But as this charioteer lurched over towards me
I struck him in my rage. The old man saw me
And brought his double goad down upon my head
As I came abreast. He was paid back, and more!
Swinging my club in this right hand I knocked him
Out of his car, and he rolled on the ground.
I killed him…. I killed them all.

Twenty-four centuries later, people are still battling on the highways, but their chariots now have the power of 240 horses and their weapons are more deadly than double goads and clubs. The road rage problem is growing as roads around the world become more congested. From 1999 to 2004, the number of bottlenecks on America’s roads increased 40 percent, according to a recent study by the American Highway Users Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group. Scientists from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a study last year showing that on more congested roads, researchers recorded more cases of aggressive driving than on less congested roads.

Researchers have typically described road rage as a psychological problem with a psychological, or even psychiatric, solution. Scientists at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto recently reported in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry that repeat road ragers frequently have psychiatric problems, including high levels of anxiety, stress and depression. They also tend to drink more than non-ragers. People convicted of road rage are often ordered to complete anger management or anti-aggressive driving programs. Self-help books and audiocassettes offer breathing techniques and prayers designed to help drivers relax so they don’t take a crowbar to someone’s windshield.

But new technology addresses the road rage problem from the car’s point of view. Rather than focusing on a person’s ability to control his emotions, companies are “road rage-proofing” their vehicles.

One approach is to remind drivers that the highway is jammed with other people, not just faceless SUVs and sedans. “The reason that people commit road rage is that they believe they’re anonymous in their vehicles,” said Ed Andrews, president of DriveCam, a company that sells a car-mounted camera invented by a road-rage victim. If Oedipus had known that his long-lost father was in the other chariot, for example, would he have slaughtered him? “When you see somebody in another car, you don’t see them as another person, you see them as a means to an end,” said Scott Geller, a psychology professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va. “It is very impersonal. We see other vehicles as just vehicles.”

Geller aims to bring civility and person-to-person communication back to the roads. He received a patent in 2000 for a device called The Polite Lite that would allow drivers to communicate with other drivers without using their third digit. A driver would install a green light above his car’s brake light. One blink of the light would mean “Please,” two blinks would mean, “Thank you,” and three would be, “I am sorry.” The technique works just as well with hazard lights. Geller conducted a pilot study with the Polite Lite in Christiansburg, Va. He found that using the code decreased drivers’ negative emotions. “It’s almost like giving them a sense of control,” Geller said. “When we say, ‘Thank you,’ we feel better. The behavior of communicating makes people less aggressive.”

Sometimes, road rage is a sign that drivers demand too much control, so one way to avert this may be to wrest power. Luxury carmakers Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz have studied a cruise control that will adjust a car’s speed according to that of the cars in front of and behind it. That could reduce tailgating, one of the major road-rage triggers, said Reg Smart of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Far in the future, all driving may be automated, said Peter Frise, program leader of Auto21, a Canadian research consortium. Putting the car on autopilot could conceivably eliminate driver frustration and road rage.

Until then, if people can’t control their own tempers, perhaps the threat of being caught could keep them from harming others. Last year, Honda’s Great Britain division developed a Road Rage Personal Attack System as an option for its luxury cars. When a person feels like she’s about to be attacked by another driver, she sounds a 120-decibel alarm with a robotic voice screeching, “Help, driver under attack!”

Several car-mounted cameras could help identify road ragers after an attack. “Initially the drivers’ reaction is that this is a Big-Brother device, that someone’s got a camera on them,” said Andrews of DriveCam. “They realize, if they’re a good driver, DriveCam’s your friend.” The AutoCam and the DriveCam film events surrounding an accident or a road-rage attack. Sometimes, the presence of a camera is enough to deter a potential attacker. “No one wants to have their rage videotaped,” said Mike Boardingham, who is in charge of product development at AutoCam. “If everyone knew that they were on camera, … people would drive safer.” And they might not let their anger on the road get the best of them.

On a simpler level, Frise said that car companies are thinking about ways to make the insides of cars more soothing so that drivers don’t associate their automobile with the frustration they feel on the road. “We know certain colors calm people down and make them feel better,” Frise said. “It seems obvious to me, if a driver has a problem, maybe some design features would help.”

There are no published studies showing whether any of these options actually deter a gun-wielding road rager, but anecdotal evidence suggests that they might have limited success. Several people with AutoCams in their cars have thwarted attacks once the attacker saw the camera in the rear window. Consider how different history and psychoanalysis might be if Oedipus’ chariot had a Polite Lite, a soothing aqua interior and a horse that couldn’t tailgate.