Road Safety

Aggressive Driving

The expressions “aggressive driving” and “road rage” are often used to describe disrespectful behaviour on the road: tailgating, cutting off another vehicle, failure to yield the right of way, flashing headlights, repeated honking, etc. The fact is that actual cases of aggressive driving are very rare and over-hyped in the media, and are different because the behaviour of an angry driver is directed at a specific individual with the intent to harm.

Generally speaking, poor driver behaviour on the road can be described primarily as a lack of courtesy and failure to obey traffic rules, which is very different from aggressive driving. Care must therefore be taken not to exaggerate the number of cases of aggressive driving and to understand the meaning of aggressive driving within the population. The perception that aggressive driving has increased in recent years does not appear to be substantiated by facts. Existing studies do not solidly confirm this perception, which appears mainly in public opinion polls. According to experts, it is difficult to objectively assess this type of incident because it is hard to interpret the intention of drivers on the basis of observed behaviour.

When we encounter bad behaviour, our first reaction is often to blame the other individual without questioning our own behaviour. At one time or another, however, we have all been distracted, on edge, nervous and made a mistake or an awkward manoeuvre. Stress, impatience and the emotions that daily life situations can generate sometimes stay with us when we get behind the wheel. Too often, however, they affect the way we drive and we can neglect to obey basic road safety rules. That is why it is important to give the benefit of the doubt to other users and refrain from attributing wrongful intentions. The driver ahead who is holding up traffic may be unfamiliar with the neighbourhood. The user who forgot to signal before turning may simply have forgotten to do so.