Valley is becoming home for ‘road rage’

Sunday, Oct. 31, 1999 | 10 a.m.

It usually starts with aggressive driving -- tailgating, honking horns, cutting off other drivers in traffic or illegal turns.

Those habits too often lead to classic "road rage" -- the threat or use of violence on the road.

And it isn't your imagination. Both aggressive driving and road rage are getting worse on the roads and highways of the Las Vegas Valley, law enforcement officials, psychologists and local motorists agree.

Road rage and aggressive driving, though related, are not the same thing, they say. A tailgater is breaking the law, but the motorist who "gets back" at the bad driver by slamming his vehicle into the offender is the one guilty of road rage.

Metro Police Detective Steve Winne sees the results of aggressive driving. He investigates injuries and fatalities on the road.

Winne believes well more than half of all the traffic fatalities he investigates are the result of some sort of aggressive driving.

Psychologists, officers and those who deal with traffic issues in Las Vegas also agree that one of the primary reasons for aggressive driving and road rage is traffic congestion.

Delays in traffic create frustrated motorists who make bad driving decisions. That can lead to cursing, hand gestures -- you know the one -- and, ultimately, confrontations.

The problem, of course, isn't just in Southern Nevada.

"It's a national problem," said Dr. Leon James, a University of Hawaii psychology professor and campaigner against road rage. James runs an Internet website -- www.drdriving.org -- that discusses aggressive driving and road rage in detail.

"No matter where you look, you have congestion, and wherever you have congestion, you have the same kinds of problems," James said.

But the problem is especially severe in Las Vegas, observers say.

In a town that grows by 60,000 people a year, there are many more cars out there than there used to be. Commutes are taking a lot longer -- up more than 36 percent since 1980. Clark County planners expect that trend to accelerate -- what is a 20-minute commute today will likely take about 50 minutes by 2020.

According to the state Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety, there are just a lot more cars, trucks and motorcyclists on the roads in Clark County. In September 1999 the county had more than 943,000 vehicles on the road, up from 578,000 nine years earlier, DMV records indicate.

Add construction projects on roadways throughout the fast-growing region and you have a recipe for unhappy drivers.

The peak time for fatal accidents in Las Vegas is between 3 and 6 p.m. Friday afternoons, a time when motorists are eager to get home and begin their weekends, said Erin Breen, director of the Safe Community Partnership, a coalition of 40 different agencies working for safer driving habits.

Most fatal accidents are on the primary arterial streets such as Sahara Avenue, Breen said.

Breen said those facts come as a surprise to many people, who assume that driving on highways and driving late on a weekend night are going to be the most dangerous. But the most dangerous driver might be the one next to you in the afternoon commute, she said.

While authorities cite traffic congestion as the biggest contributor to hot vehicular tempers, other factors may make Las Vegas an even tougher town to navigate.

Winne said he believes the large number of out-of-town drivers -- tourists or recent arrivals -- contribute to frustration on the road. People from other parts of the country often have different styles of driving or are accustomed to different traffic laws, he points out.

"When you have a lot of people coming into a new area, plus a lot of tourism, you'll have a lot of people unfamiliar with the layout of the town," agreed Paul Moreno, a spokesman for AAA of Nevada. That can lead to sudden lane changes or slow driving, two factors that can lead to frustration for the trailing drivers, he said.

"Here, it's like you're bringing all these different population groups to one area, all of them with a little different idea how to drive," Robert E. Parker, a UNLV associate professor of sociology, said.

Another factor in the mix for Las Vegas is that it is a 24-hour, seven-day-a- week town. People can be drinking and driving at any time of the day or night.

Las Vegas was second only to Texas for fatal driving accidents related to driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, a Mothers Against Drunk Driving study of 1998 data found.

Forty-nine percent of traffic deaths in Nevada were associated with drugs and alcohol versus the national average of 38.4 percent, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In Texas, 50.1 percent of all accidents involved drugs and alcohol, according to the federal data. Utah had the lowest rate in the country with 14.4 percent.

Inebriated drivers are more likely to make aggressive driving mistakes and more likely to fly off the handle in a confrontation, James said.

Early this year a coalition of 200 environmental groups released a study that found Las Vegas is sixth worst in the nation for traffic deaths caused by aggressive driving. The study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project found that there were 8.1 traffic deaths related to aggressive driving per 100,000 people in 1996. The worst cities are Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., with 13.4 deaths per 100,000 people; Tampa, Fla., with 9.5; Phoenix with 9.2; Orlando, Fla., with 8.1; and Miami with 8.1.

The study was designed to encourage mass-transportation alternatives to driving, so critics have said its conclusions are suspect. Nevertheless, it is one of the few sources to quantify the level of the problem.

While everyone apparently agrees that aggressive driving and road rage are problems, it is difficult to gauge the magnitude of the problem.

Cases of true road rage are classified by police as assault or threats against another person, so cannot be analyzed as a distinct crime.

The closest measure of aggressive driving has been the number of violations for reckless driving, which usually involves aggression. In the past three years those arrests have risen consistently in Nevada.

The Nevada Highway Patrol reports that there were 780 arrests for reckless driving in 1997, 884 in 1998 and 667 by the end of August this year -- a pace that will bring the number of arrests to more than 1,000 by year's end.

A better measure is now in place. The 1999 Legislature passed a law in May that created a new class of traffic violation for aggressive driving. Before May, Nevada police could issue tickets for speeding, tailgating or improper lane changes, but not aggressive driving.

The new law runs parallel with statutes against reckless driving, but allows the court to suspend licenses for 30 days on a first offense.

Law enforcement agencies including the Highway Patrol supported the new law, arguing that it gave them more flexibility in citing motorists.

Last month the Highway Patrol put the law to work, searching for aggressive driving in the northern part of the state. In an eight-hour period the Aggressive Driving Apprehension Team issued 44 citations for hazardous maneuvers and speeding. Since then, officers with the enforcement effort have given out another 67 tickets in another 18 hours of operation.

Highway Patrol Officer Scott Flabi said his agency may do a similar exercise in Southern Nevada after results of the operation in Northern Nevada are studied.

The point of the exercise, officers said, wasn't so much to write tickets as to educate motorists about the dangers of aggressive driving.

Other groups are asking motorists to cool it as well.

Breen's Safe Community Partnership has made aggressive driving a focus of organizing efforts for the past three years, and she said the group will continue to work on the issue.

Her group distributes the ubiquitous "Courtesy is Contagious" bumper stickers, which ask drivers to be considerate to others on the road.

But Breen is not sure if the campaign is getting through to everyone. She has been in the Las Vegas Valley for 35 years and has seen the incidence of aggressive driving climb considerably over that time.

And aggressive driving, she is fond of saying, can kill. As an example, she pointed out the death of a California motorcyclist in a case that the Nevada Highway Patrol said stems from aggressive driving.

Alexis Jill Bodkin, 22, faces a trial Nov. 8 on charges that she caused the death of Anthony Scott Wray when she passed two trucks on the right shoulder, then pulled in front of the trucks and hit the brakes, forcing one of the truck drivers to slam on his brakes.

Wray was killed when his motorcycle slammed into the truck, slid underneath it and burst into flames, Highway Patrol reports said.

Bodkin also has been sued by Wray's family.

"Aggressive driving is dangerous," James said. "People need to realize that what we do behind the wheel can affect other people."

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