Does driving encourage narcissistic and sociopathic behavior? Is this a problem of negligence or lack of empathy? What can be done?

Possibly more car-free lifestyles would encourage improvement. Sadly, we don’t demand formal driver’s training.

If everyone had to take that, driving would be better.

The interesting thing to me is how much this type of thing varies so much from place to place. Where I live, the only time you ever hear a horn honking is if someone is about to be in an accident or is honking outside a house to let their passenger know they’ve arrived. Very rarely someone will do a quick honk to let you know the light is green and you’ve been sitting there for over a minute. Overly aggressive drivers are relatively rare. Inattentiveness and general assholishness (here that means you don’t let someone in from a side street) are more frequent.

To contrast, I remember visiting New York City. Completely different! Honking horns all over the place. Aggressive driving was pretty normal. In a NYC resident’s car as a passenger, we got into a minor fender bender in slow moving traffic, and it was perfectly normal to not even get out to examine the damage (there was none). Washington, DC is like this to an extent, too.

I’ve noticed similarities in other big city vs. small town environments. So I’m inclined to think that big city living is more responsible for the driving behavior than driving in general. Maybe the hustle and bustle combined with relative anonymity is a factor.

@marinelife Maryland now requires drivers education for all new drivers. Probably a good thing. :)

@augustlan I didn’t know that. More states should follow.

@augustlan – it is almost universally a problem in urban environments, but it’s probably not really a character matter for the locale (maybe for those driving through the locale). The obvious reason is that urban environments are the place where the most drivers are in the least amount of space, so there is the most traffic congestion in such places. NYC may be worst simply because much of it was never designed for cars to begin with. In a dense urban environment, a honking horn is a nuisance for people who live in the area – maybe not so along rural highways. Either way, in a place like NYC, most of the drivers are from outside the city.

I’m sure that being caught in urban congestion is an annoyance for drivers. I know congestion on interstates made my blood boil back when I still drove. Yet I can’t imagine there’s much to honk at in quiet exurbs and the few remaining literal small towns.

@bolwerk You make some good points, there.

I don’t think driving encourages narcissistic and sociopathic behavior, I think it just exposes that aspect of people who already are that way in their personality. And if it’s latent, then big city driving might bring it out. It could be mild or severe. I think a lot of people are just lazy thinkers and they turn their minds off when driving. Then if their bad driving causes them to get cut off, their ego kicks in, and they get angry, even though it’s their own fault to begin with.

You can see how selfish (or fearful) people are by observing their driving:

Those who pause longer than a moment at a stop sign or who get confused with 3 or 4 cars at the intersection…
Those who enter a freeway onramp at a low speed…
Those who come to a complete stop before climbing over a speed bump even though there’s traffic behind them…
Those who shark around parking lots in circles, waiting and looking for the “front” space…
Those who drive slower in the left lanes of the highways and freeways…
Those who fail to speed up prior to a hill…
Those who are afraid of trucks and afraid of passing them…
Those who put their brakes on, when no obstacles or stops are ahead…
Those who hog the entire road to make a right turn, instead of using the land closest to the shoulder to turn…
Those who have slow reaction time when a light turns green…
Those who tailgate someone who is driving slow merely because they are caught behind someone else going slow…
Those who get in the carpool lane, and then drive at a speed lower than that of the general freeway…

…These are all behaviors that exhibit things like lazy thinking, stupidity, fear, or narcissism.