'You mad Millennial bastard': road rage and our 'hostility epidemic'
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- National
- Good Weekend

# 'You mad Millennial bastard': road rage and our 'hostility epidemic'

## The number of aggressive drivers ready to arc up and fight on our streets is seemingly on the rise – but what’s causing this development? And is it possible to calm down before a deadly outcome?

##### By Frank Robson

Updated 9 June 2018 — 1:14am first published 7 June 2018 — 3:09pm

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He won't move over. He's in the overtaking lane, driving under the speed limit, but he won't budge. Assuming he's just another Oblivious One, I flash my lights. No response. When I flash again he hits the brakes, so I back off. Then he raises a middle finger and holds it before his rear-vision mirror.

Okay, not oblivious.

A gap appears in the inside lane, so I indicate a turn and move left to pass him on that side. He swerves across in front of me then brakes again, the finger still held motionless above his left shoulder.

In one Australian survey, 88 per cent of respondents claimed to have been the victims of road rage.

Photo: Getty Images

It's the finger, more than anything, that gets me going. "You f---ing silly prick," I say aloud. My voice sounds thick and strange, and I can feel a chemical fizz in my veins. It's a weekday afternoon, I'm almost home and have no reason to hurry, yet it suddenly seems imperative that I show this idiot a clean pair of heels.

But each time I change lanes he cuts me off. Then, just before the multi-lane section ends, I feint left, floor it and roar past on the right before he has time to react. Glimpsed in passing, he looks about 25, his otherwise unremarkable face twisted by fury. (Why is he so pissed off? I have no idea, but for some reason seeing his anger increases my own.) For a moment we snarl at one another like dogs through a fence, and then he's behind me and we're in a 60km/h zone.

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Har! Cop that, you mad little Millennial bastard!

But he isn't going to cop it. In fact — Jesus Christ! — he's overtaking me, almost forcing oncoming traffic off the road, then cutting in so abruptly I have to brake to avoid a collision. He slows to a crawl and his arm comes out the window and jabs across the roof towards the grass verge on our left. He wants to fight.

These are the moments when lives change. When warnings of catastrophe — of injury, death, prison, anguish, grief, penury — should pound like drums in our brains. When, according to experts, we should "remember our common humanity" and exercise forgiveness, or take deep calming breaths, or play soothing music, or speak to ourselves in "friendly, reassuring" tones.

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But, let's face it, real anger drops its pants and moons such conventional wisdom. Depending on our personal reserves of the stuff, it can blind us to everything but the need to deal with whoever has wronged us so badly. Even when muted by fear it provides no sane plan, just a furious sense of indignation.

This is pretty much my condition when I pull up behind my fellow rager. Incredibly, all I have in mind is the delivery of a scathing lecture, but before I'm even out the door the other driver is sprinting towards me with a steel steering lock.

Boom! The driver's side window explodes, showering me with fragments. I shove the door open, forcing him back, and stumble out.

When he raises the steering lock above my head, I grab it with both hands and hang on. So does he. We stagger about like this for a while, neither of us saying a word, watched impassively from the footpath by an enormous Pacific Islander with a flowery shopping bag on his arm. Moment by moment the absurdity of the situation builds until, visited at last by a coherent thought, I call to the onlooker, "Hey mate, could you help me get this thing off this maniac?"

The big guy puts down his bag, steps across and plucks the weapon from our hands with ridiculous ease. The kid bolts, leaps in his car and roars off. Knees rubbery and heart pounding, I sag against my own vehicle, suddenly aware of all the idiot impulses that have controlled me for the past few minutes. Not for the first time, only a propensity for farce has saved me from my 64-year-old self.

> It's as though half the world's population exists in a state of barely controlled fury, one perceived slight away from homicidal rage.

That was several years ago, and I've barely looked sideways at another driver since. I've wanted to, but whenever provocation occurs, the Steering Lock of Doom flashes before my eyes — a symbol of how drastically things have changed since my father splattered a block of perfectly good ice-cream against a vehicle that endangered our family on a pedestrian crossing when I was a kid.

