| 11/14/02 Driving You Crazy By Carol
Scimone
"If you drove to work this morning, chances are you drove through at
least one construction zone. And chances are, there was a traffic jam.
Did you feel your blood pressure rise? Did you gesture to anyone out
of frustration? You're not alone.
"You need to sit down we've got to go." Tucsonan Lori Feingold was
losing patience with daughter Rachel as she tried to get the child to
climb into her car safety seat. It was time to go to day care, but
Rachel wasn't cooperating. "Come on honey, Mama didn't mean to yell at
you, we just have to go. We're late. We're late and I'm getting
stressed. " Does that sound familiar? In life, there's always a
glitch. Then you drive. "I had to wait one time for like, 30 minutes
before I could get on the freeway and, this is really bad, I rolled
down my window and I started yelling at the construction guys."
The familiar bright orange that dots the Tucson landscape is not a
popular color with most drivers. Neither is the guy in front of you.
This car is going really slow and it's driving me crazy." We hooked
Lori Feingold up to a meter that shows stress levels. Green is no
stress, yellow means some stress, orange means moderate stress. But
red means. " Now I'm gonna get mad."
For most of Lori's 15 minute drive to work, the meter showed her
with little to moderate stress. But there were times when it pegged in
the red zone. "I'm actually getting annoyed." And it showed.
"We locked his speed in at 86 miles an hour." Pima County Sheriff's
Deputy Bart Davis looks for speeders, tailgaters, and erratic drivers.
He finds them, especially when he's driving the county's road rage
car. "We consistently get a couple of times a week, people are upset
with the other person's driving behavior, I pull them over and they
have a fist fight on the side of the road."
Deputy Davis also gets upset with people's driving behavior. And he
hits them in the wallet. We were with him the day he cited several
drivers in a construction zone. "I'm gonna write you a speeding
ticket, a ticket for tailgating and also a ticket for not wearing your
seat belt."
In Pima County, you're an aggressive driver in the eyes of the law
when you're speeding and commit two other violations - such as
tailgating and passing in a no passing zone. Sometimes, drivers go
beyond that. Davis arrested one that broke several laws. "This lady
was speeding, passing on the right, weaving in an out of traffic,
laying on the horn and flipping people off. She was definitely a
classic example of road rage."
Angry, yes. But Lori Feingold says it's not healthy. "It's very
important that you're able to control your stress as mush as possible
for your health and mental health." That's the advice she gives to
her clients. She's a child and family therapist who specializes in
dealing with stress. "I think that the most important thing is to
realize that it's just not worth it to get into an accident, that life
is special and precious and we need to cherish it and remember it when
we're driving. And that heart attack coming down the line in five
years in now worth it, either."
The daily commute can cause all kinds of problems. Naturally, if you
get too upset, your car could suffer some damage. But there is damage
happening which you may not immediately see. And it's happening to
your body. Your health is one reason to keep Tucson traffic from
driving you crazy.
"They're inconsiderate, they cut you off, they drive really slowly."
Lori Feingold puts into words what many drivers only dare to think
about their fellow Tucson drivers. There are so many cars and so
little asphalt. Tempers flare every day on the city's slowest moving
roads. "The social theorists who would say that's our problem. We have
so many people, too many people in fact for our roads and the crowded
conditions make us crazy and we're just reacting to that." Joyce
Serido is a University of Arizona Graduate student, working toward her
Ph.D. in psychology. She studies how humans react to stress. And we
often react differently in the privacy of our own car. "I can scream ,
I can yell, I can gesture, I can let loose all the frustrations I'm
feeling for any part of my life."
Some drivers keep their frustration inside their own car. But many
frustrated drivers take their lives, and the lives of others, into
their own hands. Serido worries about the danger. "We hear about
the guns, we hear about the knives but boy, I'll tell you, every one
of us sits behind the wheel of that car with much more power than any
of those would do." Many drivers don't see that. We only see the
orange sign telling us the right lane is closed ahead. And that makes
us see red. "What researchers are telling us now is it isn't this
one time occurrence, that near miss that makes you go crazy or really
does impact your body. It's all this constant, day after day, wear and
tear of your system."
Dr. Kevin Pounds says repetitive stress is slowly killing us.
"Something around eight to 18 miles of commuting a day can have
untoward effects on the immune system and lead to people getting more
frequent colds. It has been linked to increased blood pressure and
strokes." He says repetitive stress affects the heart, the kidneys,
the stomach and can even cause depression. So what is a body to
do? One way to deal with the stress of driving in this traffic is to
roll up your window, tune out the construction sounds and tune in to
the radio. Lori Feingold says physical activity helps her deal with
stress. "I started working out three times and week and I make myself
do that and it really helps ease the stress. It's a trick to be able
to control yourself. But it is possible."
Experts say you can take control by taking deep breaths, by driving
during off hours, or by finding another way to get to work: like the
bus or your bike or carpool. Joyce Serido says almost anything that
allows you to calm down is a good thing. "Hopefully it's not beating
somebody else up."
There are some more expensive ways to calm down. Some advocate
biofeedback. There are devices that soothe the savage driver with
sounds and light. For more information, visit the web site of New Mind
Machines by clicking here "X"
To read information about the ThoughtStream Biofeedback Device
click on this "X"
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