 I'm Tim Apachella, your host for Moving Hawaii Forward. This week we examined a distasteful topic that few of us living here in Paradise wish to acknowledge that occurs on our streets and highways and roadways, and that's road rage. It seems to be a contradiction of terms to talk about the beauty and aloha of Hawaii and road rage in the same sentence, yet here we are. While researching the story, I shared with friends recent news stories of a deadly shooting and multiple stabbing event, all stemming from road rage events. They are all shocked to hear about this and a 2015 nationwide survey ranking Hawaii the number one state with road rage incidents and Honolulu coming in at number 22. Today we'll look at what road rage looks like, what its causes are, and what to do to protect yourself and your family if you're ever confronted with a driver who's upset with you. My guest to discuss this important topic is Jay Fidel, president of Think Tech Hawaii. Jay, thank you so much. Oh yeah. How are you? Really, wow. Number one state, at least we're at number one in something. That's the wrong thing we want to be number one in, unfortunately. And know this though, I mean, statistics are hard because there's really no government agency that's gathering this, so a lot of these statistics are gathered on social media websites, but it's not a good place for us to be. Why are we number one? Well, it's hard for me to really, you know, in researching this, I think it's a combination of people who have lived here all their lives and they have a certain driving habit and a lot of that speed because, you know, before H1, maximum speed was 45 miles an hour, right? Yet then we have an import from all the different states and all the different places around the world. They have ingrained habits of driving and those ingrained habits do not quite commingle well with the culture of driving here and I think that's a big part of it. I mean, it's dangerous to have road rage that kills, dangerous to have murders and stabbings and, you know, total strangers. And they say that most of these violent crimes are members of the family, you have, you know, some kind of relationship with them. In this case, in road rage is probably never that. It says you have some kind of driving altercation with them and that's your only relationship. You never met the guy before and it's very scary. There's a spark, but then there's an acceleration or a hierarchy of events that occur in road rage. So we're going to go over that later in the show. The 20 steps of or the hierarchy of road rage and it's pretty disconcerting to see this. But I want to play a video and I'm going to set it up a little bit here. This happened back on September 10th, 2014. The driver was named Ryan Eracaki and he described this on his YouTube that he posted and it's gone viral nationwide and he said the lady was looking down at something. Maybe it was her phone or something else, but there was a good car length and a half of free space in front of her. So I changed lanes. She was completely still, not moving at all, waiting for a red light to change. So try to visualize that. There's a car length and a half, maybe almost two car lengths and someone's in the far right and probably went in before the light turned green. He said, as I made the turn, I could see the lady. She honked her horn and I looked him right in the rear view mirror and I could see she was verbally upset. So let's play that clip if we may. She was arrested and she said for KITV4 News that he started it. I don't 100% regret doing it and I think I could have used different language, but I was extremely angry. So, I mean, we all get angry. What makes her angry over that fact pattern? It's irrational, completely irrational. So you have to look deeper. Psychologists would be helpful. But let's talk about the vectors that made her angry and that make these people who involved in road rage angry. Number one is the car is very important to them. Maybe that explains to some extent why Hawaii is number one because in Hawaii, cars are very important to people, even if they're not so fancy cars like the one she was driving. Center of her life and that's the culture. Another thing is that people are not well educated in driving in Hawaii. I'm sorry to say, you see that all the time. I'm sure you see that. You've been driving elsewhere and I years ago drove elsewhere and I believe that drivers in Hawaii are unpredictable. They don't know the rules of the road. They don't know how to deal in traffic. They don't know how to be courteous for that matter. How do they pass the driver's test? It's sloppy is why. It's a slack system. The education is slack and the test is slack. Everybody gets a license, but not everybody should get a license. It's not a question of exactly how to make a right turn on a stoplight or anything. It's more like how do you conduct yourself? How do you see your experience driving on the roads? And I think a lot of people don't have a clue on how to do that. So they're disrespectful. They're just stupid. What I mean is they're just not awake. They're sleeping at the switch and this creates not only a risk for them, but it angers people around them. And it's also a matter of learning tolerance. I'm sure you want to talk about that in terms of reacting to people who do bad things. Right. You said it was nice