by Gila Hayes
Members express alarm over acts of aggression they encounter on the road. Even if you’ve not experienced it yourself, there is quite a lot of video showing drivers involved in yelling angrily, gesturing aggressively, and punching, kicking or shooting. After a protracted exchange of angry words, it is nearly inevitable that one is going to claim self defense, asserting that the other person was the first to do wrong.
Few will argue that road rage is one of the more likely risks armed citizens think about when they practice tactics to avoid being killed or crippled. Classes teach shooting from cars, even some martial arts have online video about fighting inside a car. Have self-defense minded people concluded that they’d rather fight than escape?
Research has long told us that when frightened, threatened or angry, the reasoning part of the brain is greatly handicapped when the amygdala grabs control and from its primitive survival programming, directs the fight, flee or freeze response.
Only with recognition of and practice in applying reason to override the reaction – perhaps something as simple as habitually starting tactical breathing when annoyed or alarmed – can the prefrontal cortex contribute strategies, remember solutions and make a reasoned decision to resolve, not react.
Understand the problem – including what you bring to the equation. Being threatened feels personal, but rarely is road-rage about the person you are. It is about a mistake, real or perceived, made while driving or simply wandering into the cross-hairs of another driver’s frustration. So first, decide not to take it personally. If you’re highly effective at problem solving, you need not respond at all. Watch for opportunities to break contact in the fluid, evolving situation that transpires when one driver gets angry at another. Make distance and break contact.
If brake checked, back off or create distance and find a way to drive away. If blocked entirely, stay in your car behind closed windows and locked doors. Communicate “I’m sorry,” even if you can’t believe you were in the wrong. Being right or wrong isn’t the point; defusing and breaking contact is the point. Keep the car moving, even if pulling into another lane means you have to go out of your way to get where you were going.
If you can’t drive out of it, don’t open your car window or door, even to keep an aggressor from tearing up your car. Emotions tells us to stop someone from damaging our belongings; taking a breath and thinking clearly lets us focus on the higher priority to avoid injury. Think long and hard about your priorities before resorting to deadly force to preserve property. Ask yourself if you would behave as aggressively if you didn’t carry a gun; adjust your behavior accordingly.
In choosing not to fight, you lower the odds of underestimating your attacker, misunderstanding their intentions, or failing to realize they are armed, too, or have skills their appearance doesn’t reveal. Let’s say you choose to stay and fight. Maybe you think your grappling or punching or shooting prowess is superior. Maybe the other driver is small-statured or female. Think you’ll just “show your gun” in hopes he’ll be scared to see you have the means to kill him? You risk escalating the violence and may be viewed as willingly joined a violent contest of one-upmanship. You now appear to be the aggressor.
His hand in his pocket may be holding on to his wallet, his phone, or keys. You think “he has a gun he’s going to shoot me with,” while he thinks, “I’ll grab cell phone video of this jerk who tailgated me,” or he is just gripping something he doesn’t want to drop while stomping back toward you. If you are afraid road ragers may file a false report with police, invest in dash cameras for both front and back views.
Cars are for driving – so use yours to drive out of danger. Break contact, leave, drive away! If you really are scared the road rager intends to shoot you, realize that as a moving target, you are tremendously more difficult to hit than you will be if you get out of the car or if you stay seated and stationary with the car in park. Why go to guns when you could quickly accelerate out of the danger zone from zero to 60 or even at a modest speed of zero to 30? Besides, if you can get your brain working, you’ll realize you control a one to two ton battering ram. Do you really want to downsize to 9mm or .45 caliber?
Equations like “do I get my gun out or use my car to escape” are math problems that a scared, angry, threatened brain has trouble calculating. We talk a lot about de-escalating people who are angry; we need to start by de-escalating ourselves. As Linda Hoopes taught in the lead interview, “Calm yourself.” Any time you begin to feel someone has invaded your space or threatened your choices, practice tactical breathing, sometimes called combat breathing or square breathing. Have the habit on tap and at the top of your menu of reactions. Seek out safe stress challenges where you can practice calming your fear and make combat breathing a habituated response.
The Internet is full of dash-cam and bystander videos of road rage incidents. Watch and imagine how you might resolve the conflict; in your mind’s eye, see yourself making an “I’m sorry” gesture or voicing a sincere apology – even when you don’t think you were in the wrong. Practice calming breathing exercises, envision the many alternatives to gun use and surprise yourself at how many off-ramps the road to violence has, to borrow a word picture from Marc MacYoung.
In May, we had a very fun video interview about the value of competitive shooting. Several members shared their thoughts with me, and now that the summer is well and truly underway, I hope more of our members are getting out to shooting events. Although this month’s driving concern took precedence, next month, I’d like to circle back around to members’ experiences with competitive shooting, so share your thoughts with me – and our readers – by emailing me at