Road Rage

Marqus Thomas

M, W, F 11:30-12:25

Road Rage

When people hear the term road rage they understand the concept, due to the media, but few fail to realize what it really means. Road safety experts around the world say the term "road rage" ought to be limited to intentional acts of violence and assault, and the issue is a criminal matter, not a safety concern. This is true because it places limitations on what you can call road rage. Experts on road rage say there is little or no evidence that road rage results in widespread injury or death to motorists. Aggressive behaviors labeled as "road rage" are often a result of bad driving and often get mistaken for road rage. The term road rage is a subject often misinterpreted.

Limitations on what can be defined as road rage had to be established. Experts have labeled road rage by the actions and behavior of drivers. Most people will display a form of road rage, while driving, at some point. This may be in the form of horn beeping, verbal abuse, etc. Also, a person’s everyday life, such as stress and feelings, contribute to whether or not someone will commit road rage. Most experts rely on the behavior motorists’ exhibit to determine road rage. If we define it as assault associated with motor vehicle use between people who do not know each other, then, we can clearly show on the basis of a number of studies that the perpetrators of road violence generally, on the whole, fall into fairly predictable categories. They tend to share the same characteristics as perpetrators of other forms of violence (www.drivers.com/article/165/). Limitations on what society deems road rage had to be established because it was so broad of a category.

Research has come to show there is little or no evidence that road rage results in widespread injury or death to motorists. Experts have come to this conclusion because studies cannot determine if injury was due to rage, injury found to be caused by rage is deemed assault, and the statistics of road rage. A lot of studies done on injuries on the road due to road rage have been deemed inconclusive. These are inconclusive results because those who were involved in an accident, about 88% of the time, were unable to determine whether it was just an accident or rage that caused the injury (www.reportroadrage.co.uk/). Any road injury that is due to road rage is not called road rage lawfully. If any injury does occur and is determined to be due to road rage it is actually assault. The statistics of road rage also defer the connection to injury. The stats on road ragers’ is at a pretty low number because the injuries are determined to be incurred under a form of criminal assault. Experts have found no correlation between