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How to Handle San Diego's Traffic Jams

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Negotiating our 10,150 miles of highways, roads and streets with a clear head

DR. SAN DIEGO

If you’ve had the supreme emotional challenge of driving northbound at the 5/805 merge up to Encinitas, or on the 15 from Miramar to Escondido, or even eastbound 8 through Mission Valley to La Mesa between 3 and 7 p.m. weekdays, then this blog is for you.

In the words of Dan Rather, “Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn’t block traffic.” And here in San Diego, we have lots of traffic.

No, we aren’t L.A., but we aren’t on the top 10 lists of great traffic cities either. In fact, sandwiched between Miami and Denver, we are No. 15 on Google Earth’s “20 Most Traffic-Congested Cities in America.” L.A., New York and Chicago are 1, 2 and 3. The list claims, with Forbes as its source, that the worst time to drive in San Diego is Thursday at 5 p.m. We San Diegans know that the 5 near Del Mar, June through September, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., can be another traffic nightmare.

With more than 300 miles of freeways and about 7,150 miles of streets and roads, San Diego traffic reports indicate that more than 68 million vehicle miles are traveled daily in our region, with an average vehicle trip length of 5.8 miles. San Diego traffic reports also show that we spend an average of about 54 hours a year sitting in rush-hour traffic, the national average being 36 hours per year. However, we do beat the Southern California average (56 hours per year).

As Mork asked Mindy, “Why do they call it rush hour when nothing is moving?”

I believe traffic jams are a terrific metaphor for many of the problems in life that we drive ourselves nuts about. Blaming it for making us upset, horribilizing, awfulizing and catastrophizing about it — it stands as a great example of how we handle many similar situations over which we have little or no control. Read on.

I recall once when I was working for KFMB-TV8, doing my “Here to Help” psychology features twice weekly on the 5 p.m. news, that I had to race from my office (in Mission Valley) to do a much-coveted live interview with Allison Ross at the anchor desk. I left my office in plenty of time — so I thought, only to slam into bumper-to-bumper traffic at Camino del Rio South on the 8, which was backed up all the way to the Pacific Ocean westbound, and to Arizona eastbound.

I looked to the left and saw an overweight, bald-headed man pounding his steering wheel, shouting something about doing obscene things to his mother, and appearing on the verge of a heart attack.

Then I looked to my right and saw what most would consider a “10” — a lovely California beauty. She was rocking and rolling to the music on her car radio. Or perhaps, I wondered, she might have been high from weed she smoked while waiting for the traffic to diminish.

I looked in my rear-view mirror, saw myself, and then it hit me. I could pound the steering wheel, curse out my mother or the mother of my bald-headed traffic buddy, listen to some great music, smoke whatever my blond traffic neighbor was smoking (kidding!), or just mellow out and trust the fact that Ted Leitner would find a few extra words to say to cover my one-minute, 20-second spot with Allison.

How I reacted to the traffic was entirely up to me.

What was the traffic doing to me? Nothing emotionally.

Making me angry? No.

Making me upset? No.

Making me anything? No.

The traffic was only slowing me down. Traffic psychology is primarily concerned with the study of behavior in people driving on the roads and how that behavior influences their actions when they drive. This is where "road rage" and all sorts of other bad driving attitudes come from. In the end, all traffic does “to” us is slow us down. That’s traffic psychology.

Your anger is all up to what you believe about traffic and other drivers. So how do you control what you believe about other drivers and traffic? One technique is to examine what traffic psychologists call your “driving attributions.”

Let’s suppose there is a slow moving car in front of you. Why do you think the driver is driving so slowly? What do you “attribute” his/her slow driving to? Traffic shrinks say there are three kinds of beliefs you can have. Which one you gravitate toward will determine how you react/behave on the road. You can blame, or attribute, the cause to several elements:

(1) The driver's disposition. You might think the person is inconsiderate, incompetent, stupid, dumb. That’s why he/she is driving like an idiot.

(2) The driver's appearance, such as race, gender, age, size, clothing or ethnic background. That’s why he/she is driving like an idiot.

(3) The traffic situation. You might think the car is old or malfunctioning, or perhaps there is a child in the car, or someone is sick. Oh — maybe he/she is not an idiot.

Want to have healthier emotions when traffic bunches up? Never make it about the other driver’s appearance or disposition. Instead, always make it about the situation — you will create more compassion, patience, prudence and tolerance in yourself and your commute will be more pleasant, albeit still slow.

Yes, it seems that each year it takes less time to fly across the ocean but more time to drive to work. No doubt our freeways often seem like insane asylums with turn signals. We don’t have to become inmates, though.

For more than 30 years, Dr. Mantell has successfully been bringing upbeat, friendly and helpful psychological insights to individuals, families and businesses in San Diego as a clinical and corporate psychologist in private practice. He's been a regular on Good Morning America, KFMB-TV News 8, has appeared on Oprah, Larry King Live, the Today show, authored two best-selling books and speaks regularly for audiences throughout the country.

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