Low Trust Societies: Road Rage On The Rise?

 According to Salon Magazine, "Here's why road rage is on the rise." Is it because of crowded roads, crumbling or outdated infrastructure, the fricking idiots driving 10 miles under the speed limit, or that Covid just made everyone crazy? No.

    Psychologist Carla Manly told Salon the psychological underpinnings of road rage are “complex” as they are often connected to unresolved personal issues in a person’s life. From her point of view, the shell of a person’s car can create an atmosphere of “invulnerability” and “anonymity" – similar to how people are more likely to be bullies and harass others on the internet anonymously. 

    “Many acts of road rage occur when upset drivers, even those who are normally self-contained, unconsciously give themselves permission to act out their anger or frustration from behind the ‘protected safety’ of their vehicle-turned-weapon-of-assault,” Manly said. “Acts of road rage are generally far out of proportion to the error that provoked the act of aggression.” 

Automobiles have been a common means of transportation for 100 years, so I don't think that explains why there is an increase in road rage. But this might have something more to do with it (emphasis added):

But the internet could also be a reason why people are acting out aggressively while driving. As Geller pointed out, technology has led to a decline in in-person interactions, which have caused people to dehumanize each other more. Geller said the lack of in-person interactions, co-opted by technology focused on automating services where in-person interactions would usually occur, has contributed to a general lack of trust and empathy for others in our society.

You know what else causes a lack of trust and empathy? 

    People in diverse urban regions tend to seek shelter in their own little worlds. “Diversity, at least in the short run, seems to bring out the turtle in all of us. … The more ethnically diverse the people we live around, the less we trust them.”

    Putnam adds an additional disturbing discovery – that “in-group trust, too, is lower in more diverse settings.” In other words, people also become more distrustful even of members of their own ethnic group.

    “Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours, regardless of the colour of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, vote less … have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television,” Putnam writes in his report E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the 21st century.