that we had a psychologist on here. We don't have a psychologist, but I did get a lot of my research from a local nationwide expert, not just statewide expert. His name is Dr. Leon James and he's a professor at U of H, Manoa. And he specializes in traffic and psychology of traffic. And he's written a book and I'm, firstly, Mike, notes don't reflect where that is, but he's written a book sometime ago about the nature of road rage and how to protect yourself from warfare. The part of the title is warfare on our highways. Yeah. But don't you want to ask first, how do you protect yourself from having rage? You know, because you do get angry. That is one of the questions on the driving test is when do you not get in a car when you're emotional about something? About when you're in the car, something happens. Somebody jumps ahead of you. It doesn't let you get in a lane. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to avoid an emotional reaction. It's hard to not get miffed in some way. The question is how you deal with that anger management, if you will. It's very important on the road to manage your anger because there are people who are going to make you angry. Of course, that's another question about why you get angry in the first place. Right. But you know, you've driven with somebody who says, oh, look, he cut you off. You know, that is so bad. Let's get angry. And you say, no, we're not going to get angry. We're on the road. It's dangerous here to get angry. We let it happen. We sit back and we relax. We never, ever get angry. And I don't know. A lot of people don't understand that. They get angry, don't control it, don't even try to control it. Well, and Dr. James explains a very good reason why that is. And I think a part of it is he said human beings are territorial. Yes. And the car is nothing more than an extension of our territory. Yes. And that's so in the clip you played. It was territoriality. Yeah. And so extend that to, you know, how many cars are on our roadways, our own little, each car, its own little territory. I mean, is that any wonder why we're starting to see a rise in all these road rage incidents? But also that is there's a correlation between traffic gridlock and road rage. Oh, absolutely. You know, and you'll look at some slides later on the show and you'll see a correlation of those cities that ranked highest in road rage. Almost all of them have a correlation to being the worst rated in traffic in gridlock in the nation. Well, I think, you know, it's sort of, it's anxiety, it's anger about the traffic, about the roads, about the design of the roads, about the situation you're in. You've got to get somewhere and you're being frustrated and you've got your investment in the car and the car is at risk and you're at risk. The whole thing is unpleasant. It's not the dream that you saw on the ads for your new car. It's not that way. You expect an open road and here you're all, you know, congested. And I think it gives them a kind of free-floating anxiety. And then that transmutes into anger when somebody further impinges on their, the realization of their dream of an open road. And I think people have got to learn, of course, the government should probably give us more of an open road. I don't feel the government is doing bloody anything to clear the congestion off these roads. Well, no, I know a lot of transportation directors around the country saying, the roads you're driving on today are the roads of the future. So they don't want to expand capacity because that just means they're going to fill up down the road here, no pun intended. The bottom, bottom line is, and you hinted to it, is people are in a hurry. We're responding faster to everything. We have to respond to text. We have to respond to phone calls. We have to respond much, much faster than ever before. So we're trying to get to places faster. Dr. James. Well, just as fast as we remember, we got to them last time, except this time flash jam. And you can't. And so that's a bad surprise. And that bad surprise makes you all the more anxious. Yeah. So it's simple advice from Dr. James, yet very, very difficult to do because we're always doing multiple tasks and multiple trips. He's saying, give yourself 15 minutes extra, no matter what trip you're trying to make. That's a good advice, but it's, you know, if a lot of people don't see the wisdom of that, because... Well, they can't. So the question is, what happens when you're late? What happens when you're in a flash jam, you know, and you are totally anxious and potentially angry about everything? This is the environment for you to have road rage. I'm the other guy too. So what do you do? I tell you, people have got to learn to say, look, I'm driving. It's a special license, a special privilege. It's a special dangerous situation. I've got to control myself. If, even if I'm late, it's more important that I stay alive. It's more important that I not get into an altercation on the highway or crash my car, then I get there on time. And I just have to put it out of my mind that I'm late and that I'm anxious. I have to just focus on doing the right thing at the right time. And people don't do that. They should do that. Well, Jay, you're moving around on me here because I'm going to talk about that at the end of the show, but you brought it up, so I'm going to have to bring