Hell on Wheels

The suggestions appear well-intentioned but fruitless. They obviously didn't work for Mackenzie. "It sounds like common sense," says Mackenzie, whose two-year sentence will be up next spring (he's currently on work release). "But it's like telling people to get up and brush their teeth every morning. If you wake up and can't figure that out, should you have a driver's license?"

And while law-enforcement agencies gear up for the battle against angry drivers, the malady--or the psychobabble--may already have whizzed by. Last week, outside a Georgia Wal-Mart, one man used a tire iron to assault another man, who then shot him in the face after the two men's shopping carts collided in the checkout line. The Denver Post headline: "Checkout rage sparks shootings."

And on November 27, the Rocky Mountain News reported that a Keystone snowboarder "took a jump in a restricted area" and knocked over an off-duty ski patroller, who then punched the snowboarder in the face. Altercations culminating in "screaming matches" and "brawls" occur every "three or four years" on the slopes, a Breckenridge spokesperson told the News. The paper tagged the phenomenon "ski rage.