82% of U.S. drivers admitted having been guilty of road rage or aggressive driving with the last 12 months, according to a report from insurance site The Zebra.
Honking your horn, swearing, screaming, smashing your fists on the steering wheel or sticking your middle finger in the air: You can carry them all out in the relative safety of your car. Those are the physical gestures, but what goes on inside your head is the issue. When you have more steam coming out of your nostrils than a bull in a rodeo chute, it is hard to drive safely.
It is easy to become stressed when driving, especially if the traffic is terrible or another driver is being ignorant. Yet allowing your emotions to spin out of control can prove fatal. Road rage often leads to aggressive driving. It can end in two cars chasing each other, speeding down the highway, weaving in and out of the traffic with no regard for their safety or that of others. People driving aggressively, often as a result of road rage, cause many Mississippi car crashes.
Sometimes a driver takes their road rage much further, using their car as a weapon to cut the other vehicle off, to ram it, or run it off the road. Other drivers pull out a gun and kill someone.
The opera singer Robert Breault sums it up well: “Road rage is the expression of the amateur sociopath in all of us, cured by running into a professional.”