this out. Dr. James said this, because one of my questions to him, email questions to him, was back in the day, 10 years ago, there was a campaign called Drive With Aloha. And I said, how effective was that? And is it time for another massive campaign on driving with courtesy, driving with Aloha? And he said, yeah, they're good. They're good to have. These campaigns are worthwhile. But he said, most of the campaigns focus on trying to not drive with rage or not respond to road rage, because you're thinking of saving yourself and your passengers from injury or financial burdens. He said the secret is, though, is to do number one, but also do number two. And number two is, think about the passengers and the family and the relatives of the other driver. Think about them. Think about how their lives are going to be impacted if there's an altercation and an injury or death or something in between. He said, if you think about your family, yourself, and that other party, that goes a long way. There's a third thing. You want to talk about it now or after the break? Let's talk about it now. The third thing is you want to educate the other driver. The government come around and try to educate us to about up to Aloha is really futile, in my opinion. So it's got to come from somewhere else and it's got to come every day organically. And that means you and me. So if somebody cuts us off, they'll get excited. Say hi. If somebody doesn't let us in a lane, really being mean, say hi. If somebody does let us in a lane, say thank you so much. Thank you so much. You try to reinforce the good conduct and not reinforce the bad conduct. And over time, if everybody does this, traffic works better and you're less likely to have road range around you. Wonderful suggestion, Jay. And with that, we're going to take our break. I'm Tim Appichella. This is Moving Hawaii Forward and we'll be right back. You're terrific. I'm Tim Appichella. This is Moving Hawaii Forward. I'm here with Jay Fidel, president of Think Tech, Hawaii. And we're discussing the unfortunate topic of road rage. So, Jay, we're going to talk about what ticks people off. And some of them are ranked in order, some of them aren't. But there's a number of things that actually encourage others to act badly on the roadway. If you look at the incidents, you always find a cause for it. I mean, at least a superficial cause. Because remember that the basic cause is, is this kind of unbridled anxiety that makes people angry, that trips them off as a state of mind. But let's talk about, yes, as you suggest, let's talk about the kinds of physical things, driving experiences that make people angry. What do you got? Without looking, what do you think the number one thing is that irritates drivers the most? Number one, cutting people off. Close. It's watching someone look at their phone. Really? Yeah. That ranked in a 2015 Expedia Road Rage Research Report by GFK. They surveyed 1,000 drivers, which isn't a lot. But it's hard for people to talk about this subject. And certainly admit that they are participating in road rage. So, 26% said texting was the number one thing that really irritated them. And I bet it's higher if you're at a stop light and you have a very, very short sequence for the stop light and it's green and you see the person in front of you, their face is down like this texting or looking at their phone and only a couple cars get through that sequence. I mean, I bet that number goes way higher. Because then you pay the price for his dawdling. Right, correct. So let's look at kind of another one is, and you hit it, is merging in traffic without signaling. That ranks very, very high too. People get very irritated because you're putting their car in jeopardy and their family by just kind of merging in. Sure, also taking territoriality. You're not following the rules. You're being a real bum. Yeah. Sorry. Haven't used that word for a while, but I think it applies. So being a real bum. I like that. Okay. Well, cutting off, that's part of merging in traffic without signaling. Tailgating. Tailgating people thinking that if I tailgate you, I'm either going to do one of two things. I'm either going to make you go faster or I'm going to make you turn off right or left. Get out of that lane. And you know, that's a recipe. That's a recipe for disaster because if I slow down and you hit me, then we have a real incident and a real incident is always caused for road rage. People get really crazy. Well, I do know people that when they're tailgated, and it's been, you know, a lot of people do this is when I'm being tailgated, I will, on purpose, go slower. So now the person who's trying to get you to go faster, you've just created, you know. Attention. Attention between the two parties. Even though you're going, hey, you want to tailgate me, I'll just go as slow as I want. He knows you're doing intentionally to tweak his pick. Yeah. And now he's angry at you. Right. And you're angry at him. And you have an altercation. Very likely. And if there's an accident, boy, that's going to escalate right away. Yeah. And earlier, when we first started off, we talked about well, what's the cause here in Hawaii? I mean, this is the land of Aloha. Why do we have this here? Well, we mentioned that bringing in habits from other states, other countries, they have speed differential, you know, habits. And