Stuff You Should Know - Road Rage: GRRRR!!!

Episode Date: July 23, 2015

About half of all people experience rage on a daily basis when they get behind the wheel. What is it about driving that ticks us off so badly? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca slash host.

I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there eating some soup and crackers, which means this is Stuff You Should Know. Yeah, Jerry's following too close.

Yeah. Well, she's sitting down at the desk, so it's okay. It's dangerous to eat soup and crackers right on someone's bumper. Right. You could sit somebody off and they may go crazy on you and shoot you. That's right. I would like to just write off the bat and say that in Chuck's book, driving, there are three kinds of drivers.

Okay. I thought about this. There are good drivers. Okay, that's me. Which are generally just capable, confident, you make mistakes, but you're just in control of your vehicle, defensive driving. That's me. There are bad drivers.

That's me. Nervous drivers. Have you ever been in a car with someone that just doesn't feel confident behind you? No, this is not me. That's the worst. It's scary. Sure. It's not the worst, actually.

That's coming. Okay. But also people who are just in their own, like I say they have their heads up, their fannies. Uh-huh. I say that a lot in traffic. Yeah. Get your head out of your fanny.

Right. So that counts as a bad driver just in your own world, basically not even thinking that there are other people around you. That is still the second one? Yeah. Okay, yeah, I'm not number two. And then the third is jerks. That's me.

And I think we can reach people in the first two categories with this read of this podcast. Yeah. You can't reach jerks. I don't know, man, because I definitely consider myself a jerk in traffic. You can't reach jerks. And this reached me in a lot of ways. Well, then you're not a jerk because jerks are ones who are like, feel completely justified to like get up in front of someone and slam on the brakes as punishment.

That is a jerk. So I wouldn't slam on my brakes. That's just stupid and juvenile. Yeah. But I would go around somebody who cut me off and maybe cut them off. Really? Which would make me a jerk. Right?

That makes you a dangerous driver. Okay, well, I agree and I realized that being a dangerous driver is a really stupid dumb thing to do. And this article, like I was already on the road. Yumi hates the way I drive a lot of times, right? So she's got me on a short leash as far as driving goes. And so like I'm already in the mindset. But then reading this article helped drive it home even further.

Like, yes, this is really stupid. The thing that the light bulb that went on over my head was like, if you drive aggressively, it's bad enough, right? It can be dangerous. It just takes a very stressful situation to make it worse for yourself and everybody. But then one thing I hadn't considered is you might run afoul of somebody who is like a genuine psychopath that will run you off the road and kill you. It actually happens.

Pull a weapon on you and try and shoot you. Right. There was a video, a cell phone video of a guy who was driving and there was a guy road raging next to him or whatever and the guy was just filming him. And in the film, the guy pulls out a gun. Wow. And all of a sudden, a puff of gray smoke comes out of the end of the gun that's being pointed at the guy shooting the video who's driving in the other car.

I think that means it's been fired unless that gun just burped. Right. That guy was a doctor in Kentucky, the guy who shot at the other dude. So you never know who you're going to run afoul of. And that was one thing I hadn't considered that now I'm like, oh yeah, I should probably add this to the pile of reasons why I shouldn't drive like a jerk. Well and here's my caveat here is I think that any of those three drivers I described can be, you can be any of those given certain circumstances on any given day.

But what I mean by jerks are people that are just, out of the car, they're jerks. Personality wise, they're jerks. Right. And that's just who you are. And that's not who you are. Thanks, man. I was just about to put you on the spot, but you took the initiative. How about that?

So this is written by Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff. Who ironically does not have a driver's license. No, he doesn't drive and you can tell that Strickland wrote this because he talks a lot early on about how dangerous and stressful driving is and how basically you could sort of extrapolate, you're a fool if you drive a car pretty much. Yeah, that's why I don't. And road rage, what we're talking about here is it's of a fairly recent provenance, which means it's kind of one of those...

Like since cars have been around? Yeah, but even more recent than that. Sure. As far as I can tell, they've traced the origin of the term back to only 1988. Oh, wow. And it didn't really become like a nationally renowned thing until the 90s. And there was this idea that there was an epidemic of road rage going on. And I think a lot of people still suspect that there's plenty of road rage, but you

don't hear the word like epidemic used any longer as much. I think now everybody just calls it driving. But it's also contextually bound, right? There's not like a strict definition of it. No, but you also, you can't have road rage without having a car. And the more and more I looked into this, the more and more I realized that road rage is not... You can't just extrapolate it onto other conditions.

That is a very unique, very specific type of mental malady, basically. Yeah, agreed. You know, like... Yeah, because people behave in their car, and we see this over and over when they talk to psychological experts or psychologists, that you behave in your car much differently. Like the things you would do in a car, you would not think of doing like in an elevator. Yeah. You know, those are a new sense of not invincibility, but there's a...

A little bit. There's... Like you can see the other person, but there's a barrier between you and that person that gives you the confidence and the arrogance to be like, here's my middle finger. Whereas like you said, if you were in an elevator or somebody, you would not do the same thing. I said floor two. Get your head out of your face. Middle finger.

