The forecast is for higher-than-normal maximum temperatures of over 37 degrees Celsius for Indian cities this summer. As the summer intensifies, with forecasts about April showers not encouraging for much-needed relief, we need to gear up to tackle a not-so-rare, but challenging, behavioural problem that rears its hot head more viciously in the summer months – road rage.
Road rage is fuelled by extreme frustration welling up within while driving on congested roads that are also navigated by other more or less equally frustrated motorists. Experts describe road rage as a psychological phenomenon driven by stress, impulsivity, and anger, often linked to psychiatric morbidities like depression and anxiety.
It could also result from impulsive disorders like Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) – a mental health condition involving sudden episodes of impulsive, aggressive, or violent behaviour. In road rage, IED can express from perceiving traffic as an obstruction, causing feelings like being intentionally cut off, taken as a personal affront, which results in retaliatory aggression.
Besides these, there are: Poor self-control, in which motorists struggle to regulate triggered emotions, allowing frustrations to escalate to aggression; antisocial personality traits; cognitive biases, in which drivers perceive traffic blockages as “personal injustice” and blaming other motorists for it; and even substance abuse – alcohol or drugs – increasing irritability and reducing the capacity for control.
Road rage expresses in a range of behaviours among the perpetrators, like over-speeding to prove a point to other motorists, intentionally driving too close behind the vehicle ahead to scare the other motorist (‘tailgating’), shouting abuses at other motorists or pedestrians, making obscene gestures at other motorists or pedestrians, or even resorting to violent behaviour which have, in some tragic cases, resulted in death.
The common factors for road rage are pressures arising in workplace or home environments; traffic congestion and construction activities on the roads, obstructing free-flowing vehicle movement that frustrates the motorists; tight work schedules leading to impatience on the roads; or other motorists failing to signal while coming in the way.
The triggers and factors for road rage cases are all present in varying degrees in a city like Bengaluru, which in 2025 recorded a three-fold increase to 95 over the previous year. Incidentally, while road rage occurs rampantly on a daily basis on the roads across cities, only a fraction get reported, depending on the magnitude of the act or its result. One neither knows when – or what kind of – adverse behaviour would erupt in a motorist, nor the end result of it.
And yet, unfortunately, no candidate motorist is scanned for psychological traits while applying for driving licences at the regional transport offices (RTOs) – which means, there could be any number of motorists added to the already existing numbers out there potentially exploding in road rage at the drop of a hat.
The onus then lies with the already burdened traffic and the law & order police to manage the menace that comes out of hiding from the crevices of minds unknown to them. You can never tell where and when it erupts, and what the end-result would be. So, road rage cases continue unabated.
Road rage in Karnataka is dealt with penalties including fines and imprisonment. But no specific statute on “road rage” exists, and is dealt with based on the severity of the act under various sections of the Indian Penal Code – now Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita – like rash driving, voluntarily causing hurt, criminal intimidation, death due to negligence, or murder if the actions of perpetrator/s ends in loss of life. Dangerous driving can lead to six months jail and/or Rs 10,000 fine for first offences. Recent rulings of the Karnataka High Court have treated severe road rage as criminal acts, even “attempt to murder” charges, which marks a zero-tolerance approach towards road rage.
Yet, prevention is a major challenge. As road rage is described as a dysfunctional coping mechanism of the motorist while responding to stress and an erroneous perception of violation or obstruction of one’s personal space or progress on the road, respectively, the alternative is for the motorists themselves to deal with it.
Psychologists recommend techniques to motorists to avoid road rage by regulating emotions by listening to calming music, slow breathing, resorting to a five-second pause when triggered, and training one’s mind to the fact that traffic violations by other motorists or civic work obstructions to vehicle movements are not personal attacks.
Besides, the police suggest calling ‘112’ in case of escalation, without confronting the perpetrators, and installing dash cams to record the incidents to pass videos to the traffic police to pursue cases.
Although the solutions are easier recommended than practised, they appear to be worth a try. The Stephen King- and Joe Hill-authored 2012 novel Road Rage, which explores the darker side of human nature, says: “The road is a battleground where people’s inner demons come out to play.” But why allow our inner demons out on the roads when demons – in the form of poorly designed roads, lethargic and apathetic RTOs, or snail-paced civic works – already exist there? Fight those, rather than add to them!
Nirad Mudur
Deputy Resident Editor, Karnataka
niradgmudur@newindianexpress.com