Road rage, air rage: a common cause?

The driver cut in front of me, honking his horn while sticking his middle finger out his car window, pointing it in my direction. 

“What’s he so mad about?” I remember asking myself.

I had apparently failed to move fast enough when the light for the right-turn lane signaled green.

That wasn't the first time someone had so visibly disapproved of my driving.  I admit I’m not NASCAR driving material. I once had a friend tell me that driving with me was like being a passenger with Mr. Magoo at the wheel.

But I somehow felt that if the road rage guy could have met me, maybe let me buy him a cup of coffee, he wouldn't have been so enraged.

It’s easier to lash out at people when we depersonalize them. 

I’m not the best shopping cart driver either. I’m sure I've been guilty of blocking an aisle without realizing it, and several times I've almost collided into another shopper as I've turned a corner too quickly. But I've never had anyone in the grocery store gesture to me like the road rage guy did. In the supermarket, we work it out with a simple smile and an “Excuse me.”

I suspect the same is true for the recent incidents of air rage on commercial flights.

In one instance, a man was using the Knee Defender, a small plastic device that airplane passengers can use to keep the person seated in front of them from reclining their seat.  The flight attendant asked the man using the Knee Defender to remove it. When he refused (at 6 ft. 2 in. tall he said if the person in front of him reclined, he couldn't use his laptop), the passenger in front of him threw a glass of water on him. That flight from Newark to Denver was diverted to Chicago.

Another flight from Miami to Paris was diverted to Boston when one man began screaming at the passenger in front of him because of the reclining seat.

A lady on a flight from New York to Palm Beach, Fla., decided to relax by doing a little knitting (How do you get knitting needles on a plane?) and reclined her seat.  But the lady in the seat behind her had rested her head on the tray table. She didn't appreciate being smacked on the head with the reclining seat. A shouting match ensued, and the plane was diverted to Jacksonville, Fla.

I’m not a frequent flyer, but I've flown enough to know traveling by air is no fun anymore. By the time passengers take their seats, they've waited through a security line, removed their shoes, had their belongings checked, submitted to a scan and in some cases been patted down, boarded a crowded plane and quickly squeezed into a seat with limited space. (Airlines are packing more seats on planes, shrinking the space for travelers.)

Air rage is just waiting to happen.

Both road rage and air rage have this much in common: They require a degree of depersonalization.

I've never read about an airline passenger screaming at the person seated next to them because someone invaded their elbow space. It’s easier to imagine evil motives in that person seated in front or behind you that you can’t see than it is in the person whose shoulder touches yours.

When someone cuts you off in traffic, passing by you in a blur or hidden behind tinted windows, they can easily become a jerk, plain and simple, rather than what they might really be were you to meet them in the grocery store: a frazzled single mom perhaps or maybe an exhausted construction worker too tired to pay attention.

The man who used the Knee Defender later admitted he had not handled his anger appropriately, told his sons he wanted to be a better father, and encouraged them to learn from his failure. And the lady whose head rested on the tray later said she was overly emotional because two of her dogs had just died.

If passengers could see their agitators as people---people with dogs and cats, and children, people who have failed and want to do better---perhaps they would be slower to get angry and quicker to be kind and gentle.

I hope people remember that when they see me getting in the driver’s seat of my car.