Right. So the car sets you up for a certain sort of psychological aggressiveness, right? Things become okay. But it's also when you're in a car, you're almost always plopped into a set of stressful circumstances. Yeah. And so all of this together leads to the potential for road rage to just kick in. Yeah.

Well, there's someone, and boy, what a name, Dr. Leon James studies this a lot, and he is even known as Dr. Driving, because he has been an expert witness to Congress on traffic psychology. It takes to get a name like Dr. Driving. I bet he never gets honked at with that vanity plate in traffic after driving. So he believes, and I tend to agree with him that one of the big causes of road rage isn't too many people or traffic or whatever, but the way our culture views aggressive driving. Yeah.

And he pointed out that children who see their parents are nice and sweet folks. When they get in a car, they see them driving aggressively and yelling things and saying things, and this brings kids up with this idea that, wait a minute, when I'm in this weird tin can on four wheels or when my parents are, their personality changes. Yeah. I get to flip the bird at people. Yeah. And it's fine.

You can yell, scream, and cuss. I would never do that in real life, but so children see this, and then it becomes, or if you just watch TV or movies, aggressive driving is the norm. Yeah. Have you ever seen the transporter? Yeah. Or bullet? Yeah.

Or Fast and Furious 12. Or the best car chase ever. Blues Brothers? Ooh. That's a tough one. No, that's it. That's the one. That's tough.

That's the one. Fridge Connection? Oh. Ronan? Go to sleep. No? Better than the Blues Brothers. Are you kidding?

There have been, there's just some great car chases. So, you have children seeing their parents acting hostily and aggressively in the car, learning that, right? Yep. You have, like you said, fast driving being glorified to a certain degree. Sure. And then also, it's married with this idea that was around for a very long time. Our friend Sigmund Freud came up with this, that if you have some sort of base emotion

like anger or whatever, it should be vented. And that's not the case they're finding. There's this thing called catharsis theory that basically is what I just said, that if you're frustrated, you just shout and bang on your steering wheel and you'll feel better. And studies have found that, no, actually, you're just practicing to be better at being aggressive in real life, right? And that supposedly the best way to do it is just ruminate on it, just basically sulk until it goes away.

Or meditate. Sure. A couple of other things that come into play are especially here in the United States, tendency to not back down because that's cowardly. We are taught to stand firm. And a sense of justice, that's a big one for me. Plus also, all of that is psychological, you can take it even further down to the neurological and biological levels where when you are in a situation where you perceive that you are

being encroached upon or threatened or something like that, your fight or flight syndrome is going to kick in and you're going to react badly, you're going to have the opportunity to feel aggressive because again, your flight aspect is probably diminished because you feel protected and separated from that driver by your car and their car. Yeah, like this is my area. So fight is probably going to be the one that kicks in the most, right? And when that happens, anger kicks in and anger as this article puts it is a very seductive emotion.

Yeah, that adrenaline, it might not feel good in the moment, but adrenaline, you know, it's a rush and yeah, it is seductive. People, I don't know if they seek it out, but when it happens, it's not like that felt bad. No, you're like, I feel like a million bucks, I'm going to go tell my boss what's what. And if you're kind of getting that like this seems like something of a hodgepodge or a kitchen sink of like pop psychology, it very much is. But I think one of the things that has kind of been pushed to the wayside is the idea

that it road rage is made up by the media or that it is just nothing but pop psychology. It does appear to be a real thing. It's very situational and context specific. And yet because it isn't fully understood all of the mechanisms and processes, there's a lot of room for morning talk show hosts to to interview fraudulent experts on it. And then that become factor theory or whatever. Yeah. My advice is to not watch those shows ever unless we're on it.

And two, if you need proof, look around, drive in a big city one day and just do that for an hour. Right. And you will witness some kind of road rage. Well, I was read this article from like the late nineties by this, I think a sociologist or something, he was like, this is completely fabricated road rage epidemic road rage itself doesn't exist by by this guy. And the person who interviewed the guy went about just totally disassembling his argument.

Yeah. The guy, he was like strictly and he didn't drive, rode a train admitted he'd never never experienced road rage or what it what it must be like or what people are saying is road rage. And he was just sure it didn't exist. What a dope. He did back it up a little bit with police reports and all that stuff, but no road rage definitely doesn't exist.

Yeah, it happens. So let's take a break, Chuckers, before we go on, because I'm getting excited and I need to calm down. Okay. Hey, everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia, who realized she could Airbnb

her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. Lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running

and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father.

And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Go to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, I'm feeling calm. All right, good. Let's talk a little bit about just what goes on in a typical incident. What you're looking at is usually an almost always an escalation, a trigger and an escalation, an aggressive action.

One person does something, someone else does something back like a punishment, and it escalates from there, hopefully not too much. But like you said, it can lead to murder. Well, yeah, man, there's a guy out there who's called the road rage killer, has apparently killed multiple people, including this guy, Timothy Davidson, who was chased for 15 miles in Maryland, through Maryland and Pennsylvania, before the road rage killer forced him off the road and then got out and shot him to death while he was in his car. This person probably thinks they're making the roads a safer place.

