Los Angeles entered the orange tier on April 5th, which means traffic will start to get bad again. With more traffic comes more road rage. Already during a rush-hour traffic jam in L.A. on April 6th, an angry woman pointed a gun at people, threatening to kill them. This may only be the beginning of even more road-rage incidents in Los Angeles.
Photo by Cleyton Ewerton.
One would have thought that during the pandemic, incidents of road rage would have disappeared in L.A. Traffic decreased significantly at the onset of the coronavirus outbreak as businesses and schools closed and people started working from home. According to the California Highway Patrol, as of March of last year, traffic volume went down by as much as 35%. However, the number of citations for speeding over 100 mph increased by 87% from the same time the previous year.
Along with all that speeding came road-rage incidents. Yes, even as L.A. streets became vast expanses where people could speed to their heart's content, drivers still sometimes became so incensed with one another that people ended up injured or even dead.
Take what happened on July 29 of last year when an angered driver on the 605 Freeway in Whittier opened fire into another vehicle all because of road rage. On December 15, a motorist was killed during a shooting on the 15 Freeway, east of Los Angeles, also the result of road rage.
On November 28, a 30-year-old woman and her 9-year-old son standing on the corner of 43rd Street and Hopper Avenue in South Los Angeles were run down by a car that was also involved in a road-rage incident.
If road rage proved deadly even during the height of the pandemic, what will it be like now the city is opening again?
On April 5th, Los Angeles entered the orange tier.
Many of us are now rejoicing that coronavirus cases have decreased to such an extent in Los Angeles County that movie theaters, churches, museums, zoos, and aquariums can now open again to 50% of capacity. Gyms and family entertainment centers have also reopened to 25% capacity.
Come April 12th, LAUSD will reopen 61 elementary schools and 11 early education centers.
Image courtesy covid19.lacounty.gov
But with the city's reopening comes more traffic. And with more traffic comes more road rage. On March 3rd, Officer Amber Wright of the CHP Southern Division told ABC News, "Commute time is definitely increasing. It's not uncommon for people to be a little more on edge because of the traffic."
Unfortunately, as L.A. traffic returns to its pre-pandemic levels, this means more "edginess" while driving. And that will mean more injuries and deaths as the result of road rage.
The most recent incidence of road rage in Los Angeles took place a day after the city entered the orange tier.
In fact, it only took until one day after Los Angeles officially entered the orange tier for yet another case of serious road rage to erupt on the streets of this city. On April 6th, while sitting in an intersection at Fairfax Avenue and Olympic Boulevard, a woman became so irate with traffic, she brandished a gun, pointed it out her window, threatened verbally to kill people, and even shot off a few rounds.
Luckily, the police caught up with this woman and she is now in police custody. However, this can only mark the beginning of more crazed road-rage cases in L.A.
Road rage was born in Los Angeles.
Sadly, among the many things that L.A. is famous for, road rage is among them. In fact, this is the city where the term road rage was born.
The term first entered the common parlance in 1987 when a man named Rick Bynum was shot and killed as a result of another driver's anger. Bynum was driving 65 mph in the fast lane on a Los Angeles freeway when a driver behind him became so enraged that they sped around Bynum's car and shot him.
Bynum was killed with his 3-year-old son in the car. Of course, the incident caused shock around the city. Daryl Gates, then-L.A. police chief, wrote an op-ed for The Los Angeles Times where he called the phenomenon of becoming intensely enraged while driving: "highway hostility."
According to Gates, this highway hostility was the result of "a tremendous increase in the number of vehicles on our highways without commensurate increases in traffic lanes and parking spaces." Because of this, Gates wrote: "...we have seen the formation of a pattern of highway hostility fed by a breakdown in self-discipline and an abandonment of civic responsibility..."
That is exactly what road rage is, a breakdown in self-discipline. It didn't take long for newscasters at KTLA to coin the term “road rage." Ever since then we've had a name for the kind of anger people too often experience on the streets of L.A. when they encounter other drivers.
We have the power to stop road rage.
If road rage is the result of a breakdown of self-discipline as then-police-chief Daryl Gates wrote back in 1987, this means we, the citizens of this city, have the power to restrain ourselves. We have the power to discipline ourselves on the road before we become so angry we hurt someone.
Driving is a stressful business in Los Angeles. As the city reopens, traffic will only get worse. But when we find ourselves becoming incensed in this increased traffic, it's up to us to take a deep breath and let it go.
Photo by Daria Shevtsova.
We have to do a better job of forgiving people. Sometimes people are out to lunch. Often they're not making a stupid driver move out of the meanness of their heart. They might just be elderly, or they might be lost.
Even when people are plain selfish, cutting in front of us in traffic, it's important to let it go. It's simply not worth it to engage them. You never know who the person is. They might be carrying a firearm.
Just because someone does something irritating on the road, it's not worth dying over.
So take a deep breath and don’t take someone's bad driving during traffic personally. It could mean saving your life or someone else's.