Hyderabad: The effects of road rage continues long after the incident. The driver, who has suppressed his anger during a harrowing drive, carries the frustration to his destination — home or office — and needs almost an hour to get his mind back to normalcy, during which time his subordinates at office or family members bears the brunt.
Suppressed road rage leads to headache, palpitation, chest pain and other stress related disorders. Raul Merandez, manager at Amazon and a resident at Prashanth Nagar — Kapra said, “I travel to Hitec City for work and spend more than three hours on the road. It is the same if I take my own car or opt for an office cab. During my offs, I simple refuse to travel and mostly avoid occasions as I am on the road the whole week. Attending an occasion which is far would feel no less than a week day.”
Meena Hariharan, psychologist and professor at HCU said, “Stress levels have gone up — official, personal, deadlines, cut throat competition — and most of them are beyond the control of an individual. People travel with a baggage of stress and when they encounter some issue, the pent up stress comes out as a displacement because the target is unknown (if the target is known there is a coping tragedy ). Anger gets manifested in rash driving.”
Dr S. Ramakrishna, who has witnessed several such cases (however, not attributing it only to road rage) said, “The main reason is stress, drivers get insensitive to dangerous situations. Secondly, too many people possess vehicles and the third reason is that everyone is in a hurry to reach their destination. Even if we are following the rules and give way, a third person will block our way, most of the time it happens with auto drivers. Road rage leads to insensitiveness, one’s life span comes down as we are exposed to extreme stressful conditions blood pressure, diabetes, day to day headache, poor memory.”
While extreme cases of road rage can be treated using behavioral therapy, a foolproof solution can be achieved through better traffic management. Congestion fees used in cities like London and Singapore where motorists are charged when they enter areas notorious for traffic snarls, should be implemented, added experts.
