“Motorists are people,” reveals Psychologist Donna Dawson. At home with their families, or just walking around in public and stuff, they’re generally pretty easy going, mild mannered and that…
But put them in a car and they can soon turn nasty. Very nasty. Very nasty indeed. Horrible, really. It’s a bit like that whole Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde thing, Psychologist Donna similifies.
That’s right, putting someone in a little metal box on wheels is like slipping them a dose of PCP. One minute they’re a lovely well-balanced normal human being. The next they’re like some foamy-chopped snarling beast, a ranting, raving, cursing, spitting, middle finger raising, fist-shaking, tyre iron fetching psychopath.
Don’t believe it? Psychologist Donna has the stats to back it up. Apparently, she got them from that bulldog off the telly with the wobbly head, Cherchul or whatever he’s called. And Donna’s digi-facts tell us that fully 58% (that’s almost 175 in every 300 people) admit to “acting aggressively” when behind the wheel.
Loads of people (approximately 90 in every 300) admit to shouting unspeakably vile things at other people from inside a motor vehicle. That’s more than twice as many as admit shouting vile things at people from outside a motor vehicle (fewer than 37 in every 300).
Now, that disparity may partly be because swear-word shouters assume that the people they shout at are more likely to hear them when there aren’t any car bodies, windscreens, traffic noise, radios, or whatever to get in the way, acoustically speaking. It may also be because verbal abusers fancy their chances of eluding any adverse reaction from abusees when they’re in a car. But, even so, those are pretty amazing statistics, Bankstone News feels sure you will agree!
Of course there’s more to being aggressive while driving than simply shouting at people. You can also express anger and/or evil intent by ‘beeping’ your ‘horn’ (99 out of 300), by tailgating (no idea what this means, but it certainly sounds rude) (more than 32 in 300), or by “chasing someone’s car in anger” (almost 13 in every 300 people do this, apparently).
Psychologist Donna says: “One of the reasons drivers exert [sic] such different behaviours when on the road is that we tell ourselves ‘the other driver caused me to react this way due to their bad driving’.”
If true, Psychologist Donna’s insight sheds some pretty scary light on human psychology – suggesting an urgent need for a total ban on motor transport – or for people to buy more insurance – or to shop around – or something, probably.
When asked to explain why they behaved like a total b*stard in their car, everyone – but especially men – said “I just get angry in my car”.
And now – thanks to Psychologist Donna – we know why!
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