Raging drivers threaten those on Utah roads
“Police are seeking two men who beat a 35-year-old Hammond man with a golf club during an apparent road rage incident in the city’s Hessville neighborhood Wednesday.”
With an increase in road rage incidents over the past years, quotes such as this one from the North West Indiana Times are becoming all too common.
Unfortunately, Utah is no stranger to such incidents. Nicole Sevy, a junior at Utah State University majoring in family, consumer and human development, said her brother was involved in an incident of road rage in the Salt Lake area. After driving too close to another vehicle on the freeway, a disgruntled driver followed him off the exit.
“He was getting gas at a gas station and they bashed his window in,” Sevy said.
In a set of statistics compiled by Newton Hightower, director of the Center for Anger Resolution, Inc. in Houston, Texas, a Gallup Poll done by the New York Times showed motorists are more worried about road rage than they are about drunk drivers. Forty-two percent said road rage is the most worrisome aspect of driving, while only 35 percent chose drunk driving as being most worrisome.
Hightower’s statistics also included a report commissioned by the AAA showing that between Jan. 1, 1990, and Aug. 31, 1996, 10,037 car crashes were caused by violent and aggressive driving.
According to the report, 218 people were killed in these collisions and 12,610 were injured. The AAA also reported the condition is getting worse, with a compound growth rate of 7 percent for those statistics.
Another study showed that 50 percent of the crashes that occur on the Capital Beltway in Washington, D.C. are caused by dangerous and aggressive driving.
Road rage can even be a problem on USU’s campus, despite the small number of roads.
“We deal with about six or seven cases each year,” said Lt. Joe Izatt of the USU campus police patrol division. “Most have to do with two individuals trying to get the same parking space.”
Parking is only one thing that can make drivers angry. A poll done by the RoadRagers.com Web site says that tailgating, driving too slowly, and blocking the left lane are the things that irk drivers the most.
USU students have differing opinions on how well Utah drivers do in these areas.
“I think [Utah drivers] are pretty decent,” said Logan native Zak Lewis, a junior majoring in secondary education. “They don’t use their turn lanes like they should, but I think they do pretty well.”
Lewis recently returned to Logan after living for a few years in Missouri. He said that drivers are, “far better here; they’re terrible in Missouri.” Lewis also said he had been involved in a few incidents of road rage, one here and a couple in Missouri, but nothing more than angry and obscene gestures had resulted.
Sevy did not think as highly of Utah drivers.
“You go to other states and people are pretty courteous on the road,” she said, indicating that Utah drivers are not as friendly. “It bugs me when people don’t put their blinker on, or when they are tailing you,” Sevy said.
Studies show that it is common and easy for drivers to get angry at each other. In the poll conducted by RoadRagers.com, 83 percent of the people surveyed said that, just during the last time they were behind the wheel, another driver had done something to make them angry. Other statistics from the poll show that day-to-day stress and feelings of anonymity when one is in his or her own car are factors that contribute to road rage.
On a positive note, the study also shows that 68 percent of the drivers surveyed are more careful when family or loved ones are in the car with them.
There are positive solutions for drivers frustrated with the stress of everyday commuting. Hightower said that whenever he gets angry while behind the wheel, he remembers a scene from the movie “Anger Management” where the characters of Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler are sitting in a parked car on the New York freeway singing “I Feel Pretty” from “West Side Story,” while the New York drivers shout insults and expletives in the background. He said when he thinks of that scene he just laughs instead of taking out his anger on other drivers.
“This illustrates that you can do things to change your mood,” Hightower said. “Take action. Drive slower. Sing. Distraction is one of the best tools to change your angry mood.”
There are also Web sites such as RoadRagers.com which have a forum where angry drivers can retaliate by posting formal complaints, including car descriptions and license plate numbers of offensive drivers, instead of resulting to violence on the road. The Web site encourages drivers not to let encounters on the road escalate into dangerous situations by offering a harmless way to alleviate road rage anger.
-sjeppesen@cc.usu.edu