Right. I think they're also just a serial killer who has an unusual MO. So Dr. James, Dr. Driving, excuse me. He identified a bunch of aspects of driving that can contribute to this, and they all make sense. One is immobility because you're stuck there, you can't like, you know, if you're at home and you're stressed out, you can go take a jog or something or go hit the boxing bag. Which is, again, been discounted.

The heavy bag, and when you're behind the wheel of a car, you can't do that stuff unless you have a speed bag like hanging in the driver's seat. And similarly, you're also feeling a sense of constriction, right? Like you're on the road and it's the open road and it's a big road, but I mean, really, it's just several feet across. Yeah. You've got to stay on it. Yeah.

You have to stay on it. You're boxed in. So that makes sense. Yeah. Lack of control. Even if you are one of the good drivers, like I mentioned, in control of your vehicle, you cannot predict or have any control over the drivers around you or traffic or construction or weather or anything else that can add up to a cruddy commute.

Right. And what's more, you don't have the option of just abandoning your car or in traffic gets bad. So you are stuck. Oh, you can if you're Michael Douglas and falling down. Right. But that's what made that act so radical and kicked off and established his character. He just leaves his car.

Yeah. In traffic. People don't do that, which contributes further to that lack of control. You're stuck there. Whether you like it or not, unless you want to give up your car for a lot of people, like the car is the most expensive possession they own, and so they're not going to abandon it. So that to me, the lack of control, that is probably the most feakened situation or aspect of driving that can lead to aggression and hostility and stress is like, if you need

to be somewhere and you left in time and you made sure that you got up early and you got out there and everything's great on your end, but then you pull right into traffic and you know you're going to be late, well, that's not fair. Yeah. It's not fair. That's when it starts. It's unjust. That's right.

And it's everyone else in front of you's fault. That's right. Territoriality is a big one. Like I said earlier, this is our space and if you infringe upon that space, there's trouble. Denial and loss of objectivity is a pretty obvious one because no one, it's never your fault. Right. You know.

Yeah. It's not you. It's the other jerk. Yeah. Although that's not true for me. I will, in case I do a bonehead move or when that happens, I'm always very quick to say I'm sorry. Well, I will get very mad if they continue to yell at me, if I'm like, oh, I'm sorry

about that. That was, you know, my fault. Right. And then they're still yelling at me. Oh, yeah. They've got a half a second. Right. Then I'm like, you know.

They have a half a second to accept your apology or ignore it. If they escalate, oh, it's on, right? Yeah. Like what do you want to put me in stocks and flog me? Right. I'm saying I'm sorry here. And I do the same thing, Chuck. Like if I do something stupid, like I almost every time will be like, sorry.

Throw the hand up. Sure. Mm-hmm. Just the hand. All fingers sticking up. Yeah. That's right. Unpredictability.

You never know what's going to happen out there, so that can make it stressful if you're not confident. Yeah. Especially if you're not confident. I imagine that's a terrible way to drive. And then ambiguity. I never really thought about that, but Strickland points out there is no mutually agreed upon way to say you're sorry.

I've always kind of thought it was throw the hand up and nod. Throw the hand, and I think people are perceptive enough to tell when you're sarcastically waving. Oh, sure. Like when somebody wouldn't let you in, even though you had your blinker on, and finally you're like, I'm forcing my way in front of you. And then you give them that sarcastic wave, like, thanks so much. I'm in front of you, even though you didn't want me to. Yeah.

I think people can distinguish between that wave and like a sorry, shoulders hunched, sorry kind of, or, yeah, you appreciate it wave is a great one. You're up. You're waving. You're turning about in your seat. Maybe you turn your windshield wipers on and a salute to the people. Yeah. But you can tell the difference.

Yeah. You know, let someone over. I found more and more people are intentionally don't let people in if someone's like, oh, I missed my turn. Such a jerk. Can I get in there? And people like, what kind of psychopath, what kind of sociopath, well, it's the same thing.

It just depends on whether you know, no, no, no, I could let you in, but I'm not going to do it. You know what, when I see somebody else do that, I'm just like, I'll be like you piece of garbage to the person who wouldn't let the other person in. But then every once in a while, and I'm really shocked and dismayed when this happens, like somebody will be trying to like go ahead of me and I know they're going to get in front of me. And I'll like look down and I didn't realize it, but I've been accelerating rather than

just going the same speed I was before unconsciously, I'm like, oh, you're not getting in front of me. So I'm like speeding up and it's just such a horrible thing to do. When I realize it, I'll stop and let them go or whatever. But yeah, it's almost unconscious sometimes. Some people, you can tell that it's very much conscious. They're just not letting the person in. But I think sometimes it's also unconscious, like people don't, they don't want to be behind

somebody. Yeah. And I'll also point out too that, you know, you should let people over and stuff just to be nice and pay it forward, but yeah, why is that so funny? That movie makes it funny. Oh, I didn't even see that movie. That's a real term. You wouldn't see, you wouldn't use that term if you'd seen the movie.

But sometimes if someone has, you know, missed their turn and they're blocking an entire row of traffic that is trying to turn, sometimes you just got to be like, you missed your turn, like take the right turn around and start over, right? Like there's 40 people behind you that didn't miss their turn, they're trying to take that right. Man, totally agree. And those people are like, nope. Yep.

