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