One in five motorists experience road rage
14 December 2007
One in every five Western Australian motorists has experienced an incident of serious road rage in the past 12 months, nearly half of motorists have been a victim of mild road rage and 15 per cent of drivers admit to being a perpetrator of road rage according to new research from the RAC.
The statistics also revealed that one in every 25 of the survey's respondents had their car damaged as a result of road rage and one in every 100 people were assaulted, but of those assaults only a quarter were reported to the police.
Other cases of serious road rage included aggressive tailgating, cars braking suddenly in front of other cars and threatening behaviour.
The RAC's Executive Manager of Member Advocacy David Moir said the research was ‘eye opening' and that more needed to be done to investigate the causes and effects of road rage and to look at what should be done to manage the phenomenon.
"We urge the Government to include road rage in its new community violence strategy and to give it the required funding and support to effectively address this issue.
"One of the main issues with road rage is that it goes largely unrecorded because people believe it to be trivial and not worth reporting, but we know in some cases it can escalate and can result in a serious incident,'" said Mr Moir.
"Reporting allows the police to build a picture of where road rage happens and to see if any patterns emerge - perhaps at a certain intersection or stretch of freeway."
Mr Moir also called on the motoring community to respect all road users and not to over react to others behaviour.
"All drivers make mistakes, but that shouldn't mean people need to respond aggressively to those mistakes.
"Our roads are more crowded now than ever before and people are busier but drivers need to realise that our roads are for the benefit of all road users, not just a few."
Mr Moir said in today's world there was more need for drivers to be courteous and patient.
"What ever the reasons for someone frustrating you on the road it is more than likely that they didn't do it deliberately," he said.
The research showed that while, not surprisingly, the majority of road rage incidents happened when people were driving, some instances occurred when people were stopped at traffic lights, intersections or in car parks.
Of those surveyed, the main causes of road rage were seen to be people driving too slowly, tailgating or wanting to go faster while pulling out in front of drivers and cutting them off were also seen as causes.
The survey also looked at cases of mild road rage such as rude gestures, honking the horn, shouting abuse.
The results indicated that, of the 45 per cent of people who had experience mild road rage in the past 12 months, around 40 per cent of those had done so between 3-5 times.
Fifteen per cent of the survey's respondents acknowledged that they had been a perpetrator of mild road rage while just four per cent said they admitted to serious road rage in the past 12 months.
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