I'm just going to sit here. Or blocking the box at an intersection. Yeah. You just set everybody back. Yeah. Big fines in New York City. Not in Atlanta. It's a free-for-all here in Atlanta.

Anybody can pull into an intersection at any time and block as much traffic as they want. It's partially, the traffic planners are partially responsible for this, Chuck. There are plenty of dumb lights out there and dumb intersection systems that need to be improved. But one rule of thumb is you just, you don't block the box. If everybody agrees not to block the box, then traffic will actually move a lot faster for everybody. Yeah.

Well, actually take a step back. The real rule is don't enter an intersection if you cannot get completely through the intersection. Well, that's the thing. Don't block the box. Yeah. But sometimes people think like, oh, well, I think I see traffic moving. I'll just go ahead and get out there. Right.

Then that light turns and then you're sitting in there like a jerk. What we need is just driverless cars. Do the thinking for us. Or people without their heads up their fannies. All right. So is it road rage? Is it aggressive driving? It's hard to determine that because you ask a hundred people and you're going to get a

hundred different answers. Like some people say like, no, driving 40 and a 30 is fine. That's not aggressive. Yeah. Supposedly 47% of Americans consider driving 10 miles an hour or more over the speed limit to be a type of aggressive driving. That's part of the problem is you have wildly different opinions on what aggressive driving is.

So not only do you have different opinions on what aggressive driving is, even if people all agree, yeah, like tailing somebody is, or following way too closely, is aggressive driving. It is. I think pretty much everyone can agree on that. There's still no quantifiable way to say that. Is it like three feet? Is it a car length?

Well, no. Can you judge a car length? Like there's, there are actual laws that say the amount of car lengths you're supposed to be behind someone. How many? Well, it depends on your state. What state? Georgia.

Well, I haven't taken the driver's test 30 something years, but if I remember, like if they teach you in driver's ed, like two car lengths is safe and unless it's raining, and then you're supposed to increase it by one. But I mean, there are rules. Okay. It's not just indeterminate. People don't follow them. No.

But like that's where you'll get a ticket. If you rear in someone, right. Once you rear in somebody, but people very rarely get pulled over for just for follow closely. Oh, no. Of course not. Unless you're following a cop too closely. So, okay.

Agreed. Like people, there's no real definition necessarily of road rage. Although Strickland points out that there's a lot of people say what would constitute aggressive driving is road rage, right? And he kind of sticks to the definition of road rages when aggressive driving triggers a situation where people are committing acts of violence against one another, either using their cars or because of their cars or around their cars. Yeah.

I guess my definition would be more than one interaction. Like one person cutting someone off and like flipping a bird, not nice, but I don't know if that's road rage, but if then that person reacts to them back and you have a situation going on between two people, that's road rage to me. My definition of road rage is when something just sets you off and you go with it. Even if you're not like, even if the person doesn't see you and you're not trying to get the person to see you, but like you're pounding on your steering wheel because somebody cut you off or they didn't use their blinker or they're sitting there on their cell phone

at a green light or something like that and you're just that moment of basically temporary insanity that can just be a one off to me. It doesn't even have to necessarily overtly include two people. It can be one person being set off by the behavior of another person. That to me is road rage. Yeah. I've gotten much worse. I have to admit about when the light turns green, it used to be just a polite look like

someone doesn't notice, just a little beep, the light screen. But now the person is invariably looking down at their phone and I don't just do a kind of little beep anymore. I give them a honk and the other day, oh man, I had a lady sitting at the green light on her phone texting. I can see her. I honked good at her. She flipped me off and continued to like, I'm going to finish my text.

Oh my God. Oh dude, I had to like channel every like, you know, cat Steven song on the planet running through my head to not go nuts. Yeah. I did the trap too. I'm not perfect. I was so angry at the injustice of her being like, no, no, no. I know it's green.

Yeah. Shut up. I'm going to finish this text. Or similarly, I'll notice people who are not quite that hostile, but like you'll beep and they'll look up and they'll see like, oh, it's green. And then they're, they start to do both. Right. They're still on their phone, but then they start to drive, but they're going like a half

a mile an hour and it's not that much better than flipping you off and sitting there continuing to text. At least that lady knew where she stood. Yeah. Maybe I should give her credit for just being herself. Yeah. You know. Um, all right.

So Dr. Driving, um, he lists some, he divides aggressive driving up into three areas that I think are pretty emblematic of what you see every day. There's impatience and inattentiveness, which is sort of what I was talking about earlier. You're rolling through stop signs, you're blocking the box, you're, uh, you're sitting there on your cell phone, you're speeding, um, you have your head up your fanny or your, your other excuses. I'm super late. I'm sorry, but I'm really late.

Yeah. These are almost two, two sides, two opposite sides of the same coin. Yeah. Um, but they are, they constitute Dr. Driving's lowest level of aggressive driving or road rage, depending on your, your definition, right? Don't you find that a little disconcerting that after all these years, we still don't have a distinct definition for road rage and that there's a guy named Dr. Driving at the vanguard of the study of this.

