ELIMINATE ROAD RAGE BY CLEARING THE AIR (POLLUTION).

Byline: Gregory Wright Local View

HERE are some ways to reduce road rage (Daily News Drive section, May 11). (Bonus: Many of these measures will also reduce America's disproportionately high per capita contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions.

Increase the fuel economy of all U.S.-manufactured and imported vehicles by raising the corporate average fuel economy (C.A.F.E.) standards immediately, thereby ending the trend toward ``faster and bigger'' cars rightly fingered as a major source of the phenomenal recent increase in aggressive driving and road rage. Such driving, not surprisingly, stirs up in other drivers. The ridiculously overpowered cars on the road today are an automatic major source of the road rage phenomenon.

Support the long-proposed global ``carbon tax'' to provide incentive to reduce fossil-fuel use and help fund the many measures needed to transition the world from the fossil-fuel age and avert the worst consequences of global warming.

Institute a pay-at-the-pump state auto insurance program as a major supplement to (if not eventual replacement of) private auto insurance. This innovation will require all drivers automatically to pay for their car insurance, or some portion of it, and will require the drivers who drive ``larger and faster'' and more miles to pay more, in proportion to their increased gasoline consumption. (Out-of-state visitors also hereby will help foot the California car insurance bill.)

Encourage ``green driving'' to reduce fuel consumption, atmospheric and local air pollution, and high-fuel-consumption aggressive driving (all that speeding and rapid acceleration uses a lot more gas). That is, teach new and old drivers to drive moderate, fuel-efficient speeds (around 55 mph, the people's commitment to mitigating the U.S. contribution to global climate change) and to avoid excessive, pointless acceleration on surface streets and freeways. Also, set lower speed limits on sustained uphill runs on highways and freeways.

Experiment with ``variable speed limits'' to be read out on roadside digital speed limit signs that will temporarily and specifically lower urban-freeway speed limits, within a range of reduced speeds, when traffic has slowed further on. If cars do not approach jammed traffic at high speeds, the backward-spreading rapid braking of numerous cars can be avoided and the traffic can continue to move as a managed, slower-speed continuous ``stream'' (instead of driver- and car-racking stop-and-go), conferring easier driving, earlier arrivals at successive off-ramps and less pollution.

Enact laws mandating the placement of speed- and acceleration-reducing governors on the engines of the cars of convicted speeders and reckless and aggressive drivers. Consider mandating speed-reducing governors on all cars driven by more-accident-prone young drivers (under, say, age 25). And fund research into the perfection of speed- and acceleration-reducing technology for these purposes.

No doubt some readers will feel some road (-related) rage at my suggestions. But the alternative is a tremendous increase in the travail and danger of driving as our population mushrooms in the years ahead - and in the terrible consequences of the relentless accumulation of carbon dioxide and other pollutants in the global atmosphere, conditions like the climate-change-driven disruption of agriculture and the food supply, the spread of tropical diseases, hotter heat waves, super storms, and the destruction of natural beauty. Not the world I want to live the rest of my life in.