She turned 60 in September 2024. Two weeks before that date, her peers chose a surprise 60th birthday celebration to bless God Almighty for His mercies. The venue was chosen. Guests were invited. Entertainers were contacted to provide guests with a mix of praise songs blended with Afro-beats featuring top Nigerian artists. Decorators were fully mobilized for an event tagged ‘bold and beautiful’. All was set. Carpets were rolled. Drums were ready. Expensive and best-designed wears were all set.
As a prelude to the D-day, Tessy, oblivious of the surprise get-together, set out for austere shopping to fulfill her wish to always share her celebration with Motherless baby homes within her neighborhood. On her way home, she alighted from the Uber cab safely without any incident.
However, as she was crossing/walking to the other side of her street, a reckless driver knocked her down and killed her on the spot, truncating the best of man’s gesture. The driver never stopped to assist her to the hospital. Nor did any of the onlookers, whose preoccupation was capturing the tragedy to feed their social media accounts with countless followers, which has become the unfortunate norm.
Even at her age, Tess was cute and beautiful. Her life was like a script crafted in heaven and delivered through Mother Earth. Tess (not her real name) was her name. Call her lucky or favored, and you would not be far from the truth about her life. Hers was not just about beauty without brains, as she equally had a good education where she came tops. In her career, she was a goal setter, feared by her male colleagues. Life seemed smooth and easy for her until an avoidable tragedy set in.
Tess was an only child and a mother of a six-year-old son whose birth was a demonstration of man’s faith and God’s ultimate mercy and compassion; her son came after years of waiting on God for the fruit of the womb. Her death threw her family into anguish, with sighs on the futility and vanity of life.
With her death, her post-career dreams and aspirations died with her, leaving a six-year-old son for her bedridden husband to cater to. Tess’s story is one of the numerous tragedies on our roads. Daily, crashes occur, killing, maiming, and leaving behind traumatized loved ones, families, and sometimes children with no one to care for them.
Her tragedy reminded me of the FRSC coined acronym, RAIDS (Road accident immunity delusion syndrome), reminding us of the vanity of life, especially in the hands of reckless drivers; a vanity that respects no class or sex.
If you call the driver who knocked and killed Tess reckless or road rage, you won’t be far from the truth. That is because road rage or recklessness is a term that describes aggressive and dangerous driving behaviors and has become a daily occurrence in our climate, and across a handful of developed countries.
In the Federal Road Safety Corps, we also cry as we lost five or more in September 2025 killed by reckless drivers. I know that times are quite challenging and pave the way for such negative behaviors, but there are specific steps that we can take to mitigate the effects of rage incidents.
Before we dwell on that, we must know that aggressive or angry behavior includes rude and verbal insults, yelling, physical threats, or dangerous driving methods targeted at other drivers, as well as other road users such as pedestrians and cyclists, as a way to intimidate them or release frustration.
Let us now look at the causes of road rage. The most common reasons cited by aggressive drivers responsible for aggressive driving and road rage are heavy traffic. This factor could be reinforced by existing stressed conditions, running late to work or an appointment, already feeling angry before setting out of their homes, as well as feeling tired.
In our climate, I cited the government’s own reform meant to reposition our economy and country, and the resulting adjustment as incidents that could aggravate aggression. There might be others, but these are the most common that drivers confess to.
For factors that increase the risk of road rage, available studies show that age, time of day/year, and type of car are common. I guess they forgot to mention that your status as an employed or unemployed person could also increase the risk, as well as your mental and emotional state.
Before I continue, let me share my near-miss experience as a pedestrian while jogging. But for God’s mercies, I was almost knocked down, even though I complied with all of the safety rules, devoid of any form of arrogance or show-off, while jogging.
As a personal rule of thumb, I comply with the rules for safety while driving or jogging. I am also careful to remember that there is the possibility of being knocked down by a crazy cab driver or even a private car owner, even when all the rules have been complied with.
I, therefore, do not joke with the sacred rule that says face oncoming traffic.
On this fateful day, I was doing my stuff, jogging and sweating, and very conscious that I had done everything possible to stay safe, such as ensuring I was very visible to traffic. I guess I had forgotten the Nigerian maxim that acknowledges the look left, look right rule but expands it by urging you to also look up, look front, and look back because you stand the risk of being run over from any direction within our clime.
I was very sure that I had looked at all the possible directions, but I missed one of the greatest cautions, and that is that whenever you are approaching a fuel station, or even a possible T-junction or Y-junction, you must watch out for drivers who, after buying fuel, would rather choose to drive against traffic instead of using the legal route of driving.
Such drivers usually exhibit their deviant driving behavior using the hard shoulders or even the walkway. What saved me on that fateful day was that even though I was jogging and facing traffic, I also ensured that I jogged very far away from the hard shoulder. I would have been dead meat if I had been jogging as if I had a right of way on the hard shoulder like most of us do.
My experience shows you that nobody is immune to being a victim. Now to the studies, which reveal that drivers aged 19 and below are more than four times more likely to be involved in aggressive driving than older drivers. It goes further to say that road rage tends to occur more in summer months and towards the end of the week in developed climes and festivities in our clime. It also says that angry drivers are prevalent during peak commute hours or school run hours.