Yeah. Uh, all right. It escalates into number two, which is a power struggle. And this is big, you know, this is a big deal. This is when you are, um, flipping someone off, they're flipping you off. You've rolled your window down. You're making that eye contact that they don't recommend you make, um, I'm much more passive aggressive.

I never make the eye contact. Right. Do you like, uh, scratch the side of your face with just your middle finger? No, no. I don't do that. I don't flip anyone. The bird that's just, uh, I'm just like, you never know who that person is. Yeah.

I'm just like, I don't want to have someone run me off the road and try and kill me basically. Right. See, that never even occurred to me and I'm a passive aggressive Southerner. Gotcha. That's really probably why, um, tailgating people, cutting them off, um, acts of retaliation. And basically he says that this is people with an unhealthy mentality when you think that you're the target of someone else like that person is after me, which can be the case.

And that happens to me a lot like anyone who's driving slow in front of me in the fast lane is purposefully not getting over because they don't feel like they have to. And it, it doesn't matter that I'm behind them. They, they just, they don't have to do it. They don't care that they're, it's, they're right to be in the fast lane just as much as mine. Yeah. Even though they're driving slower.

That is the, one of the greatest challenges in my entire life is just dealing with that. The left lane. Yeah. You know, Georgia has a law now where you can be fine for driving slow in the fast lane. Yeah. We, we actually talked about that on an episode and I think we were, we were, um, talking it up and we got some mail from people like, that's a ridiculous dangerous law. I'm like, no, that's a great law.

Yeah. Our response to all of them were get out of the left lane. Yeah. Problem solved. So that one's mine where it's like, I have to remember there's nothing personal and even if that guy is like, well, it's my civic right to be in the fast lane to jerk, uh, it has nothing to do with me. Yeah.

The person doesn't know me. It's not anything to do with my day and, um, we, I was reading this thing in Pacific Standard. Did you read the article? Yeah. It's called the psychology and biology of road rage. And they were talking about how it's, um, potentially one of the, the things that people with road rage have is called intermittent explosive disorder where you basically disproportionately

rage toward a stimulus, right? Yeah. To any given stimulus. So they were saying like, I got the impression like it's a bit of a stretch. They were saying that people with IED, um, it doesn't necessarily mean that if you have road rage, you have IED, but they were saying that road rage could be a symptom of IED. But the thing that I got that's part of this intermittent explosive disorder, the thing that stuck out to me was hostile, hostile attribution bias.

Yes. And that seems to come up a lot in road rage. Yeah. And I think, um, I, I guarantee you that's tied to narcissistic personality disorder. Oh, good. It just sort of goes hand in hand. Yeah. Um, basically like they're, the injury or threat is not an accident.

It is purposeful, um, and personal. Right. That's what I'm saying. When somebody's driving fast in front of me, me being a narcissist, apparently, I have to, I have to say like, as whatever, I can just go around them, doesn't matter. Even if they are like, I know who you are, I know you hate being driven slow in front of them. It really changes.

Nothing. No. We're still going 70, 80 miles an hour down a highway in metal boxes, which means safety first, no matter what. Yeah. So do you get up in front of them and then do the old, uh, douse them with your, uh, windshield wiper fluid? No, I don't do that.

I've seen people do that before like, all right, I guess I got to turn on my wipers for a second now. I, uh, I've never taken that as a hostile act, although I'm sure people do. It's a thing. I've seen people do that. Yeah. They'll like someone will cut you off and they'll get in front on the highway and then squirt their little blow over the car at a high speed.

Yeah. No, I know what you mean. Children basically acting like children. I will, um, I, I have gotten to the point now, I've gotten way better Chuck. I really am, um, have learned to just keep my aggressive driving and check. Yeah. Um, and just let it go. Let it go.

And like I'll still be a spark there, but I'm, I've gotten to a point where I can be like, it, it, it doesn't matter. Just go around them. Bite your lip. Right. Until it bleeds. Yeah. Until it teeth work their way all the way through.

I see you come in the morning. So you're just bloody in the face. But if it's really bad, if somebody is clearly just being like an arrogant jerk, like this is my fast lane too. My taxes paid for this. I don't have to get around you. And it's a real thing. I've got this thing now where as I'm passing them, pass them slowly and calmly and everything

safe, but I'll just be like staring forward with this huge overbite. Like cleanest the slack, John Yockel, exactly. And it works really great. That's pretty good. It feels pretty good to me too. It feels more clever than like shooting someone, the bird, you know, anyone can throw out a middle finger. Sure.

Unless I guess you don't have the middle finger, you know, that's a problem. So the final bit, the final category is recklessness and road rage. And that's when it escalates to full on violence, like I'm going to use my car as a weapon or I have a weapon. Yeah. And the same Pacific standard article referenced an article in the journal, sexy, sexy journal accident analysis and prevention. Yeah.

From Hobbit. And found that the presence of a gun increases road rage and aggressive driving behavior. Like even if it, even if the person doesn't pull it out, just knowing it's in the glove compartment makes them more likely to be hostile. Yeah. It says they're more likely to make obscene gestures at motorists and follow aggressively behind other cars. And they're saying, does that mean that you have a gun, you're going to drive more aggressively?

