Car company creates hilarious tool to channel drivers’ anger — and avoid dangerous road rage incidents

A car company in China has a cartoonish approach to curing road rage.

XPeng has unveiled a quirky new feature designed to subdue angry drivers — though it may also prove to be a distraction.

Suppose you’ve ever thrown a digital banana peel at an opponent in Mario Kart. In that case, you might know the satisfaction that throwing something like a digital shoe or an angry face would illicit.

The Guangzhou-based car company has developed an augmented reality game that allows the user to fire off emojis at the wrongdoer, which will project over the windshield in 3D space and give the illusion of hitting the cars.

The steering wheel will have a customizable button that serves as a trigger, and the system will identify the target through its camera array before launching the emojis that appear to explode against the real car.

While they might not be as satisfying as throwing up the middle finger or watching the cup of coffee you hurled splash against your enemy’s car window, it could provide drivers with some temporary relief from pent-up anger.

The program, dubbed the “Road Rage Reliever,” was unveiled earlier this month during a presentation in China.

XPeng CEO He Xiaopeng said the bizarre feature represents “technology-driven emotion,” Fast Company reported.

“We used to prioritize technology first, but starting this year, we will prioritize experience first,” Xiaopeng said, adding that the AR game is a way to “be civilized and experience ‘civilized frustration’ rather than engaging in dangerous behaviors.”

Road Rage Reliever converts the windshield into a virtual battleground featuring an 87-inch-wide augmented reality heads-up display (AR-HUD) that takes up the driver’s entire field of vision and then some.

According to the developers, XPeng and Chinese electronics manufacturer Huawei, the program has advanced optics and calculates the exact distortion necessary for the eyes to believe that things are not displayed on the windshield, but rather floating in the space 33 feet in front of the car.

The optical illusion convinces the brain to interpret the 3D objects as real, the companies claim.

The development comes as road rage has become an increasing problem around the globe. In the U.S. alone, 92% of Americans have said they witnessed road rage in 2024 and 89% said they have been a victim, according to Consumer Affairs.

Though road rage isn’t new, there has been a significant spike in violence a result. In 2024 alone, 116 people were killed in road rage shootings and 362 were injured, according to Siegfried and Jensen.

But the big question is whether or not its safe, with already growing concerns about driver distractions with touchscreen infotainment systems in cars.

XPeng said that “drivers are responsible for judging when it’s safe to use.”

Studies have shown that heads-up display systems can significantly improve the subjects’ attention to risky areas, particularly when compared to traditional displays in the middle of the dashboard that force the driver to take their eyes off the road.

The HUD placement keeps eyes in the driver’s forward field of view, but some research shows that drivers were more likely to glance at HUDs compared to traditional displays, which can make them “potentially distracting … Because the HUD is in the driver’s field of view, drivers may fixate on it and fail to perceive events in the environment,” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.