Background
- Nearly 2 in 3 U.S. drivers believe that aggressive driving is a bigger problem today than three years ago, while nine out of ten believe aggressive drivers are a serious threat to their personal safety (AAAFTS, 2015)
Objective
- To provide estimates of the prevalence of aggressive driving behaviors
Methods
- Survey conducted in the United States in 2014, a sample of 2,705 U.S. licensed drivers age 16 and older who reported having driven at least once in the past 30 days, weighted to reflect the U.S. population
- Subset of questions from AAA Foundation’s Traffic Safety Culture Index
Key Findings
- 78% of U.S. drivers reported having engaged in at least one aggressive driving behavior at least once in the past year
- Most common behaviors:
- Purposefully tailgating another vehicle (50.8%)
- Yelling at another driver (46.6%)
- Honking their horn “to show annoyance or anger” (44.5%)
- One-third of all respondents said that they had made an angry gesture at another driver
- One in four drivers reported that they had purposely tried to block another driver from changing lanes
- 11.9% of drivers said they had cut off another vehicle on purpose
- A small proportion of drivers admitted to engaging in behaviors beyond the scope of general aggressive driving and which may be considered road rage:
- 3.7% reported that they had exited their vehicle to confront another driver
- 2.8% reported that they had bumped or rammed another vehicle on purpose
- Most common behaviors:
- Male drivers were more likely than female drivers to report each of the aggressive driving behaviors examined
- Drivers may underreport engaging in aggressive driving behaviors due to their negative social connotation, and thus the true prevalence may be higher than the estimates reported