so what ranks very high here is slow drivers. Not just here in Hawaii, but nationwide survey. Or bad drivers. Is slow drivers or bad drivers? Yeah. I mean, you know, you described the guy who's texting at the phone. Well, there's an old, you know, there's a variation on that theme. It's when you're coming down, you know the light's going to change and it's green. But he decides to slow down for some reason. Why? God knows why. I hope he answered that. He's slowing down because he thinks at some time, at some indeterminate time in the future, it's going to change. So he's going to sort of change it in his mind and he slows down, he slows down, he slows down. Still green. And you're behind him and he can't go anywhere. And then it goes for 10 years. I've been waiting for an explanation on this point. Thank you. This was very, very, very conservative driving. Right. But it's total waste of time. It's nobody in front of him. He's not keeping up with the speed limit or even the minimum speed. And you suffer because you don't want to go around him. You have to wait for him. So he's a bad driver. It's bad education. He's to be educated. And you know, people like that, a lot of them, they, in their whole lives, they never learned different or better. They're always like that for their whole driving lives. And it's really problematic because the guy behind him is very impatient. I think, personally, I think the state needs to have a sub chapter of required text reading, whatever videos, I don't care what it is, before you take that test dedicated to good driving habits. Absolutely. And civility on the roadway. Absolute civility. There it is. Yes, civility. So, okay, guess what else ranks high? And we certainly have a lot of this. Any guesses? We have a lot of it. We're known for it. Oh, stink eye. How about stink eye? Close. That's, we're going to come to that. I'm going to give that to you. I'll give that to you. No, tourists. People get mad at tourists. Yeah. They get very upset with them. Because, again, they're from an out of area. Yeah, it's true. They don't know and they're ignorant drivers and they get lost and they're very tentative about their driving. But it's all the more reason to cool them and manage your own anger. Gee, okay, they're tourists. In fact, I would say, you know, you can extend that kind of mindset to anything. Gee, he just cut me off or he just did something really nasty, stupid and all that. It's okay. Relax. Take a deep breath. There's no need to get excited about it. It's not going to get you anywhere or any faster. True. All right. We're moving along. We got to knock some of this out because we got a lot to cover and I probably don't have enough time. I think the other big one is drifting in other people's lanes, honking the horn because the light changed too soon and, you know, you're in a hurry to get them to go and so you're honking at the horn. That's the true fact. I mean, somebody hunks the horn in Hawaii, especially in Hawaii. They do that on 7th Avenue of Manhattan. Nobody cares. It happens all the time, although I think there's an ordinance there too. But people really hear they don't honk their horns and once you do that, once you're hungry, you'd better have a good reason. And I always look around and say, is there a good reason for that? Or is he just, you know, acting like 7th Avenue? I saw this at the airport. Years and years ago, someone honked and a gentleman got out, went up to the offending party and screamed, we don't honk our horns here in Hawaii and really gave him a chewing out. And I'm going, okay. Okay. Good for him, but maybe not. Bad idea though. Bad idea. Because, you know, when you get out and you get by the window of this guy and you just did that, you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know. It was a bad idea. You could have a gun. Really bad idea. You could get out of his car and start chasing your horn. I saw this happen recently in a parking lot. These two guys didn't even know each other and one was backing out and in some way threatening the other guy. Well, they got into it. And the one guy was chasing the other guy around. Total strangers in a parking lot and a jack-in-the-box. And so this is really awful that they, you know, and I said, I'm closing my door. You must have been in the garage when it was a little hot that day. Locking my, yeah, it was. It was. It was a weekend and it was hot. Okay. You're almost out of time, you know. Yep. I know. And we got adopted. Last thing, bicyclists who don't follow the road rules. Oh, yeah. For bicyclists, you've got to give them a pass. You know, you've got to give them a pass. I mean, we talked about transportation. You're a bicyclist, fan, and they have to follow the rules. The cyclist who doesn't follow the rules is risking his life. Yeah, that's true. And that's not a good idea. But, you know, gee whiz, we should encourage cycling. And if you have road rage over a cyclist and you yell at them or cut them off and people do, you know, they try to pay them back. Yeah. That's the other thing. They try to maneuver a car in a little sudden maneuver to, you know, kind of like spook them, you know, scare them. Yeah. And that's bad. That's all bad. Kill them that fast. Well, it depends on how agile your hands and your steering components are. You got to give cyclists a pass, even if they're