Redirect your Decisions

Imagine driving on the 105 with your music low, just enough to jam a bit but also be able to be alert of any coming hazards. You check your mirrors every five seconds and everything seems fine…until this raging white car passes you just enough for you to brake. You should start to feel your hands shake and your heart beat faster than ever before, but instead you grip the wheel, adjust your seat, learn forward, and in an instant your foot is stepping heavily on the gas. Your vision focuses on that one car and nothing else. Cars around you are honking but you ignore them. You catch up right behind the car and right when you think you’ve scared it, it comes to a sudden stop and you both collide because you did not have enough time to swerve or stop. What I have just described is the truth behind being a driver.

When you first learn to be behind the wheel you believe as long as you are being a responsible driver nothing will happen, but that is completely false. Like my father always tells me, “never lose your focus because there will always be a driver that does not even have their lenses on.” But as young adolescents getting our driver license is fun. We see this privilege exciting that we fail to see that with driving comes a great responsibility. We think checking our mirrors every few seconds is enough, except it never is. There is more responsibility that has to come from our minds and bodies. So what is enough? The reality is that there is not enough that can be done to prevent deaths caused by drivers. We live in a country where even if there are signs at every pole and streetlights directing us there will always be that one thing that ruins the purpose of safety. A car can either pass a red light during incoming traffic on one end and crash, speed and lose ability to stop before colliding into another vehicle, the driver could fall asleep on the road, or in this case of the essay let their emotions take control of the wheel rather than their minds.

Our emotions are a strong aspect of our experience of being a human being. We feel and that is the glory of being a decent person, but there are times where allowing our feelings to show is dangerous. As I have mentioned before, young adolescents are reckless. We are still growing and learning and yes that means we struggle with knowing when we have the green light to express ourselves. But what does this mean? It means we are more dangerous to the world than anything. We allow our anger to take control, this is an event that has been given the term road rage. Road rage is anger caused by stress and frustration when driving a motor vehicle in an unacceptable way. Now you probably see yourself in this term. Maybe when you are on your way back from work and your body is exhausted but there is a lot of traffic and all you want to do is get to your bed, so you serve between cars and honk and tailgate. It is okay to see yourself in this, I know I can agree that I have had road rage at times. It is normal to be stressed with traffic at times, but it is not okay to allow that frustration to take over the wheel. When frustration controls your actions, it can cause the loss of not only your life but another driver whether they have angered you or are just on the road. And the reality is, most drivers who have lost their lives are just drivers who happened to be on the road at the same time. The good thing is that we have figured out the issue, now we can be able to discuss what are the options to avoiding road rage and saving lives.

The first step is self evaluation. Driving when you are not in a balanced state can cause every thing to go downhill. Your mind is focused on the stressor that you loose complete focus on the road. So when you wake up, check with yourself and figure out what you are feeling. If any negative emotion is present find a positive way to decrease that feeling. This can be done by eating, watching a movie/show, talking with someone, writing it down in a journal, listening to music, listening to a podcast, etc. Anything that you know calms you down is helpful to have a safe road. But what if nothing works? There will be times where days are not the best, you have them and I have them and everyone else around us has them, those are the days where we need to internally decide whether it is worth driving and risking a trigger or is it better to find an alternative way of transportation. But in many cases the only option is driving, but the same contemplation is required. What would you get out of having rage? Is it worth risking lives just to chase or compete with the driver? If you were telling the story to someone would they be impressed or worried? Exactly, road rage is not worth it. It is not deserving of lives.

Road rage is not only seen in young adolescents, I have seen it in my father, my cousins, my older friends, even my grandma one time, but if you start now you will be able to understand the consequences of road rage and know how to cope with anger next time someone cuts you off without using their blinker. So next time you are driving know that you can not control outside drivers, but you can definitely control yourself and your wheel so carefully choose your next steps.