Road rage is a dead-end street

Perhaps it was inevitable that the car in Beijing would no longer be used merely as a mode of transportation and status symbol, progressing onto the macabre function of being used as a weapon. When a woman accidentally struck, but did not injure, a middle-aged couple at a junction in Tiancun, Haidian district, what began as a minor incident resulted in a fatal conclusion once the woman's husband, following in his SUV, pulled up.

Of all the options available to resolve the argument, the angry motorist decided to return to his car and hit the middle-aged man with his car before reversing over him and ultimately killing him. The argument that began with his wife's car was terminally ended with his. But why did he opt for this method instead of, for example, retrieving a weapon such as a socket wrench from his vehicle as a method of bludgeoning the unfortunate pedestrian to satisfy his rage?

An interesting aspect of this terrible tragedy is the fact that the male and female drivers were driving separate vehicles. Instead of resolving the altercation, peacefully or violently, on the street, the man retreated to the sanctuary of his vehicle - his own clearly defined part of the universe, set apart from the collective societal bonds in a sort of individualistic cocoon. The private automobile, the icon of Western individualism, by necessity occupies a paradoxical place in an Eastern society where the focus is on the group. In a culture where thoughts are subconsciously collective, how does something so centered on the self as a private car fit in?

When you close your door and the outside world becomes more distant and blurred, like some strange yet familiar alternative universe, do you as a person change? The notion of Dr. Jeykll, pedestrian, turning into Mr. Hyde, the motorist, is a familiar one in the West. But could it have even further consequences in an environment where the motorist is swinging between the two extremes, changing from being part of a greater whole to rolling around town in his portable kingdom of one.

Road rage is an unfortunate by-product of motorized transportation, turning otherwise calm and reasonable people into the beast that lurks within us all. Maybe the most dangerous thing is for motorists to read about the harrowing tale in Haidian and believe they could never succumb to the monster inside.

Sometimes the rapid change of modernization outpaces our ability to process this change. As a former motorist who moved to a land of pedestrians and cyclists almost a decade ago, I now find myself as a pedestrian in a land of motorists. Like an infant, the character of Beijing's new army of motorists has yet to form so there is still time for positive habits to come to the fore. The streets don't have to be filled with millions of micro warlords in their mini fiefdoms. We all share the same road.