OKLAHOMA CITY – Responding to a recent Forbes story that ranked Oklahoma as having the fourth-highest incidents of road rage in the U.S., State Insurance Commissioner Glen Mulready said the findings reflect a disturbing trend.
“We are hearing more and more” about instances of road rage, he said. “The mental health state of our country at the moment is fragile.”
The insurance commissioner said his department will develop a statewide campaign to focus attention on road rage.
“I don’t believe we’ve done anything specific about this yet,” he said recently, “but this is a great topic for us to address.”
Road rage is a pocketbook issue that can easily become expensive, Mulready noted.
The best thing to do in response to an angry driver “is to not engage,” he said. “Aggressive driving is risky behavior. If you get in an accident, if you cause an accident that results in damage, your insurance costs are going to go up.”
The national average increase in car insurance rates is 45% after an accident with property damage, and 47% for causing an accident that results in injuries, a Forbes Advisor analysis found.
Road rage was blamed for the death of a 19-year-old who was shot to death in south Oklahoma City earlier this month. And on Sept. 23, a 17-year-old boy was assaulted in his car by an older driver who cut him off at a stop light in south OKC and started punching the boy in the mouth.
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol does not track road rage reports in its database, but OHP Trooper Eric Foster told an Oklahoma City television station recently that street/highway construction and the blistering temperatures contributed to multiple instances of aggressive driving.
Forbes Advisor said they analyzed “10 key metrics from a survey of 5,000 drivers across the nation” to identify the states with the most confrontational drivers.
Utah ranked No. 1; Missouri, #2; Colorado, #3; and Oklahoma placed fourth.
Drivers in the Sooner State were the third most likely in the nation to say that another driver in their state has exceeded the speed limit to block their car from changing lanes (43%), tied with New Mexico and Wyoming.
They also ranked third for being forced off the road by another driver (9%), tied with Alabama and Delaware.
More than half (52%) of Oklahoma drivers were the recipient of rude or offensive gestures. Sooners also frequently reported being tailgated (66%) or honked at (69%).
Just over 20% of Oklahoma drivers who were surveyed reported knowing someone who was injured in a road rage incident.
Overall, Forbes reported, 85% of drivers surveyed said they’ve experienced at least one form of road rage. Some instances, like frustrated honking, may be fairly innocuous, but other forms can have far more severe consequences.
Almost one-fifth of the drivers surveyed said they witnessed drivers lose control of their vehicles because of their road rage, and 16% said they have seen someone else lose control of their vehicle due to another driver’s road rage.
Of those surveyed, 22% reported seeing someone cause an accident due to road rage, and 23% said they knew of someone in their state who was injured in a road rage incident.
The most common aggressive motorist maneuvers that drivers had experienced were:
• Another driver honked at them (63%).
• Someone tailgated them (62%).
• Received rude gestures from other drivers (45%).
• Were cut off (43%).
Forbes also asked drivers if they ever engaged in what could be considered road rage. Of those who admitted they have, the most common reason was that another motorist was driving inappropriately (31%).
Other common reasons motorists cited for becoming confrontational were stress (24%), heavy traffic (23%) and running late (19%). Nearly one in 10 drivers (9%) said most other drivers are incompetent, which triggers their road rage. The same amount said exhaustion causes their irate driving.