They can't say that, of course. Or do you, or are you, or if you're an aggressive driver, you're just more likely to be the same type of person have a gun? Right. Exactly. Interesting study though, for sure. Yeah. And, and that, that same guy actually, what's his name, or this other dude, Emile Kakaro.

He's a, or Kakaro. He's a professor. Probably Kakaro. Kakaro. He's a professor at a university of Chicago and he makes a great point. His advice is, don't assume the other person is like you. Yeah. Like, they may be crazy.

Don't assume they don't have a gun. Yeah. Don't assume that they're rational and reasonable and that, like, it can stop escalating at some point. Yeah. That's what I tell Emile all the time. I'm like, I trust you. I said, but you don't, you don't know if you flick someone off.

Like that may be it for you. And that would really be upsetting if I lost you to road rage because you hung some crazy guy bird. Seriously. Like that's the most senseless, one of the more senseless ways to die, wouldn't you say? Yes. Okay. Which leads, which leads definitely up there, which leads to a preventing road rage, Chuck,

which we're going to talk about right after this. Hey, friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home. Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too.

Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. I'm Mangesh Atkala, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop, but just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Josh. We've vented a lot here today. I know. Even though they say that's not healthy. No. I do feel a catharsis there.

Boy, pair this with our traffic podcast and that's driving goodness. That was the breaking bubble. Yeah, the break bubble. So how can you avoid road rage? Everyone makes mistakes behind the wheel. You can, and actually, there was a little sidebar in here about these guys that came up with a vehicle signaling system just to say, I'm sorry, it's not a bad idea. No.

Because horns, depending on the horn in your car, it can sound aggressive itself even when you do not mean it that way. Yeah. Even a tap tap. Yeah. Or a honk. Yeah. Or it's like, brrrrr.

Yeah. That wouldn't be a bad idea to have a little light that pops up that says, sorry, and then if they don't forgive you, another one that pops up that says, I said I was sorry, one last chance. But people will figure out how to use those sarcastically, like cutting someone off and slamming on the brakes while flashing, I'm sorry. Someone would use it like that. I would have three lights.

One that says I'm sorry, two that said, I just said I was sorry, and three that says you're dead to me. And then they would have one that says, I don't care. But then like the to me would burn out without you knowing it, and would just say you're dead. Yeah. There you go. Oh God, the road rage killer.

All right. So everyone makes mistakes. Oh, hold on. I did read an article about I think a Ford executive who's in charge of the horn. Oh, really? It's like trying to figure out how to make different types of horns. So like in Europe, apparently they have different types of horns available to them. Yeah.

That wasn't just Europe. That was Europe in 1910 that you just did. So what do you say that can become like when you go to buy a car, you say I want this kind of horn? Yeah. Or it comes equipped with a horn that has different functions and capabilities for different situations. That's a great idea.

Like supposedly Tesla has one that's like muted for use with pedestrians so you don't scare the bejesus out of them. Yeah, sure. So there's other ones like a chirping one that's supposed to be friendlier. Right. And then there's the semi-truck air horn, which you can get it put in your car. That liquefies your ear canal. Yeah.

My problem was with rental cars. Their horns are always lame. Oh yeah, they're tiny. Like not even much of a sound. Actually Hyundai released the Sonata and like it was a great car, but everybody hated the horn because they found it to be too wimpy. Yeah. They had to like re-release it with a better horn.

I believe it. Do you remember, did you watch A Little Miss Sunshine? No, I never saw it. That's a good movie. There's a running gag that their old VW van has a horn that will go off occasionally just without, but it sounded exactly like my old VW Beetle had a horn that was like and it would cut in and out and it would, for a time, whenever I took a hard left turn, it would go off.

Wow. But it wasn't allowed. It was just like, it sounded like a dying person gasping for air. A death rattle. Yeah, a death rattle horn. That's a good movie. You should check that out. A death rattle?

Well, that death rattle two and three and then Little Miss Sunshine. Gotcha. You should check out Pay It Forward to see why you should stop saying Pay It Forward. I have no desire. All right, so everyone makes mistakes. Back to that. But you can avoid this escalation in conflict if A, you don't do the eye contact deal. They say that's just like a wild animal.

Don't look them in the eyes. Yeah. Or wait, I thought they said do look them in the eyes to stare them down. I think it depends. On what animal? Yeah. All right. Stare it down.

But it's a sign of aggression. You pull up someone and you look them hard in the eye. You're saying you're on. Yeah, exactly. Let's rumble. Keep control of your temper. That's a no-brainer. Someone...

It is a no-brainer, but that's tough to do if that situation. It is. Especially if your justice bells are ringing like mine do. Like that person shouldn't get away with this. Right. Like lady in front of me. You need to be taught a lesson. You should not get it.

We've gotten away with that. All right. They have done surveys even that show that drivers don't think that they're being... They think they're being assertive and not aggressive. So that basically there can be a lot of mixed communication. And your goal is to just, I don't care what they're doing, I'm not going to match what they're doing. Right.

It's also called being the bigger person. Yeah. You know? Just let it go. Don't let them make you hit the gas pedal. Just think about all the gas you'll save by not driving aggressively in return. Yeah. And Strickland points out that will seem unnatural to you even.

