Originally Posted By: daves87rs
I'd hate to see what some of the posters here would have done...
You never know now a days...
Been a while since I've seen a good cat fight though....
Well....do you mean actually done while on the road? Or claimed to have done while full of "keyboard courage" while on an internet chat forum...
One of the interesting aspects of road rage is the removal of normal social mechanisms, including non-verbal cues, from interpersonal interactions while behind the wheel. People do things to other people while driving their car that they would never do in a normal interpersonal situation, e.g. a line at the supermarket, or walking down the street. When the normal feedback mechanisms are removed, you see all sorts of base behaviour: aggression, selfishness, retaliation, anger, indignation...
I'll spare you most of my own anecdotal examples of road rage (I used to drive in NYC...) but I will say that one road rager (an extreme example of tailgating, speeding and agression in neighborhood/city traffic) that nearly collided with me on the way to work one morning, happened to be in the USN...and I happened to have the time to follow him on base and to his command. At which point, he exited his vehicle and I exited mine, and I re-established some of those normal social interactions using both verbal methods and non-verbal cues...and since we were both in uniform, I added a few uniquely military verbal and non-verbal means of interpersonal communication to clearly articulate my point on the unreasonableness of subjecting me, and the other drivers, to the exceptional level of risk that he had chosen on his morning drive to work...
I might also add that you see some of those previously-mentioned negative behaviours in internet fora like BITOG because the communication, while direct, is all typed; there is no non-verbal set of cues to provide feedback on that typing.
However, the reason that I keep returning to BITOG is the high standard for respectful communication that the members maintain and that the Mods enforce. This site really is a model of internet civility.
I'd hate to see what some of the posters here would have done...
You never know now a days...
Been a while since I've seen a good cat fight though....
Well....do you mean actually done while on the road? Or claimed to have done while full of "keyboard courage" while on an internet chat forum...
One of the interesting aspects of road rage is the removal of normal social mechanisms, including non-verbal cues, from interpersonal interactions while behind the wheel. People do things to other people while driving their car that they would never do in a normal interpersonal situation, e.g. a line at the supermarket, or walking down the street. When the normal feedback mechanisms are removed, you see all sorts of base behaviour: aggression, selfishness, retaliation, anger, indignation...
I'll spare you most of my own anecdotal examples of road rage (I used to drive in NYC...) but I will say that one road rager (an extreme example of tailgating, speeding and agression in neighborhood/city traffic) that nearly collided with me on the way to work one morning, happened to be in the USN...and I happened to have the time to follow him on base and to his command. At which point, he exited his vehicle and I exited mine, and I re-established some of those normal social interactions using both verbal methods and non-verbal cues...and since we were both in uniform, I added a few uniquely military verbal and non-verbal means of interpersonal communication to clearly articulate my point on the unreasonableness of subjecting me, and the other drivers, to the exceptional level of risk that he had chosen on his morning drive to work...
I might also add that you see some of those previously-mentioned negative behaviours in internet fora like BITOG because the communication, while direct, is all typed; there is no non-verbal set of cues to provide feedback on that typing.
However, the reason that I keep returning to BITOG is the high standard for respectful communication that the members maintain and that the Mods enforce. This site really is a model of internet civility.
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