Is an armed society a polite society? Guns and road rage

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2005.12.014Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

While concerns about road rage have grown over the past decade, states have made it easier for motorists to carry firearms in their vehicles. Are motorists with guns in the car more or less likely to engage in hostile and aggressive behavior?

Methods

Data come from a 2004 national random digit dial survey of over 2400 licensed drivers. Respondents were asked whether, in the past year, they (1) made obscene or rude gestures at another motorist, (2) aggressively followed another vehicle too closely, and (3) were victims of such hostile behaviors.

Results

Seventeen percent admitted making obscene or rude gestures, and 9% had aggressively followed too closely. Forty-six percent reported victimization by each of these behaviors in the past year. Males, young adults, binge drinkers, those who do not believe most people can be trusted, those ever arrested for a non-traffic violation, and motorists who had been in a vehicle in which there was a gun were more likely to engage in such forms of road rage.

Conclusion

Similar to a survey of Arizona motorists, in our survey, riding with a firearm in the vehicle was a marker for aggressive and dangerous driver behavior.

Introduction

A car is like a second home, and motorists tend to respond to perceived threats in a territorial fashion. Unfortunately, when another driver makes a mistake, it is often difficult for him to apologize, to signal “excuse me” in a way that can be readily understood. By contrast, cars provide an environment in which individuals may feel safe to display hostility. A car gives the motorist power, protection, easy escape, and anonymity. Not surprisingly, hostile behavior by motorists is relatively common (Whitlock, 1971, Turner et al., 1975, Fong et al., 2001).

The term “road rage” is relatively new, having first been described in the U.S. in the late 1980s (Fong et al., 2001). While the behavior is inconsistently defined (Smart and Mann, 2002, Dula and Geller, 2003), making indecent gestures at other drivers and following aggressively are almost unanimously considered types of “road rage” (Joint, 1995, Wells-Parker et al., 2002, Miller et al., 2002, Smart et al., 2003). Until quite recently, studies focusing on the characteristics of road rage perpetrators were rare (Smart and Mann, 2002); in the past few years they have been the subject of a number of a empirical inquiries (Dukes et al., 2001, Wells-Parker et al., 2002, Miller et al., 2002, Asbridge et al., 2003). Our study uses a national survey to further examine risk factors for road rage perpetration and victimization.

Over the past two decades, 23 states have made it easier for residents to legally carry firearms on their person and in their vehicles (Rosengart et al., 2005). It is estimated that over eight million Americans carry guns in their vehicles each month (Hemenway, 2004).

One claim about gun carrying is that “an armed society is a polite society”. While a Google search of that exact quote in October 2005 yielded over 33,000 hits, no one seems to have explained precisely what the phrase means, and empirical evidence concerning its validity is minuscule. We examine one specific aspect of the potential association of armed individuals and polite individuals—whether motorists with guns in the car tend to be more or less polite, and secondarily, whether these motorists are more or less likely to be victimized by impolite drivers. An earlier study by the senior authors found that, among Arizona drivers, gun carrying motorists were more likely, rather than less likely, to act rudely and aggressively (Miller et al., 2002). The present study investigates whether or not that result holds true at the national level.

Section snippets

Methods

In the spring of 2004, the Harvard Injury Control Research Center commissioned Fact Finders, Inc., a social science research firm in Albany, NY, to conduct a national random-digit-dial telephone survey. Using techniques developed by Waksberg (1978), telephone numbers were randomly selected to include households with both listed and unlisted numbers. The random digit-dial technique is designed to ensure an equal, unbiased probability of inclusion in the sample of all households with a single

Results

Seventeen percent (17%) of drivers reported having made obscene gestures at other drivers in the past year; 9% reported aggressively following other drivers, and 3.5% reported both behaviors (Table 1). In bivariate analysis, these behaviors were significantly more common among males than females (e.g., 20% obscene gestures versus 14%), younger adults (35% obscene gestures for the 18–34 age group, versus 17% for the 35–59 age group, versus 4% for the elderly) and those who drove more frequently

Discussion

Risk factors for aggressive (driving) behavior include youth, male gender, binge drinking, smoking, and having a criminal record (Evans, 2004). In our study, we find that these factors are also associated with making obscene gestures and aggressively following other drivers. Consistent with our Arizona study (Miller et al., 2002), we find that these two hostile behaviors are also associated with traveling in a motor vehicle that contains a firearm.

One would hope that those people with firearms

Acknowledgement

This research was supported in part by the Joyce Foundation.

References (26)

  • G. Fong et al.

    Road rage: a psychiatric phenomenon?

    Soc. Psychiatry Psychiatr. Epidemiol.

    (2001)
  • J.H. Frey

    Survey Research by Telephone

    (1989)
  • D. Hemenway

    Private Guns Public Health

    (2004)
  • Cited by (48)

    • Aggressive Driving and Road Rage

      2021, International Encyclopedia of Transportation: Volume 1-7
    • The weapons effect

      2018, Current Opinion in Psychology
    • The weapons priming effect

      2016, Current Opinion in Psychology
      Citation Excerpt :

      Weapons can even make people more aggressive when they are concealed rather than visible. For example, one study involving a nationally representative sample of adults found that motorists with a concealed weapon in their car were more prone to drive aggressively (e.g., tailgate, make obscene gestures), than motorists who drive without weapons in their car, even after controlling for many other factors related to aggressive driving (e.g., gender, age, urbanization, census region, driving frequency). [6•]. In many societies, weapons such as guns are highly visible and readily available.

    • Interpersonal violence in road rage. Cases from the Medico-Legal Center for Victims of Violence in Hamburg

      2016, Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine
      Citation Excerpt :

      In one American study3 vehicles were used in roughly one-quarter of cases of aggressive behavior in traffic, and in over 40% of cases weapons such as firearms, knifes or clubs were used. Here, a different distribution of weapons in the US and European countries serves as a plausible explanation; a study from Arizona showed that up to 18% of drivers carry a gun in their vehicle.16 Compared with other types of interpersonal violence cases at our Centre, men are slightly more often victims of traffic-related violence than other types of violence (75.9% versus 55%), and experience life-threatening injuries resulting from traffic-related violence less often than with other types of violence (7.8% versus 16.5%), but no significant differences appear in the localization of injuries for either men or women.

    • Alcohol misuse, firearm violence perpetration, and public policy in the United States

      2015, Preventive Medicine
      Citation Excerpt :

      Roughly 300 million firearms are in civilian possession in this country—about 45% of all civilian-owned firearms worldwide, though the United States accounts for only about 4.5% of the world's population (Graduate Institute of International Studies, 2007). General Social Survey (GSS) data for 2010 suggest that there are approximately 50 million firearm owners in the United States, including about 35% of men and 11% of women (General Social Survey). Firearm exposure is not limited to personal ownership, of course.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text