To just say, you know what? They're driving like that. It's not my problem. They're a sad, angry person. Well, he also points out that they're probably under as much stress as you are. Yeah. They may be late. Because apparently in follow-ups to aggressive driving incidents and road rage incidents,

people frequently say they were under stress outside of their car already. Work stress, life stress, that kind of stuff, right? So when you carry that into the extraordinarily stressful, unnatural situation of driving a car, especially in traffic, you're just already set up for it. So if you step back and think, maybe that person's having a rough time in their life, it will make it easier for you to just let it go. Yeah. It's a bigger person.

Yeah. It's a win-win. And we've all been there. And I think you can admit, like, if you're just having a great day and everything's coming up, Josh, you're probably much more laid back behind the wheel. Sure. You know? But if you're super uptight about something, I think all of us fall into that trap, you

know? Yeah. So there are steps you can take to prevent falling into that trap. There's one in here that cracks me up, but it's totally true. Listening to relaxing music. Yeah. I listen to easy listening music, like basically radio lobotomy. Yeah.

And it actually helps quite a bit. Really? Yeah. He says, concentrate on breathing. I can't do that. Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. I get bored anytime I try to just focus on my breathing.

Yeah. You're either good at that or you're not. Right. So I've opted for relaxing music instead. He recommends to get enough sleep. I guess that makes sense. Here's one that you have to give yourself plenty of time to where you're going. Sure.

I didn't expect to just have a pleasurable ride. Right. Right. You just can't. No. You expect the worst. Expect that, you know, and if you show up five minutes early, whatever, that's fine. People love punctual people.

That's nice, right? If you, if it's out of your hands though, then you should say, okay, I'm going to be like, not, oh God, I need to cut through all this. Yeah. Which is kind of like, you me is rolling on the ground laughing right now hearing me say that. Yeah. Because I'm like, we have to go to the airport.

First of all, we have to leave two and a half hours before our flight. Yeah. And I have to drive like a maniac on the way to get there. Yeah. Even if we have plenty of time. Yeah. Because there's a flight. Yeah.

You got a deadline. Yeah. You don't want to miss that flight. Nope. I get it. I get super stressed with when I know I have to fly that day. Yeah. Because you don't know, you can look at the traffic map, but sometimes it feels like you

can't leave early enough. Right. You know. I've actually gotten a lot more relaxed on that too. You know, I think about it. You mean like this little walking volume for me, right? That's great. She's totally chilled me out in traffic.

Yeah. She's chilled me out about like missing a flight and all that stuff. So yeah, I have chilled out tremendously, but I still do drive aggressively sometimes. That's right. I'm a work in progress, Chuck. I do too, my friend. It happens. And we've already talked about avoiding venting.

That can actually increase your sense of danger and frustration instead of calming you down. Yeah. And they're screaming and yelling that that's really not alleviating anything, you know? I do know. I can tell you afterward whenever I do it, I feel terrible about myself. Yeah. Like I was just like, why didn't you just let that go? Now you look like a jackass to anybody who saw you like going, yeah.

And you feel like a jackass too, don't you? Yeah. Yes, I do. That's what I say to myself. So let's talk a few statistics here to close. Shall we? Well, Dr. Driving does point out one thing that I think is probably right. What's that?

One of the best ways to deal with road rage, to prevent road rage, is to teach little kids from an early age how to drive safely, how to avoid road rage, that kind of stuff. And I remember going to Safety City. Did you ever go to Safety City or have you ever heard of it? Never heard of it. It might have just been like an Ohio thing. Okay. We had Danger City.

Nice. That sounds kind of fun. Safety City was the opposite of that. There were dangers there, but it was all like plastic miniature stuff. So like there was a jail in the center town in like a little tiny street. It's like a tiny city with like streets and sidewalks and all that stuff and then buildings and all that. And then you're on your big wheel riding around learning what traffic laws are like.

Really? So it's to teach kids how to drive? Yes, but also how to cross the street safely, all that stuff. What you learn about the danger of walking out in front of a car by being a car yourself and having one of your peers walk out in front of you. And like the first couple of times you try to run them down, but then you learn like, no, that's not cool because they send you to jail. Was that part of school?

I don't remember what it was. I was pretty young. I just remember my dad taking me to it and being like a decent drive away from our home. So I'm not exactly sure where it was when I went to it. I just remember it was, I got to bring my big wheel and I thought it was pretty great. It's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny to think about parents of, and it still happens today, but it seems

like in the 70s and stuff, what was going on in the car was like far from a teaching experience. Yeah, we were looking at like old child safety seats. They looked like they were worse than nothing. Yeah. Like this metal bar that would just cut you in two if you hit it like fast enough. I mean, like these things couldn't have been safe. Like an old rusty spring like pointed at your temple.

Yeah. It's just bad news. Yeah. I got a, you know, I mistakenly flew in on this last tour to Baltimore instead of Washington DC. So I had to take a cab. I was going to take like a bus and a train, but I was like, no, I'm running late. I need to get in a cab.