Back then, before guns, clubs, knives and even chainsaws entered the fray, a block of Hokey Pokey hurled in anger was about as violent as it got, especially in New Zealand. Now it's as though half the world's population exists in a state of barely controlled fury, one perceived slight away from homicidal rage.

While no statistics are kept for road rage incidents, polling suggests most drivers believe they're getting worse, in frequency and violence. In a 2011 national survey by insurance company GIO, 88 per cent of respondents claimed to have been road rage victims, with the highest capital city rate reported in my home town of Brisbane, where an extraordinary 95 per cent of those surveyed identified as victims.

In Australia, over the past year, numerous road rage incidents include the jailing of a man for punching another motorist who then fell into the path of a garbage truck and died, and another man charged with murder after a German tourist died from stab wounds following an incident in Brisbane. In Sydney's south-west, a 25-year-old male (since charged over the matter) allegedly punched another driver through an open vehicle window. After being restrained by onlookers, the shirtless, heavily muscled aggressor was seen to return to his vehicle and remove a chainsaw. Horrified bystanders then filmed him striding among stationary peak-hour traffic and allegedly threatening people while revving the chainsaw.

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The hostility epidemic isn't confined to roads. Ragers attack staff at schools, hospitals, on planes and public transport; they bash one another, and innocent bystanders, outside pubs and nightclubs, at parks, beaches and sports grounds. (Even supermarkets aren't safe: in April, social media carried footage of two men grappling hideously on the floor of the fruit and vegetable section of a Coles supermarket in north Brisbane.)

Social media itself serves as a sniper's lair for the world's worst bullies and bigots, whose attacks can be every bit as dangerous as physical violence. By mapping four basic emotions in more than 70 million posts, researchers at Beihang University in Beijing found that anger was social media's main driving force. More "influential" than joy or sadness, it also spreads faster and further, generating ever more rancour as users respond to its vexatious themes.

Donald Trump, himself a divining rod for fury and loathing, typifies the pattern, having personally tweeted more than 450 insults since becoming US President. And while anger was a major motivation among those who backed him, new research suggests the anger (especially among the 41 per cent of white Millennials who voted for Trump) was due less to their own economic problems than their sense of "white vulnerability" – in other words, racial resentment.

Trump's online supporters have set new lows for viciousness and vacuity, demonstrated by the response when actress and gun-control activist Alyssa Milano felt the need to bring her own armed guard to a recent protest against the National Rifle Association: "Hypocritte!!", "MORON", "SHUTUP!!", "So stupid!!!!!!", "Liberal dumbass", "You are an oxy moron", "No you are not going to GET ANYONES GUNS you dumb bimbo" "She's a no talent lowlife b---- that needs to go away!"

Not surprisingly, it was the US that popularised "rage rooms", where people pay to smash inanimate objects with wooden bats and crow bars as a means of venting anger. Rage rooms in Australia report that most of their clientele are women aged between 20 and 35 — many of whom have jobs that involve dealing with the public.

Ed Hunter, owner of Melbourne's "rage room", The Break Room.

Photo: Supplied

Set in a converted shoe factory in Melbourne's Collingwood, The Break Room was the first to open here in 2016. It's owned by Ed Hunter, a runaway advertising executive who says the project rescued him from "turning into the angry person I didn't want to be". Hunter reckons about 60 per cent of his customers like to smash things for fun and recreation, while the rest use it to deal with real anger and stress in a therapeutic way. The cost is $50 for 20 minutes, with baseball bats, old plates and dead electronic gadgets included, although some worrisome people like to bring framed photos of ex-spouses or lovers and pulverise them as well.

"Everyone has their own stresses in life," notes Hunter. "Some may already be dealing with things like sick loved ones, or relationship breakdowns, or misogyny and sexism in the workplace, but then have to cope [in a job involving] complaints from the public, which can be pretty frustrating."

There are no padded walls at The Break Room, but there are floors littered with broken glass — hence the rule prohibiting heavy drinking before a session. "A glass or two of wine with dinner is okay," says Hunter. "But if you're six pints in, then obviously there could be a problem."

