Back in 2016, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety published a shocking study in which it reported that 80% of drivers admitted to committing road rage. They confessed to everything from punitive horn-honking to flipping the bird to tailgating, cutting people off and assaulting them. And now that more people are behind the wheel of automobiles under the stress of a pandemic, road rage incidents are increasingly in the news. “With the added stress of not having a job or being able to pay the bills, or having few places to get away from it all, people are more likely to act out on the road,” says emotional intelligence expert Harvey Deutschendorf. He engaged in road rage himself before figuring out how to stop doing so. Invite him on your show to learn how road rage is a manifestation of human beings’ primitive brain which kicks in before their thinking brain takes over. Deutschendorf says it takes about six seconds for messages to reach the thinking brain and will explain how to take advantage of that along with other ways to diffuse a potentially explosive situation. Harvey Deutschendorf is the author of “The Other Kind of Smart: Simple Ways to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence for Greater Personal Effectiveness and Success.” Contact him at (780) 757-5949; harvey.eiguy@shaw.ca