wrong. I agree. I mean, we have to be nice. Okay. I want to talk about the hierarchy of road rage because this is really important. I want you to take the first five points if you could. It's intense easy. Okay. The first five points, mentally condemning other drivers, verbally denigrating them, closing ranks to deny another driver an opportunity to change lanes, give stink eye, speeding past another car or revving the engine, boy, that's out of the 50s, preventing another driver from passing you. I went to six. Yeah, that's okay. I'll take you to the next five or so. All right. Go ahead. Then you start graduating to tailgating, to press the other driver to get out of the way. And then you start honking or yelling at someone through your window to, you know, indicate your displeasure. You're going to use your car to retaliate by making sudden gestures, threatening gestures with your vehicle. So that's getting ranked ranking up there. You pursue another, you start following them. So that's like number 12. Number 13 is you're getting out of the car now. You're engaging in a verbal dispute on the street or in a parking lot. That's getting up to the number 20. This is number 14. You start keeping a weapon in your car in case you decide to get in a road rage incident. Oh boy. See? See how this is graduating? Can you see the judge asking questions about that? Yeah. But you know, how many people carry a baseball bat in their car just in case, right? You know, I don't know anyone, but there are people. Yeah, but there are people. You delivery start bumping a ramy into a car. Oh my God. Then you try to run the car off the road. That's number 16. Oh my God. Then you get out of the car and you actually start doing a physical beating, ultra cage rage. Yeah. And number 18, you're trying to run someone down. Number 19, you're shooting in a car. And the last thing is you actually killed someone. Well, that'll give you some gratification, but only for a moment. I mean, I think you have to see road rage as something that conceivably leads to all of these things. Yeah. And you have to realize, you know, you have to see yourself in court. What's going to happen to you? I mean, there's no way you're going to escape killing somebody on road rage. You're going to get prosecuted and probably convicted and probably sentenced to a long term. There's no escape for even if he did something really bad. Yeah. You're all, you're both going to be involved no matter if you're the receiving or the perpetrator. We got a quick video on what the HPD recommends. I'm Detective Shari Sousa, and welcome to another segment of Ask HPD. Today's question comes from Vanessa. Vanessa asked, what should I do if I encounter a driver with road rage? Vanessa, if you are behind the wheel and encounter a driver with road rage, do not engage with him or her. Do not pull over on the side of the road and do not get out of your vehicle. Doing so may increase the chance for violence. Instead, call 911 and an officer will be sent to your location to assist you. We want to remind all drivers to follow the rules of the road. Be courteous and drive with Aloha. Thanks for joining me today. As always, if you have any other questions, please feel free to email or message us on any of our social media websites. You can also check out our other Ask HPD videos on our YouTube page. On behalf of Chief Kealoha, until next time, Aloha. Okay. You just saw that that clip and believe it or not, I don't why HPD is using that clip because she did three things horribly wrong. Number one, she made eye contact with them. That's something you don't want to do in a road rage incident. Just ignore them. She looked over at them. Number two is she used a hand jester. She went like this. Okay. Bad idea. Bad idea. Number three is if you saw her, she started verbalizing something. Worst idea because they're assuming you're saying the worst things about them. So those three things are things you don't do when you're confronted by someone with road rage. Don't make eye contact. You don't return gestures. You certainly don't get out of the car. You don't yell or hunt the horn back at them. And the bottom line is you just try to disengage. You think to yourself, how can I make this safer? How can I make the situation safer for myself, my family, and the other driver and their family? Yeah. So if they're tailgating, let them pass by you. You don't get out of the way. This simple common sense things, but you don't know until you're faced with that particular dilemma. So that's... Yeah. Disengage. Gradually. Don't race off or anything. Don't do anything remarkable. Just slow down a little bit. Let them pass you. Give them that pot of road they want. Give them their space. Don't engage with them. Disengage with them. Nice and slow and gradual, organically. And then, you know, as a result, they'll probably cool off. You know, a bad day on the road can affect your life and the life of your family for years to come. Yeah. The other thing is she pulled out a phone. She made a call. Well, actually, HPD says if it gets bad, call 911 and they'll assist. So... Okay. All right. Well, that's all the time today we have for today. I appreciate you coming on and talking about this important topic. I'm Tim Apachella. This is Moving Hawaii Forward and we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Aloha.