At the age of 12, I experienced what is reasonably called an "explosive rage" after some particularly effective taunting from my 14-year-old brother and his best mate. We were putting up a tent when I went off.

There was a sudden sense of detachment, as though the real me had somehow stepped aside, then a lot of wild screaming and howling as I kicked and tore the tent down and slashed it to bits with a rusty fishing knife. There was no thought involved: for perhaps 20 seconds, although aware of my actions, I was literally out of control. It was the angriest I've ever been, and I can still picture the shock and alarm on the other boys' faces as they backed off and left me alone among the ruins.

After years of big-brother bullying, the meltdown left me briefly elated: at last I had a weapon bigger kids feared — not the fishing knife, but my own strangely intoxicating rage. (It never worked again, though, because real fury can't be simulated and – mercifully – I haven't experienced anything like it since.) But our late father, a war-damaged ex-soldier, was at times a dangerously angry man, and I've wondered whether my own short fuse might be hereditary.

Science has yet to determine whether anger levels are determined by our genes, but according to Tom Denson — an associate professor at the University of NSW's School of Psychology — aggression definitely is. "Aggression is almost 50 per cent heritable," he says, "which puts it among the most highly heritable human traits, together with intelligence."

Though often conflated, anger is an emotion and aggression the behaviour it can engender. But not always. Because aggression, which Denson defines as "behaviour intended to hurt another person", can exist without anger — "Like a Mafia hit man, who has cold aggression, or in military aggression."

So what is anger? Neurologists know that the yet little understood emotion originates in the brain's limbic system, which also generates other base emotions such as fear and desire.

Linked to the adrenal fight-or-flight reactions, anger is what induces mammals to act first and think later. It achieves this by bypassing the frontal cortex (the rational, decision-making part of the brain), thus overriding inhibition in favour of action. Human neurobiology actually rewards anger by triggering the release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that regulates the brain's reward and pleasure centres.

"When [you're angry]," says Denson, "your heart rate increases, your temperature rises, blood rushes to your skin and to your large muscle groups, and you get this physiological arousal." Anger's underlying cause is almost always a sense of provocation.

"It's a subjective sense, a feeling that you've been mistreated or harmed — as in a road rage incident, when most of us think, 'Oh, that's crazy! I don't understand why that person did that!' Then people get angry, and can get aggressive as well."

Interestingly, for a social psychologist specialising in the causes and consequences of anger and aggression, Denson has little personal experience of either. He grew up in the US (perhaps the world's crankiest country) watching Arnold Schwarznegger movies, yet has never been in a fight. "I'm very low in aggressiveness," he says. "I'd go to school, and people would get into punch-ups and stuff, but I could never really understand how all that happened. Yet people who were angry always interested and intrigued me."

Since moving here from California in 2007, Denson, 42, has conducted a series of laboratory experiments involving anger-driven aggression, and methods of self-control. "Which is hard to do, because it's a real automatic response, forged by evolution … we're trying out new techniques that people have developed in different areas of psychology."

Denson says there's no evidence that public anger and aggression is increasing. There's also no evidence it isn't increasing, because the absence of statistical data makes it impossible to know. Anecdotally, though, the 20-odd experienced drivers I spoke with were in no doubt: road rage, and what one woman called "the constant potential for it", are rising, along with "footpath oafishness" and public rudeness in general. All drivers questioned believed expanding populations, increased traffic congestion and the time demands of modern living are contributing to anger on the roads.

An ongoing study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety in the US — based on national police records — shows an average of 1200 incidents of road rage are reported yearly. But the foundation says the real figures are much higher, with about 8 million US drivers involved in serious road rage incidents in a single year. Young males are consistently the worst offenders.

Denson points out that violent crime rates in Australia are actually falling, with the exception of domestic violence, which is about the same. Behind such statistics, what author Tim Winton calls the "toxic masculinity" in Australian culture, remains one of the darkest and least explored causes of violence and aggression within relationships.

