After people slip behind the wheel of their cars, they often act in ways that would be completely inappropriate elsewhere in their lives. A study¹ conducted in 2023 by the German Accident Research Organization of Insurers found that drivers in Germany were increasingly inconsiderate and aggressive. Approximately half of respondents stated that they immediately have to let off steam on occasion once something has irritated them. This level was just under half as high in 2016. What’s more, every fifth driver acknowledged using their vehicle’s headlight flasher to “clear” the passing lane ahead of them. This level was also roughly half as high in 2016. Nearly one-third (31 percent) of respondents said they would step on the accelerator pedal when someone tries to pass them.

Reaction vs. aggression: Solving a psychological puzzle

Why do drivers act this way? The German Society of Traffic Psychology² says that road rage is frequently a form of reactive behaviour, something that occurs when drivers are prevented from reaching an important destination. This event frustrates them and causes them to lash out at the object standing in their way, something like a vehicle that is creeping along ahead of them. This feeling of rage is intensified when drivers consider the actions of other drivers as something avoidable. As a result, they view them as a deliberate act of obstruction or even a provocation (something like driving slowly in the autobahn’s passing lane) in comparison with unavoidable impediments (like a slow-moving agricultural vehicle).

Hostile (as well as emotional or impulsive) aggression is also frequently triggered by such strong emotions as anger or humiliation, according to the society’s traffic psychologists. Drivers want to take revenge for what they perceive as unfair treatment by other road users. Harming the other driver is the primary goal of hostile aggression. But as emotions calm, drivers may come to (belatedly) regret the way they treated their victim. From a psychological perspective, this form of aggression requires a trigger. The trigger of road rage can frequently result from the interplay of situational circumstances and personality traits. Congested roads, overloaded roads and traffic jams resulting from increased mobility promote compensatory forms of behaviours, things like speeds that are inappropriate for the situation, tailgating and risky passing manoeuvres.

Communication in the car:

The silence behind the wheel

Tom Vanderbilt, a journalist at the New York Times and a bestselling author³, blames deficits in communication for drivers’ reactions. Vanderbilt’s conclusion: “Once we get into the car, we are almost condemned to be silent.” This life of silence awakens the desire in people to verbally react, even if no one can hear them. Vanderbilt describes an experiment in which a car was positioned at a traffic light. The car did not budge when the light turned green. Researchers then observed the vehicles located behind the vehicle. They discovered that drivers of open convertibles waited much longer before they started to blow their horns and blew them much less than the drivers of cars with the top down. It appeared that the drivers in vehicles with the top down felt less vulnerable to attack thanks to their enclosed vehicle. Vanderbilt’s conclusion: “Anonymity increases aggression.”

The power of the perspective:

An experiment made some surprising findings

Researchers at the Interdisciplinary Centre of Traffic and Transport Sciences at the University of Würzburg studied similar phenomena. In a simulator, the traffic psychologists asked the subjects to drive behind a vehicle on the autobahn’s passing lane. The right-hand lane had plenty of spaces that the vehicle in front could use to switch lanes. The subjects were then asked to determine whether the driver ahead of them had a good reason for remaining in the left-hand passing lane or whether the driver should switch lanes and let the subjects pass. The identical situation was then repeated – with the roles reversed. The subjects were now driving the vehicle in front. The interesting finding: Many subjects who had insisted during the first simulation that the driver in front should change lanes remained glued to the passing lane in the second scenario and would not let the driver behind them pass. Researchers then concluded that drivers view events on the road only from their own perspective. They attributed a large amount of road rage to our inability to understand the actions of other users of the road. This finding was confirmed by a study¹ conducted by the German Accident Research Organization of Insurers. This study found that most users of the roads consider road rage to be a major problem. But they frequently fail to see that they themselves play a role in it.

Learning from ants

Are drivers per se egoists who have only their own interests in mind? There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. But one thing becomes clear when you compare human behaviour with the strategies employed by the world’s unofficial traffic world champions, ants: Ants do not have any traffic jams, tailgating or road rage. Each day, a highly complex traffic system is created in an ant colony, a community of more than 1 million residents. The secret to their success is cooperation. Ants simply try to do what is best for the entire colony. The progress made by each ant is essential for the well-being of all. No ant considers its time to be more valuable than the time of others.

Can friendly driving methods improve life on the road?

How do cooperative strategies by people – things like giving the right-of-way to another vehicle at an intersection – influence road traffic? This naturally depends on the amount of traffic. If every second driver who had the right-of-way were to let another vehicle use it at a busy intersection, this action would be much less efficient than it would be if every 10th driver gave the right-of-way to several cars. But the frequency of cooperation in real traffic situations has already reached virtually its optimal level. What can be done to enable us to get faster and better to our destinations? We can take some fundamental actions that will facilitate increased traffic efficiency and improve safety. They include:

• Deciding not to change lanes on the autobahn frequently. Frequent lane changes are a practise that produces virtually nothing and can even cause traffic jams.
• Carefully observe traffic and put yourself in other drivers’ shoes when possible. It will soothe your nerves.
• Systematically apply the zipper merge principle. Drivers should use all traffic area available to them, create space for other cars and merge rather late than early. Late merging significantly improves traffic flow, something from which everyone profits.

¹ German Insurance Association (Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft e.V.), survey study conducted by the German Accident Research Organization of Insurers, https://www.udv.de/udv/themen/verkehrsklima-in-deutschland-2023-155368

² German Society of Traffic Psychology, position paper No. 09, October 2020

³ Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), Tom Vanderbilt

Status: 14.6.2024
© Volkswagen AG