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one. Katz argues that we are engaging in a kind of theatrical storytelling, inside of our cars, angrily “constructing moral dramas” in which we are the wronged victims—and the “avenging hero”—in some traffic epic of larger importance. It is not enough to think bad thoughts about the other driver; we get angry, in essence, to watch ourselves get angry. “The angry driver,” Katz argues, “becomes a magician taken in by his or her own magic.” Sometimes, says Katz, as part of this “moral drama,” and in an effort to create a “new meaning” for the encounter, we will try to find out something after the fact about the driver who wronged us (perhaps speeding up to see them), meanwhile running down a mental list of potential villains (e.g., women, men, teenagers, senior citizens, truck drivers, Democrats, Republicans, “idiots on cell phones,” or, if all else fails, simply “idiots”) before finding a suitable resolution to the drama.
    This seems an on-road version of what psychologists call the “fundamental attribution error,” a commonly observed way in which we ascribe the actions of others to who they are; in what is known as the “actor-observer effect,” meanwhile, we attribute our own actions to how we were forced to act in specific situations. Chances are you have never looked at
yourself
in the rearview mirror and thought, “Stupid #$%&! driver.” Psychologists theorize that the actor-observer effect may stem from one’s desire to feel more in control of a complex situation, like driving in traffic. It also just might be easier to chastise a “stupid driver” for cutting you off than to fully analyze the circumstances that caused this event to occur.
    On a larger scale, it might also help explain, more than actual national or civic chauvinism, why drivers the world around have their own favorite traffic targets: “The Albanians are terrible drivers,” say the Greeks. “The Dutch are the worst drivers,” say the Germans. It’s best not to get New Yorkers started about New Jersey drivers. We even seem to make the fundamental attribution error in the way we travel. When bicyclists violate a traffic law, research has showed it is because, in the eyes of drivers, they are reckless anarchists; drivers, meanwhile, are more likely to view the violation of a traffic law by another driver as somehow being required by the circumstances.
    At least some of this anger seems intended to maintain our sense of identity, another human trait that is lost in traffic. The driver is reduced to a brand of vehicle (a rough stereotype at best) and an anonymous license-plate number. We look for glimpses of meaning in this sea of anonymity: Think of the curious joy you get when you see a car that matches your own, or a license plate from your home state or country when you are in another. (Studies with experimental games have shown that people will act more kindly toward someone they have been told shares their birth date.) Some drivers, especially in the United States, try in vain to establish their identities with personalized vanity plates, but this raises the question of whether you really want your life summed up in seven letters—let alone why you want to tell a bunch of people you don’t know who you are! Americans seem similarly (and particularly) predisposed to putting cheap bumper stickers on their expensive cars—announcing the academic wizardry of their progeny, jocularly advising that their “other car is a Porsche,” or giving subtle hints (“MV”) of their exclusive vacation haunts. One never sees a German blazing down the autobahn with a PROUD TO BE GERMAN sticker.
    Trying to assert one’s identity in traffic is always going to be problematic, in any case, because the driver yields his or her identity to the cars. We become, Katz says, cyborgs. Our vehicle becomes our self. “You project your body way out in front of a vehicle,” says Katz. “When somebody’s changed lanes a