Why Road Closures Are Rage-Inducing for Drivers – Triathlete

Disgruntled drivers can pose race-day risks to triathletes, while their voices could also influence future events. A psychology professor explains road rage and what athletes and organizers can do.

Recently in Norway, drivers hijacked a closed triathlon course, removing signs and barriers and forcing the cancellation of the Challenge Sandefjord race. In another recent horrifying case, a man drove through the barricades of a children’s triathlon course. While no injuries were reported, the possible consequences could have been catastrophic.

These are just two recent examples of drivers gone wild – in ways that no one wants, but that risk it all over seemingly small inconveniences. Cyclists and triathletes who ride on the road are no strangers to contentious encounters with angry drivers. But race day seems to bring out a different level of rage. At best, this rage takes the form of irritated glances, honking horns, or furious comments fired off on a social media post for a race; at worst, drivers circumvent course barricades, leading to injury or even death.

Rage on the rise

It probably comes as no surprise that such irrational behavior among a small set of drivers has become common. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there has been a 500% increase in reported cases of road rage over the last 10 years.

So what makes drivers so angry about race road closure? The reasons why are several, explains Ryan Martin, a psychology professor and dean of arts, humanities, and social sciences at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay.

“Driving is almost the perfect scenario for leading to anger. Everything about the driving experience exacerbates some element of why human beings get angry,” says Martin, who is known as the “Anger Professor” for his area of research. “Road rage starts with the fact that you’re on your way someplace. You have a goal in mind, and these goals can be easily disrupted by obstacles or barriers – everything from bad weather and slow drivers to accidents and race closures.”

When anything unexpectedly interferes with your pursuit of a goal you deemed worthy of driving to – be it work, a workout, or a critical need – that can be a big problem, he says. On top of that, “driving is inherently anxiety-producing, because it’s dangerous or because you could easily be running late for something. [Delays from road closures] tend to exacerbate that anger, too, because you’re already tense when you’re driving.”

There’s also an in-group/out-group situation happening on race day, Martin says. “People driving by may not identify with the racers at all, and there might even be some hostility toward them.” Being part of the “out group” and make a driver even angrier that they’re being delayed by someone else’s hobby.

For the person experiencing the delay, being faced with “what they perceive to be a totally unnecessary and unreasonable obstacle, especially when they didn’t anticipate it – that feels like a really significant provocation,” Martin says.

In short, he says: “it’s a formula for rage.”

The science of rage

Anger is a universal element of being human that “starts with a little structure deep in your brain called the amygdala,” Martin says. He describes the amygdala as a “little emotional computer that kicks off your emotional responses. When you’re provoked, it basically says, ‘hey, get mad!’ and it fires off a message to another little structure in the brain called the hypothalamus that kicks off your fight or flight response.”

Also called the sympathetic nervous system, this fight-or-flight response causes your heart rate to increase, your muscles to tense up, and your digestion to slow or stop. This helps divert blood and energy to the bigger muscles in the body that are readying to run or launch into combat, based on the threat that’s triggered it.

“We have the capacity, and neural circuitry, for sudden aggression because it can be life-saving in the face of a sudden threat,” says Dr. R. Douglas Fields, neuroscientist and author of Why We Snap: Understanding the Rage Circuit in Your Brain.

“It is not a failure to have this response,” Fields adds. Indeed, this response was great when our ancestors were faced with hungry bears in the wilderness. But, he adds, “the problem is that this life-saving reaction to a sudden threat can be triggered inappropriately in the modern world as we face situations our brain was never designed or evolved to encounter.”

For example, in the face of a road closure on the way to work, this highly-responsive rage-wiring can amount to an outsized anger response to a small delay. “This is the “S” (stopped) trigger for sudden rage,” Field says referring to his LIFEMORTS mnemonic, which refers to the nine triggers of rage.

9 triggers of rage

• Life or Limb: If your life is in danger, you have to react quickly to escape or fight back.

• Insult: Real or perceived insults can result in enraged responses. 

• Family: “If a mother’s offspring or children or pups are threatened, she will immediately respond aggressively to defend them,” Fields says.

• Environment: “Human beings are fiercely territorial, and … use aggression to defend their territory, because their livelihood and survival depends on it,” Fields says.

• Mate: Crimes of passion fall in this category, that also answers to the saying, “all’s fair in love and war.”

• Order in Society: If your sense of fairness or social order is offended, that can trigger rage response. 

• Resources: “Human beings are intolerant of theft and will react with violence to prevent it,” Fields writes.

• Tribe: This “us-versus-them” trigger can result in some of the most horrible atrocities man perpetuates. 

• Stopped: Just like a cornered animal, humans resent the feeling of being obstructed or frustrated and will lash out when they feel they’re being prevented from doing something they want or need to do.

The fight-or-flight response served us well back in the day, when threats were in the vein of, say, a lion or a bear. Today, it has a different interpretation of a threat: “A person or animal will erupt in sudden violence to escape from being trapped or impeded in some way. This can be life-saving, but this brain circuitry can misfire by situations in our modern world, like driving, that did not exist in the past.”

