Crowded roads and fast-paced living make a dangerous combination.
Increasingly, traffic enforcement officers have to deal with road-rage incidents that sometimes have deadly consequences.
Take this recent incident in Port St. Lucie, where a woman has been charged with stabbing a man who was following her car too closely.
Anusha Bissoon, 28, and her boyfriend were riding in a car and became angry when another vehicle was tailgating them, officials there reported. When they stopped their car, the other driver stopped and they began fighting in the street. Bissoon, officials say, fatally stabbed the man.
Lt. Chris Miller isn't surprised. As spokesman for the Florida Highway Patrol post in Manatee County, he has seen motorists' driving habits deteriorate.
"I've observed over the years an increase in road rage, mainly on the interstate because there's more traffic and people generally tend to be in a hurry," he said.
Aggressive driving habits have been around since the "advent of motorized transport and quite possibly, since the beginning of vehicular travel," according to a 2004 National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration study.
But "beginning in the 1990s, an unrelenting series of news reports captured the public's attention and elevated to a national problem what previously had been considered to be, simply, rude and occasionally bizarre human behavior," the federal agency reported.
The triggers include driving slow in passing lanes, not using a turn signal when changing lanes and following vehicles too closely, Miller said.
Road rage happens when drivers take these incidents as personal affronts and want to respond in a vindictive, retaliatory manner, according to Carlos Zalaquett, an associate professor and coordinator of the mental health counseling program at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
"Something happens when we get behind a steering wheel," Zalaquett said. "We develop this full sense of being master of our domain and what you want is all that counts."
Aggressive driving and road rage are mental health issues, he said.
"A soccer mom with children in car seats in the back of her SUV who starts to drive aggressively because another driver does something that she doesn't like is putting her children in danger," Zalaquett said. "How do you explain this kind of behavior from a woman who otherwise is a great mother?"
Sgt. Mike Kenyan has seen lots of road rage during the 28 years he has been with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office.
"From my experience it all starts from something minor," said Kenyan, who has been a supervisor with the sheriff's office Traffic Enforcement Motorcycle Unit for 13 years. "And it's getting worse. People are not as courteous as they used to be. Everybody's in too much of a hurry to get to where they've got to go."
The failure to understand the situations of other drivers also fosters aggressive driving.
"We get behind the wheel and lose perspective," Zalaquett said. "We need to be capable of seeing the other person's perspective."
The personalities of aggressive drivers fall into different categories. The hostile personality type is quick to get angry over small infractions by other drivers, such as failure to signal a lane change.
"They also tend to get upset at others for not being as aggressive a driver as they are," Zalaquett said.
People who are very competitive or narcissistic are inclined to be more aggressive when they get into a car, he added: "They feel life should go their way and get upset when it doesn't."
Then there is the vigilante driver, who goes out to find others who are not driving the way they think they should be.
"That driver wants to teach them a lesson," Zalaquett said. "They don't understand a fight with a car can evolve into a life-threatening situation."
Miller, the FHP spokesman, offered drivers a few tips to avoid road rage. Follow basic driving rules like using a signal when changing lanes, driving in the right lane and allowing faster traffic to pass on the left, and not following the vehicle in front of you too closely.
The easiest driving habit - "be courteous, even if others are not," he said.
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