavior rubs off on nearby drivers who in turn enrage other motorists. In a U.S. News report, by Warren Cohen, Mike Tharp, and Jason Vest, they said that "the rate of "aggressive driving" incidents÷defined as events in which an angry or impatient driver tries to kill or injure another driver after a traffic dispute÷has risen by fifty-one percent since 1990."

Since Hawaii is rich with many different ethnic people, maybe the foreigners that come to live in Hawaii bring bad driving skills with them. I remember people telling me of their taxi experiences. They remember catching several taxis where the drivers could barely speak English. They drove erratically on the freeway, cut off other cars at the last minute, tailgate, came to abrupt stops that ended up awfully close to other other car's bumper, and they did not allow room for another car to enter the lane. The drivers of the other cars were pissed when the taxi cut them off unexpectedly with no signal and within an arm's length to their car. They flipped the bird, shouted obscenities, and tried to give the taxi drive the same treatment.

Drivers licenses are too easy to obtain in Hawaii. According to Andrew Ferguson of Time, "This democratization of the highway has occurred simultaneously to a decline in traditional driver's education, once a near universal part of the curriculum in America's secondary schools." "Today," Cohen, Tharp, and Vest say, "only forty percent of new drivers complete a formal training course, which may be one reason twenty percent to thirty-five percent of applicants fail their initial driving test," and those that fail illegally jump behind the wheel until they can retake the test. Since traditional driver's education is not enough, a new driver's education focusing on "emotional intelligence skills on the road should be taught in Kindergarten through the twelfth grade" (James). Topics to be looked at:

á As pedestrians, how to behave toward drivers

á How to behave as passengers

á How to deal with peer pressure in highway situations

á How to develop and sustain a positive driving philosophy

á How to accept diversity, and how to accommodate it

á How to practice self-witnessing behind the wheel

á How to participate in Quality Driving Circles

á How to use inner power techniques to manage emotions in traffic (James)

A license renewal is easier to obtain today too. Forget the paper exam. Move on to the eye exam. How convenient it is these days.

In the meantime, since there is no better form of mass transit on Oahu, walk, ride a bike, carpool, or just catch the bus. Busses are good. Busses take some cars off the road. Just be prepared to have a long ride with frequent stops.

Road rage needs to be contained. It is just as bad as drinking and driving. Several radio stations make public service announcements daily, but it is uncertain as to whether or not listeners are paying attention. We have to teach others to be humble behind the wheel, and avoid road rage. Dr. James says that focusing on "supportive driving" or "driving with the Aloha spirit" will help keep the roads rage free.