Martin notes that most people “have the capacity to control” anger and its inherent lashing-out reflex, thanks to another area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. This is “that part right behind your forehead that essentially makes us most human. It’s the rational brain that controls our emotional impulses.”

But that inherent capacity can be compromised when another stressor is in play, such as being hungry. “It could be that you’ve dealt with enough stressors and it’s already trying to control too much,” he says, which can lead to an inability to control a rising sense of rage when confused with any obstacle (if you’ve ever been “hangry” afer a workout, you know how this goes). All of this “can make it really, really difficult to pull back from that anger.”

But there’s also basic human nature at play. Sometimes, people don’t consider that the road rage they’re witnessing might not be road rage at all. “You’re surrounded by all these anonymous people who can make mistakes. And when they make those mistakes, it’s really, really easy to interpret it in the worst possible way,” Martin says. We’ve all honked when we knew we should have given someone a moment. And there’s few among us who haven’t quickly escalated to flipping the bird or shouting an obscenity when another driver does something we think is stupid, incorrect, or unsafe.

It’s also worth noting that there are some absolutely valid issues that arise when roads are closed because of a race. From being able to get to work to being able to reach the hospital in a timely manner in an emergency situation, there could quite literally be lives on the line.

Any of these circumstances can make a driver feel angry, and while the lash-out that follows might seem disproportionate to others, for the individual whose livelihood or very life is potentially at stake, the response seems wholly appropriate and sometimes utterly uncontrollable. It’s also an emotion that sticks – and often, this leads members of the community to take steps to contact local officials to complain about the race. Permission for road closures are already tough for race directors to obtain, but they can be almost impossible when the community protests every time race weekend rolls around.

Though the driver’s behavior is ultimately the driver’s responsibility, it’s possible for race directors, communities, and even the racers themselves to de-escalate the sense of threat (and resulting anger) some drivers might feel when race weekend draws near.

Finding a safe, sane medium for races and drivers

What can race directors and athletes do to keep competitors and themselves safe without overly burdening other roadway users? Eva Solomon, CEO of Epic Races, says she uses several techniques when planning the 10 events she organizes, and has offered similar suggestions to other race directors in her capacity as chairperson of the USAT Race Directors’ Committee.

Clear communication

Forewarned is forearmed, and many race directors know this is a critical piece of the puzzle in planning an event. Solomon says her team uses a variety of communication tools when alerting the community to upcoming road closures.

“A couple weeks ahead of time, we send out a postcard to all the homes and businesses in the affected area letting them know the course. We keep it positive,” she says, and include a QR code where recipients can send questions and concerns.

That feedback isn’t always fun to receive, but every time someone engages with the team, it means they’re aware of the potential disruption.

Community buy-in

Communication also helps build community buy-in, which Solomon notes is one happy upside of all those postcards.

“We make suggestions for how they can get involved, coming out to cheer on the racers or work an aid station. Some people get super excited and ask, ‘how can we help?’”

This not not only garners new volunteers and supporters, but can alleviate some of the in-group/out-group issues that Martin mentioned.

Local coordination

Thorough coordination with municipal officials and emergency services is a must for any race. Race directors and their agents – volunteers, course officials, organizers, etc., must work to reassure community members that emergency services will be able to get where they need to go, no matter what’s going on with the race. And this may take some extra effort on the part of race organizers.

Case in point, Solomon says that community complaints during the 2023 edition of the Ann Arbor Marathon led to pushback from municipal authorities when she and her team worked to secure permits for the 2024 race. Determined to prevent the race from dying, Solomon says they made some common sense adjustments to their plans and approach, including starting the race an hour earlier so competitors would be off the course earlier.

Another key adjustment: working closely with the police. “The week before the race, we drove the entire course with the lead officer at the time of day the race was starting, looking for points that we would have to pay close attention to,” she says. The officer could see how heavy traffic typically is that time of day and whether workers trying to get to their shift at the local hospital, for example, would be impeded.

This hands-on, collaborative work helped the police get a better sense of the specific challenges they might need to manage during the event and let them see that the team had found suitable detours for all critical and emergency traffic flow.

“Rather than just leaving it to them to figure it out, we made sure they really understood the event. That helped a lot,” Solomon says.

Athlete education

There’s no denying that in many instances, athletes themselves bear at least some the blame for the frustrations some drivers feel. As Triathlete editor Susan Lacke said in a recent commentary about the tensions between athletes and Kona locals in Hawaii: “…visiting triathletes act more and more like seagulls: they swoop in, crap all over the place, and leave.”

That’s clearly not the case for every athlete, but a few bad apples can split the lot. Athlete behavior can make it harder for communities to get on board with hosting future iterations of the race. Keep in mind when you’re traveling somewhere for a race, the locals might have strong opinions about you, your lifestyle, and your motivations, and remember – you’re an ambassador for all athletes, whether you like it or not.

But perhaps the most important thing for athletes to remember: while race day is no doubt pumping some money into the local economy, it doesn’t always trickle down to the guy who’s being prevented from picking up his kid before daycare starts charging more.

Source: Why Road Closures Are Rage-Inducing for Drivers – Triathlete