Ahimsa gets mowed down, road rage rules Delhi

MEAN STREETS: Roshan Jahan was hit on the head with an iron rod because she asked the bus driver to drive carefully.

Featured Blog

Rajdeep Sardesai

Television, for politicians with a vision

Featured Slideshows

Related Headlines

powered by

• 35-yr-old man beaten to death on Delhi road
• Road rage claims Gurgaon doc's life
• Road rage: Man shoots and flees

Keywords: Accidents, Road Rage

New Delhi: Road Rage is an urban epidemic that's turning the man behind the wheel into a wild, swearing maniac. And on the receiving end are people like Roshan Jahan.

“When I told him that he'd almost killed us, he attacked me with a rod,” says Roshan Jahan.

A minor altercation snowballed into a brutal assault on Wednesday after a mini bus driver hit Roshan Jahan on the head with an iron rod in full public view. Her fault was she had asked the driver to drive carefully.

“By the time I got out of the car, he'd slapped her a number of times. All she'd asked him was why was he driving rashly. He dragged her and hit her with an iron rod,” says Roshan Jahan’s husband, Abid Khan.

Road rage can range from persistent honking to abusing, running down, and as in Roshan Jahan's case - even brutal violence.

Psychologists say impulse reactions, as these are signs of a clinical disorder called Intermittent Explosive Disorder, or IED. But what causes this sudden outburst of insanity?

“It is primarily too much of egoist tendencies, which are leading to road rage. These are again people who have poor frustration tolerance,” says Professor of Clinical Psychology, Manju Mehta.

Road rage is often justified in terms of some master narrative a manifestation of urban stress, a sense of retribution against the system or even short periods of irrationality to name a few. Perhaps there IS some truth to these attributions. But what is troublesome is the ease and frequency with which it is invoked.

On September 19, 15 bikers beat up a former Brigadier in a fit of road rage in Mumbai. On July 17, Jitendra Singh, a property dealer, was killed by four men after his car hit their motorcycle. In December last year, a Gurgaon-based doctor was beaten to death by two men who rammed into his car.

So big cars, even bigger streets and the aggression of newly acquired wealth and status can turn a vehicle on the road a killing machine.