Amid rising road rage incidents, traffic psychologists, driving schools and police are focusing on emotion regulation and temperament
Pic/Aditi Haralkar
On August 19, Yogesh Gaikwad was flung 50 feet through the air by employer Satish Sharma on the Thane-Ambernath Road. The 43-year-old was filling in for Sharma’s regular driver and had barely been on duty for 12 days. Gaikwad’s crushed collarbone has been fitted with plates in three places; and three fingers on his left hand are broken.
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Colaba-resident Sharma had gone to Ambernath to resolve things with his estranged wife. The next day, he decided to take his son back home which his father, Brindeshwar, opposed staunchly. He took off in his black Tata Safari, dragging Satish’s son into the back seat. Gaikwad was behind the wheel as it unravelled. “Brindeshwar followed us in a white Fortuner, cut us off and braked. He got out and yanked Satish out of the car,” Sharma tells us over the phone.
Traffic personnel during a Yoga and Pranayam session at the Byculla Traffic Training Institute. Pic/Aditi Haralkar
Gaikwad quickly alighted too as Sharma’s cousin joined the confrontation which escalated into a melee. “I was calming things down when Sir [Sharma] snatched the car keys from me, and got into the car. All I remember next is the car coming at me… I had no time to react as I was flung in the air and blacked out.”
His first thought when he came to while lying on the road was what his family’s life would be if he didn’t survive this. An autorickshaw driver and onlookers took Gaikwad to the hospital. The video of him being flung in air went viral on social media, and made it to most news channels.
Nitish Koppikar has been using dash cams for the last six years and swears by them. Pic/Nimesh Dave
Gaikwad’s medical bills have mounted to R6 lakhs for two surgeries. “The Sharma family has refused to pay the bills,” he says, “and my 85-year-old father is not in a position to go to the Ambernath police station to keep following up my case. I have two children, a wife and a senior parent to support. If it was not for the rickshaw driver, I don’t know who would have taken me to the hospital. People seemed least bothered about me…” Gaikwad lives in Badlapur’s Ramesh Nagar.
India’s flaring tempers and fretting nerves, on road, were documented by Ford Motors Company in 2021. The Ford Cartesy Survey found that 60 per cent of motorists experience high anxiety due to traffic-induced issues. A little over 1,500 drivers from six metros (Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, and Hyderabad) participated in the study.
Anagha Pullangotte, traffic psychologist, Hyderabad
Mumbai ranked number four in its “Oblivious” list, with 21 per cent of respondents saying they were preoccupied while driving, and felt they lacked traffic know-how to drive in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
The most recent case of road rage occured in Malad last Saturday when an autorickshaw overtook Akash Maeen and his wife Lavina, who were on a bike, nearly grazing them in the process. Nine to 10 autorickshaw drivers have been arrested for Maeen’s death due to fatal wounds as a result of the ensuing altercation. Not many knew about the incident, until the disturbing video surfaced on Monday morning. It shows a mob stomping on Maeen at Malad’s Daftari Road, even as his mother, Deepali, tries to shelter him from the blows.
Yogesh Gaikwad in the hospital immediately after the accident
Despite repeated attempts to reach the family, we did not receive a response until this story went to print.
On Reddit, a new thread began: Ambernath Road Rage: SUV Driver Drags Man After Knocking Him Down, Takes U-Turn and Rams Into Another Car (Different POV). Comments range from revoking Sharma’s licence to deteriorating respect for law and order. “He should be issued a permanent jail sentence and mandatory mental health session and therapy,” says one user.
Nitish Koppikar. Pic/Nimesh Dave
In data revealed by Mumbai RTO’s last year, around 20,000 applicants failed the driving test in 2022 after the Transport ministry made it more thorough. Anupam Dubey runs an RTO-approved motor training school in Borivli west, Devansh Motor Training School, where aside from the technical skill, he also coaches students on mental resilience and emotion management.
“The first thing we tell trainees is to keep a cool head,” he says, “When someone honks like a maniac, we tell them to let them pass by. ‘Learn to let someone go ahead so you can stay alive’ I tell them,” says Dubey. “Most people don’t train at a driving school; they get basic lessons from family and friends, and begin to drive like they were born behind the wheel.”