Yeah. And I got in a cab to go from Baltimore to DC and it was the grumpiest oldest cab driver I've ever met in my life. Yeah. I was in the mid-70s and immediately started honking at the cab in front of him at the airport to get out of the way. Oh yeah. They do that.

And dude, this, it was the perfect guy for what I needed cause he drove like a bat out of Hades to get me there on time. And it was, it was comical and scary and awesome. Yeah. All at the same time. Did you have your seatbelt on? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. People who don't put their seatbelt on because they're in a cab, it's, it's like use your brain. Yeah, I used to not wear much in the back seat, but I've gotten better about that. You need to. Yeah. I always figure like, I'll just hit the seat in front of me, right? Maybe so, but you might go flying over the seat and kick the person in the front seat

to death. Yeah. It's not just you. Kick him to death. Yeah. Can we talk stats? You dug out this cities that are the most courteous and least courteous last year. Auto Vantage Survey.

They did one in 2009. They did one in 2014. And this varies from year to year, but in 2014, they listed Houston, Texas at our own Atlanta. Number two, least courteous. Baltimore, DC and Boston as least courteous. Right. And that changed from 2009, which was New York, Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta. The only holdover was Atlanta and Minneapolis, which surprises me.

Yeah. But how the mighty have fallen, Baltimore in 2009 was the third most courteous. In 2014, it was the third least courteous out of like 25 major cities. It makes me wonder what kind of study this is, to be honest. So they surveyed 2,500 drivers who drive in rush hour traffic at least three times a week and then ask them questions that pertain to like aggressive driving and driving courtesy. Not terrible. Yeah.

They survey and each participant spent about six minutes or whatever, but I mean, it's about as legitimate as these kind of things get because it's the study of road rage and apparently no one's serious about it. Most doctor driving and he can't even be serious enough to just call himself Dr. James. Well he used to be Mr. Driving, so he's definitely taking it a little more serious. He went back to school. Most courteous cities last year where Portland is number one, Pittsburgh, St. Louis. But Portland was also number one in 2009.

Yeah. So they're a chill people out there. That's been my experience. Portland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Francisco and Charlotte, North Carolina is the most courteous cities. So how about that? Yep. You got anything else?

No. The thing I did see though, I was surprised Strickland Sites study that found that women and men are pretty close in aggressive driving behaviors, self-reported aggressive driving and road rage experiences is like 54% of men, but 44% of women. I would have guessed that the disparity would have been a little more, but apparently road rage strikes both genders equally. I definitely see angry women out there and angry dudes. It's both.

Yep. So that's road rage, dude. Uh-huh. If you guys want to know even more about road rage, type those words into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener mail. Yeah. And if we didn't impart it, settle down out there.

It's dangerous. Yeah. We're all trying to get by here. Everybody's got their own life stresses that they're bringing to the road. They're a little more courteous. They didn't mean it to you personally, so don't take it personally. Yeah. And Chuck and Jerry have seen her drive.

Oh yeah. I've never seen Jerry driver. She like an aggressive driver. No. Jerry drives very safely. I remember. She takes crazy routes. I remember that.

Like I've come through this parking lot because this light stinks and yeah, but I think that's the commute route. She has just, she had mastered it from a bucket. I will do that too. Oh yeah. Me too. Um, all right. I'm going to call this a wow signal from a pro.

Oh, cool. Hey guys, I'm a radio astronomer and actually, yeah, right? Actually my subfield is radio transients, i.e. radio signals detected once and never again. Wait, is this person going to debunk the wow signal right here? No. It's actually a nice email. Okay.

Good. I felt like I had to write in about the wow signal. I'm really glad I listened to the episode. She almost didn't because you guys really did a great job nicely balancing the science and speculation. So thank you, and when I get asked in the future, I'll be sure to refer people to your wonderful coverage. Well, thank you.

I thought I'd give a few more details on it if you're interested. On the, it might be real side of things. It's also worth mentioning that the big ear telescope used to look at two points on the sky at the same time separated by a small distance, like two separate pixels. The wow signal was detected in one, but not the other, which is another good indication that it might indeed be coming from space. On the, it might be nothing side. However, some recent work that I've done actually showed that some unexplainable signals that

we've detected at a radio telescope in Australia turned out to be coming from microwave ovens at the telescope site. Manmade signals can sometimes interfere with radio telescopes in ways we don't expect. So it's hard to know if something like that could have also produced a wow signal. It's hard to say either way. I don't have a strong opinion to be honest. I mainly study things called fast radio bursts, but I just wanted to say great job and thanks for making my job easier.

Rock on. Thank you. Rock on. And that is from Emily Petroff. Originally from Portland. Thank you. Emily. Oh, courteous driver.

Probably now living in Melbourne. I don't know about Melbourne's driving and moving to the Netherlands in January. If I pass my PhD defense in October. Oh man. Good luck, Emily. Way to go. I hope to see you in the Netherlands or, you know, that in my mind, yeah, gotcha. If you want to tell us that we did a fantastic job on something that you're an expert in,

we'd love to hear from you. For a change. Yeah. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to selfpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And in the meantime, you can hang out with us at our super dope home on the web, stuff you should know.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas

are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.