Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: A View From the Driver’s Seat

Hosted by Maury Hannigan, Commissioner Emeritus, California Highway Patrol

ìRoad rageî is deliberate, violent behavior by a driver in response to a real or imagined traffic grievance. Drivers may use their vehicles as weapons, or even get out of their cars to accost or attack another driver. Road rage occurs when something ìsnapsî in a driver who might usually drive carefully and obey all traffic laws.

Similar to the road rage driver is the ìaggressiveî driver. An aggressive driver may run red lights, tailgate, weave in and out of traffic and ignore traffic laws as their normal pattern of driving. An aggressive driver may trigger road rage in another driver or may develop road rage themselves.

This timely program looks at road rage and aggressive driving from the driverís perspective. Viewers learn what to do if they are the object of an enraged driver and how to avoid becoming enraged themselves. Knowing what to do if confronted by a person who is enraged can mean the difference between life and death.

Key Points:

• Violent actions committed by motorists are criminal offenses.
• A recent six-year study recorded over 10,000 incidents in which an angry driver tried to injure or kill another motorist, resulting in the deaths of 218 people.
• Aggressive drivers who disobey traffic rules are often more easily enraged by the actions of other drivers, but road rage also can occur in drivers who normally follow traffic rules.
• Road rage is often triggered by a trivial offense that causes the enraged driver to feel he has been “wronged.”
• Drivers can avoid enraging others by always being considerate, paying close attention to changing traffic situations, never insisting on the right of way, and following all traffic and safety rules.

20 minutes

$295.00