ON-RAMP : Freeway Freud

A sort of judicially enforced daylong encounter group, the Less Stress Safety Traffic School in Studio City offers more than coffee, cookies and court documents. Founder/philosopher Roz Busch believes that the way you drive is a metaphor for the way you live, so she gives her students the tools to psychoanalyze other drivers. Among her insights, based on 11 years in the traffic school biz:

Drivers who don’t signal have a failure to communicate, possibly from being emotionally burned in the past. “When they do signal, other motorists could move up and take their spot,” she says. “They don’t want to give others this advantage.”

Drivers who block traffic while waiting for a parking space “only got attention by their negative actions” as children.

Drivers doing 45 m.p.h. in the fast lane are angry and trying to pass that anger to the person behind them. Giving them the finger tells them they’ve succeeded.

Drivers who won’t let you merge feel “it is their road, and you have no right to interfere with their passage.” Similarly, tailgaters “are trying to enforce their superior will.”

Drivers who don’t watch their speedometers “feel it is easier to follow the pack than take responsibility for their own actions.”

Rubbernecks’ “relief at seeing an accident they’re not in takes precedence over getting where they need to go.”

The best way to deal with imperfect drivers is to remember their insignificance, she says. “When you drive at 60 m.p.h., you travel 88 feet per second. These people are just 10 feet in that one second of your life. They just don’t matter.”