Divine intervention might be needed for the first two problems, but science has discovered a solution for the third.
Watch out for cars with bumper stickers.
That's the surprising conclusion of a recent study by Colorado State University social psychologist Prof William Szlemko.
Drivers of cars with bumper stickers, window decals, personalised licence plates and other "territorial markers" not only get mad when someone cuts in their lane or is slow to respond to a changed traffic light, but they are far more likely than those who do not personalise their cars to use their vehicles to express rage by honking their horn, tailgating and other aggressive behaviour.
It does not seem to matter whether the messages on the stickers are about peace and love "Visualise World Peace", "My Kid Is an Honour Student" or angry and in your face "What We Need Is A Patch For Stupidity", "My Kid Beat Up Your Honour Student".
Aggressive driving might be responsible for up to two-thirds of all traffic accidents in the United States that involve injuries.
Prof Szlemko and his colleagues at Fort Collins found people who personalise their cars acknowledge they are aggressive drivers, but usually do not realise they are reporting much higher levels of aggression than people whose cars do not have visible markers on their vehicles.
Drivers who do not personalise their cars get angry, too, Prof Szlemko concluded in a paper recently published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, but they don't act out their anger. They fume, mentally call the other driver a jerk, and move on.
"The more markers a car has, the more aggressively the person tends to drive when provoked," Prof Szlemko said.
"Just the presence of territory markers predicts the tendency to be an aggressive driver."
The key to the phenomenon apparently lies in the idea of territoriality.
Drivers with road rage tend to think of public streets and highways as "my street" and "my lane", in other words, they think they "own the road." - Shankar Vedantam