Anupam Dubey, Proprietor, Devansh Motor Training School
Dubey observes that the young crop of aspirant drivers have not clocked the required hours they need to show the RTO officer while appearing for the test. “While even 21 days is not enough, at least driving schools ensure you log in that many days,” he says. “My major concern is the temperament of young drivers who have no patience or are hell-bent on not letting anyone take over.”
This apathy reflected in the Ford study: 53 per cent of respondents confessed to not making way for emergency vehicles such as ambulances and fire trucks, while 40 per cent of drivers and commuters displayed the weakest demonstration of ideal behaviour on the road. They are characterised as possessive, impulsive, preoccupied with work or family commitments, and lacking knowledge of road rules and safety guidelines.
Road safety workshop being conducted with fresh inducted traffic cops
“Most cases of road rage happen when someone crosses that invisible line,” says Anagha Pullangotte, a traffic psychologist and mental health practitioner from Hyderabad. “A gesture or a word takes the incident from a verbal altercation to a physical exchange. It might be saying something like “F*** off” or showing the middle finger.”
The specific triggers are what the Indian Institute of Management (IMM) Hyderabad graduate is studying in this new branch of psychology. “I noticed that there is not much research available on this,” Pullangotte says, “and though we are still in the middle of the study, we can see that the thresholds for trigger words are different across states due to differences in culture. For example, what might be normal to say on the streets of Delhi might be a trigger in Mumbai, and with migration towards metros being at its highest, these alterations are only getting frequent.”
National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) 2021 data shows that deaths by accidents overtake deaths by murders. At least 43,499 people were killed in hit-and-run cases of rash driving while comparatively 29,272 people were murdered in separate incidents across the country.
The Mumbai Traffic Police has been training its personnel to handle frayed nerves with nerves of steel. “Every officer is trained to keep their cool when they see a situation going out of hand,” says Senior Police Inspector (Traffic) Mubarak Shaikh, who works as an instructor at the Mumbai Traffic Training Institute at Byculla. The officers undergo two weeks of training in emotion regulation via Pranayam and Yoga, bolstered by tactical knowledge of when to call in reinforcements. “Every zone has traffic monitoring vans, so when we get tipped off about an altercation, we send these. But if the situation heats up more with the potential of a mob gathering, we radio the area DCP as well as city police.”
Shaikh observes that extreme incidents like the ones involving Maeen and Gaikwad are more frequent in North Mumbai and the western suburbs. “The population rise in these areas due to cheap housing has outnumbered our personnel strength,” she adds. Many Mumbaikars have been taking steps to insulate themselves with measures such as dashcams. Gaikwad himself is grateful to the passers-by who captured his ordeal on phone. “No one can say I was lying about how it happened,” he says.
Nitish Koppikar has a fleet of three cars to deliver medical equipment to hospitals and clinics. “Around six years ago,” says the Malad resident, “many of my drivers began to get into accidents and I wanted to verify whether it was for genuine reaons or they were being negligent.” He invested in dash cams for his fleet, and they have come handy twice. “At Charkop, a man driving behind me on his scooter didn’t notice a pool of water and skid, almost touching my car. He blamed me for braking too quickly…but as soon as he saw the dashcams, he shut up and went his way,” says Koppikar.
In another incident at Kandivli, a drunk biker crashed onto the road dead in front of Koppikar’s car. “When he came to argue with me, I could smell the alcohol on his breath and I told him that I have video evidence of what happened. He too went off without much protest.” In both cases, Koppikar feels the other motorists could have manipulated the situation to force him to cough up money. “While you need a very high-end camera to capture licence plate numbers, even a basic one deters false claims. Not many people know of this technology and how it can help them, even with its limitations,” he adds.
The common man only recently heard about dashcams when the first accident on Atal Setu was captured by one—a car flipped several times and came to a halt in early January this year.
Doctors estimate it will take Gaikwad at least six months to recover fully, with no certainty of degree of mobility. “I drive Ola/Uber cabs,” he says, “but now I will have to see just how much I will be able to do… or if I am do anything at all….” We can’t help but think about what Australian journalist Tom Vanderbilt wrote in his book, Traffic: Most crashes, after all, happen on dry roads, on clear, sunny days, to sober drivers.”
53 %
Respondents confessed to not making way for emergency vehicles such as ambulances and fire trucks
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