Road Rage and Risk

By: Dr. Gary Anderberg

December 21, 2023 — If you want to gain a deeper understanding of road rage, try riding a motorcycle. There's something about bikers that tends to bring out the worst in those cocooned in their metal and glass vehicles. Even your great-aunt Edna will lean out the window of her 1988 Buick Skylark and let loose a stream of amazing invective accompanied by suitable hand signals when she thinks a biker has somehow violated her roadspace.*

If you manage a fleet, whether for local delivery services or cross-country freight hauling, road rage isn't a trivial matter. The good people at Forbes have developed a new guide to help us navigate confrontational drivers. And navigate we must. As Forbes writer Ashlee Tilford notes, "Violent road rage incidents are on the rise nationwide. In 2022, 413 people were injured in road rage shootings, a 135% increase from 2018." Yes, that's 413 shootings. This is before we get to other forms of mayhem, not to mention a lot of mangled fenders.

Forbes has developed a new interactive map** that allows the user to see the different rates of highway rage incidents from state to state and drill down to some of the important details. In case you're wondering, Arizona comes in as Number 1 in the road rage sweepstakes in this compilation, while little old Delaware has the lowest rate. Maybe that's the effect of how low the state tax rates are in Delaware? The serious point is that rates of rage-related incidents vary pretty significantly from state to state.

While we as fleet safety managers can't control the anger issues of other drivers, we can focus on training our own drivers on how to handle potential road rage incidents with an emphasis on those states where we know such blow-ups are most common. Should our drivers know where and when road rage incidents are most likely to crop up, both by state and by type of road, so they can mentally prepare to deal with these situations calmly and professionally? Should our drivers know how to de-escalate a traffic confrontation and be the adult in the room? That seems like a prudent step to us.

Road rage isn't new, but any number of stats indicates that it's a growing threat whenever our people and our vehicles are on the road or even in a parking lot. Awareness may be the best tool we have to deal with this risk. Check out the new Forbes resource.

*First-hand observations from the saddle of my CanAm Spyder touring bike over the last 12 years.

**Yes, another map.