Road rage, accidents: How to minimize

Most of the time I turn the television on for news, I see reports on vehicular accidents. They are regular reportage as if the news programs of the tv channels are incomplete without them. My God, they come in horrendous torrents, at times or they are treated with the same prominence as some alleged corrupt practices of the present administration of Her Excellency President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Personally, I do not relish this kind of reporting. It is negative and displays only a lack of appreciation for quality news. For one, I cringe at the gory sight of mangled bodies. When, in the morning news, there are footages of blood splattered on windshields as results of smashups, I tend to pass my breakfast. I even dislike viewing cars turning turtle.

Yet, this genre of news reports continues to permeate. Media outlets carry these stories with gusto. However the stories are written, what seems to stand out is the fact only of the occurrence of mishaps. But, even that is only relevant to those involved or their relatives and circles of friends.

Apart from traffic accidents, however, we are witnessing a new spectacle. It is horrifying. It is lately called road rage. In 1978, the Wall Street Journal reported a case of unfriendly driving. Then, between September 1990 and September 1996, more than ten thousand cases of unfriendly driving were recorded in America. These reports of unexplained violence among users of the road, mainly drivers, evolved to become a phenomenon known as road rage.

A study suggests that the drivers among us must have, at one time or another, felt an urge to hit a fellow chauffer for mistaken behavior. How many times have we been enraged by the other guy's sudden incursion into our driving lane? This situation arises when a driver on our right, coming from a stop, proceeds to our lane without even any signals. We always believe that we have a right to stay on our course and that it is wrong for the other guy to squeeze into where we are. Then, we react rather violently by manifesting, in many ways, to the intruder that we do not intend to give way.

Rage surges when a vehicle coming from the opposite direction overtakes a car in front of him, crosses a double yellow line and eats deep into our lane such that we are left with no recourse than take sudden evasive action. We get mad because in our attempt to avoid a collision, we come near to hitting a vehicle nearest to us. While no actual physical damage results, our anger reaches such an senseless level that anything can happen.

Every now and then, I ask myself a simple question. Why do we always have traffic accidents or worse an increasing rate of road rage? To answer, I surmise that there may just be too many motor vehicles on the road. That government fails to build needed road networks for the expanding volume of traffic is another plausible explanation. These two yield to the situation that where each one driver competes with the others for the shrinking road space, collision is likely to happen.

Having thus identified the possible sources of many of our bloody vehicular accidents, results of road rage included, we suggest to our leaders to move accordingly. The easier basic thing to accomplish is for our leaders to create new roads, expand and widen existing ones and make sure that the traffic laws are enforced strictly. Admittedly, it is not so easy to draft the laws to minimize the number of vehicles on the road, but this has to be done. At the same time, moves need be taken to leave the act of driving motor vehicles to the hands of those less prone to violence. While this is most difficult to achieve, it has to be done. Or we will see road rage reach more frightening heights.