Road Rage

In the 19-plus years that I have lived and worked in Korea I have seen numerous cases of road rage that have always bewildered and in some cases shocked me. Although it might seem different than the kind of physical reaction that often characterizes road rage incidents in the United States, in South Korea the road rage incidents are just as bad and have gotten much more physical over the years. To be sure, as more and more Koreans have been able to afford cars and drive the rate of road rage has also increased.

Before one looks at any incident of road rage, whether it is cutting someone off with their car (which happens a lot in Korea) to physically getting out of one’s car and attacking another motorist (I have seen Korean drivers get out of their cars in downtown Seoul and start fighting in the middle of the street; well, not exactly fighting in throwing any punches but slapping each other around a few times) one has to question what is it that would provoke someone to the point where one would react in such a way to harm another motorist? Where has public decency and behavior gone to allow something like road rage to happen in the first place? Have our public morals and basic decency eroded to the point where such behavior becomes more prevalent in our society?

These are the questions that we need to answer to understand why road rage exists in our societies today. It is much more than tempers flaring and a motorist wanting to take out his or her frustrations on another motorist. In a very disturbing way, road rage is a microcosm of much larger social ills and concerns the obvious erosion and breakdown of public morals and decency. In order for us to address how to alleviate road rage, we need to take a serious look at how our society, in terms of sense of morality has eroded over the years. It is not something that we can merely point fingers and blame this one or that one either. 

Although pinpointing the actual root and cause of road rage is not as easy as one might think (after all we are dealing with the human psyche), finding ways to deal with it, at least finding ways to prevent it from happening are easier. First of all, motorists need to exercise more care when driving and, as I learned in driver’s education back in high school, motorists need to drive more defensively. Instead of overreacting when someone cuts you off or fails to signal properly, it would be a better idea to watch out for those motorists who might not be exercising care while driving. It is not that you are merely turning the cheek or looking the other way; on the contrary, you are driving more defensively and preventing a more serious accident from happening.