If you were stand­ing in line at the super­mar­ket, and the per­son in front of you didn’t notice the line moved for­ward, you prob­a­bly wouldn’t give him the fin­ger and start yelling obscen­i­ties. You might say some­thing like, “Excuse me.” Most full-grown adults have been taught how to han­dle prob­lems with­out swear­ing and spit­ting. So if we don’t han­dle super­mar­ket drama with four-letter words and threats of death, why do we han­dle road drama this way?

Whether we’ve been the one receiv­ing it, or the one dish­ing it out, we’ve all expe­ri­enced road rage. There’s no argu­ing that car horns are impor­tant. They alert other dri­vers of dan­ger: “Stop! You’re back­ing up into my car!” “Care­ful, you’re com­ing into my lane!” Horns can stop some very bad acci­dents before they hap­pen. Unfor­tu­nately, they’re used just as often to express our annoy­ance. “You just cut me off, you idiot!” “Green means go, mis­ter!” Is it nec­es­sary, in these sit­u­a­tions, to lean on the car horn for 3, 5, 10 sec­onds? Is there a ben­e­fit to curs­ing your fel­low Turn­piker and then insult­ing his mother? Bad man­ners only esca­late anger, and often result in retal­i­a­tion and more aggression.

It’s pretty clear why road drama turns good peo­ple into mean­ies. 1. Roads are dan­ger­ous, so the con­se­quences of mak­ing a mis­take are seri­ous and make peo­ple upset. 2. Unlike on a super­mar­ket line, you and the guy you’re yelling at are sep­a­rated by glass, metal, and asphalt. Why not take out all your frus­tra­tions from work, school, home, and rela­tion­ships on this dri­ver in front of you? The anonymity pro­vided by a car makes it easy to behave in ways you nor­mally wouldn’t, when face-to-face.

Next time you’re ready to call some­one a name you wouldn’t want your grand­mother to hear, try and real­ize that it’s not really you talk­ing, but an engrained cul­ture of bad road­side man­ner. Then real­ize that you’re bet­ter than that.