Road Rage

A few days ago I was surprised to hear someone refer to road rage.  This is a term I hadn’t heard for at least 5 years.  Back when the economy was rosy and we had nothing better to worry about, the news media decided that road rage was a major problem.  Has it gotten better?  If so, why?  Has it gotten worse? My opinion is that there has been very little change in driver behavior, except possibly that they spend more time on cell phones – which has now become the big issue.  (I found this article from back in August 1998 opining that despite all of the publicity at the time, there was no real evidence of an epidemic of road rage.  There were instances from time to time and place to place, but no epidemic as the news would have us believe.)

What happens to these subjects that are promoted as big, important items at the time?  A list from the past may include such problems as West Nile Virus, various episodes of shark attacks, killer bees crossing the border from Mexico, Y2K, SARS and many others (including weeks of coverage of the Casey Anthony trial last summer).  During all this time, banks were writing mortgages for customers who had no ability to pay them off over the long term, the government continued to accumulate a growing debt, and Social Security and Medicare were (and still are) on shaky financial ground.  We allow the hype subjects (and the fluff) in the media to replace real news by showing more interest in it.  This is not the fault of news agencies; it’s ours for reacting.  Until we behave with perspective, these will be the consequences.

We must be alert, stay on our toes and exercise perspective to sort out the truly critical from the trivial.  It’s up to us to make the distinction, because history has shown that the news media and politicians won’t do it for us.  They will serve up whatever they believe will hold our attention so that they can sell their products or point of view.  We deserve and should demand better!