Yet publicly, as Denson sees it, we're still better behaved than Americans. "I find Australia an incredibly civilised place. The public discourse here is very respectful compared to the US. There's less vilification of people … you hardly ever hear a prime minister speak about a group of people in a really terrible way whereas we've got a president who speaks about everybody in a really terrible way." (Flattering as this may be, it's difficult to see how anyone moving to Australia from a country where teenage boys can buy AR-15 semiautomatics with which to commit mass school murders could find it anything but civilised.)

Part of Denson's work in anger control involves aggressive driving, so I run my own experience with the steering-lock guy past him. "Wow!" he responds appreciatively when I get to the violent bit. "Oh, wow!"

Is it common for people in my position to delude themselves that they can sort things out by giving another angry driver a good telling-off?

He laughs. "Yeah, but it's not necessarily a delusion; it's a loss of self-control, which happens when you become angry." He adds, somewhat to my relief, that we're never going to get rid of anger, and that most mammals experience it because it helps them take action when provoked.

"It's just not too helpful in today's society, where you have police, and there's legal consequences, and so on. But in the world we evolved from, it was an effective way to stay alive. And that would have been true in your case … if you lived somewhere where there was no effective law enforcement."

Or no passing Pacific Islanders?

"Exactly."

“When [you’re angry] your heart rate increases, your temperature rises, blood rushes to your skin and to your large muscle groups, and you get this physiological arousal,” says associate professor and psychologist Tom Denson.

Photo: Getty Images

On December 1, 2015, a man died horribly under the wheels of a garbage truck after a roadside clash with another driver that lasted about 15 seconds. It happened soon after my own motoring drama, and only about 30 kilometres away beside the southern lanes of Brisbane's Gateway Motorway. There were no weapons or bizarre twists involved, just two seemingly ordinary blokes — Shane Merrigan, 50, and Tamate Heke, then 36 — heading home from work on a Tuesday afternoon.

A New Zealand national and father of three, Heke was a factory worker with no criminal history, due to marry his long-time partner the following week; Merrigan, married with four daughters, was a professional driver who'd already been counselled at a former workplace over several road-rage incidents.

Somehow, the pair got into an all-too-familiar anger spiral: both tailgating and vying to get ahead; both cursing and giving one another the finger. According to court evidence based on CCTV footage and witness statements, Merrigan was in front when he gestured for Heke to pull over. Both vehicles stopped and the drivers got out – so close to traffic rushing past at 100km/h they were buffeted by disturbed air — and stood yelling at each other.

Heke was then seen to deliver a single punch to the head or neck of Merrigan, who fell backwards onto the road and disappeared in a moment beneath the truck. He died instantly of multiple injuries.

A distraught Heke admitted throwing the punch to police at the scene, saying Merrigan had assaulted him first. This claim was found to be unsupported by evidence at Heke's second trial for manslaughter in Brisbane's Supreme Court earlier this year, after his first trial ended with a hung jury. Heke, who pleaded not guilty to all charges, was ultimately cleared of manslaughter but found guilty of unlawful striking causing death, for which he's now serving six-and-a-half years in prison.

The long judicial process served to illustrate how widely the horror unleashed that day has spread, starting with Heke's anguish at the scene, where he was physically ill and shook uncontrollably, crying, "What have I done? What have I done?" Later treated for depression and suicidal thoughts, he told police he'd tried to grab Merrigan as he fell, and that he "didn't mean it".

The courts heard of the grief and devastation of Merrigan's loved ones and friends — "The happiness I had has been drained … pretty much everything has been destroyed," wrote one of his daughters in a victim impact statement — and of the after-effects suffered by the truck driver involved, and by other motorists who stopped to help.

"There are many victims of your stupid, frustrated action in punching Mr Merrigan," Justice Peter Applegarth told Heke during sentencing. "You made a foolish decision to accept [his] invitation to pull over. Nothing good was ever likely to come of that."

That's anger for you. If my own experience is any guide, once it grabs us, our ability to make decisions that aren't foolish largely disappears. After that — puppets to our own evolutionary flaws — we rush furiously into that dark zone where the worst that can happen often happens.

And then nothing is ever the same.

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age.

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