Understanding Road Rage - Transportation Experts Look at Remedies

  Research Report Available from the National Technical Information Service

    SPRINGFIELD, Va., May 2 Popular opinion has it that 'road
rage' is increasingly prevalent and dangerous in the urban driving
environment. Whether or not this opinion is true, driver frustration in
congested conditions may lead to an increase in aggressive driving, a less
intentionally malignant and more common subset of road rage. The potential for
significant safety benefits might be realized if transportation professionals
had a better understanding of some roadway factors and characteristics of the
congested driving environment that induce irritation and perhaps contribute to
the frequency of aggressive driving. Understanding Road Rage documents the
major first-year activities of a Texas Transportation Institute study.

    Researchers studied five focus groups consisting of six to ten individuals
and a telephone survey of over 400 Dallas motorists to identify and quantify
the pertinent factors increasing driver impatience, irritation, and stress in
the congested driving environment. Based upon the survey responses, the
research team developed reasonable and feasible traffic engineering mitigation
measures for further evaluation. The following three items were selected for
further evaluation:

     *  Innovative merge strategies - test concepts such as the late merge and
        zipping at urban work zones;

     *  Bottleneck improvements - evaluate the benefits of adding capacity at
        freeway bottlenecks for reducing aggressive driving; and

     *  Photogrammetric investigations of incidents - assess the ability of
        photogrammetry to expedite incident clearance.