Ever notice how there's not much elevator rage? Face to face, folks are pretty nice and polite with each other, even in situations where they have to share space or might be delayed, unless there's some kind of really huge, huge sale. I think there is just something about cars and driving -- anonymity, physical and emotional distance from the object of rage, confidence in the ability to speed away, extension of power, I don't know, maybe all of the above -- that is conducive to drivers expressing their annoyance, anger and rage. Rage that might not actually have much to do with whatever traffic snaggle is being ostensibly raged over, if y'know what I'm sayin. Call it...inner turmoil. Each of us contains the emotional pain of 100 Linkin Park songs. And since we are not in Linkin Park, and are not even invited to perform as guest-rappers, we have no outlet for our hot suburban rage. So it comes out, directed at strangers, when we're driving around, simply because that is an easy and natural time for it to come out.. It's a theory.

One reading of Jane Jacobs is that car culture screws up communities because it diminishes face-to-face contacts and the vitality that comes from an 'intensity of users.' People out in cars, not the same as people on the street. The vitality that used to reside in the city centers, where everybody would take the trolley to go buy everything and do their business, and everybody wore a hat and said hidy-ho and clang clang clang went the bell, has been sucked out to and divvied up sparingly among the various parking/shopping pods in the suburbs. Where there used to be vitality there is now only lawyers and drug-dealing. Hey that's just the way it goes. If you think about it too much, you might get resentful of a situation that may not be changeable, and that can only lead to spontaneous outpourings of rage on the way to the mall.

Robert

Here's a link to the foreword Jacobs wrote for the 1992 edition of her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities: http://www.walksf.org/essays/janejacobs.html

Foot people vs. car people, she says. What about bike people?

Eeek.  Clicked on the link, but was frightened by the voice.  Anyhoo, why, why, why do you think road rage is so common?  Just curious.  Seems like there could be lots of different reasons, but I'm curious about your take on it.