Chief
05-08-2008, 05:06 AM
http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/story/353145.html
Published: May 6th, 2008 01:00 AM
If you drive, you’ve met the road-ragers.
They use other cars like slalom poles, weaving in and out of lanes at 75 or 80 mph. They ride your bumper, flashing their high beams, when traffic makes it impossible to move aside.
They cut in in front of you with inches to spare. To avenge a perceived insult, they tail you menacingly for miles.
There’s the road-raging duel, with two maniacs passing and braking in front of each other at 85 mph. More dangerous yet are the berserkers who throw rocks and other objects at their victims, jump out at intersections and start fights, ram other vehicles and even shoot total strangers.
What all aggressive drivers have in common is a reckless indifference to the safety of others. They frequently cause accidents.
Studies suggest that most crashes involve aggressive driving. In many cases, ragers push each others’ buttons – with, say, the “highway salute,” an insult that apparently makes retaliation mandatory.
So we can’t help but applaud the Washington State Patrol’s recent crackdown on road rage, which has been spectacularly successful in the Puget Sound region.
To catch the road-ragers, the patrol has deployed “aggressive driving apprehension teams” in 40 unmarked vehicles that look like anything but a police car. A driver swerving maniacally through heavy traffic may be shocked to find an innocent-seeming Dodge Charger suddenly closing on him with lights flashing.
The patrol has also retooled its reporting system to red-flag citations issued for aggressive driving. Recipients of those tickets rarely find clemency if they take them to court.
The state’s stealth tactics are catching a lot of aggressive drivers. In Pierce and Thurston counties, six troopers on aggressive driving patrol nailed 6,017 offenders in 2005, 7,337 in 2006 and 9,810 in 2007.
That’s an impressive trendline. In King County, though, the results have bordered on miraculous: from 9,874 citations in 2005 to 17,206 in 2006 to 26,694 in 2007. That county’s five aggressive-driver busters appear to have made a real dent in the problem: Driver complaints about aggressive drivers have fallen from 1,401 in 2005 to 1,067 in 2006.
Troopers don’t seem to be doing anything different in King County; they just operate in what the military calls a “target-rich environment.” There are apparently a lot of road-ragers to be caught on that county’s heavily congested stretches of Interstate 5, I-405, I-90 and Highway 167.
Any law-enforcement agency deserves the public’s gratitude when it successfully targets a group of offenders who put everyone at risk. And the WSP rage-busters provide yet another benefit: the pure satisfaction – after nearly getting run off the road a few miles back – of seeing the culprit pulled off on the shoulder, a stern trooper standing by his window.
Good on the WSP in the Pugetopolis area for treating this problem seriously. But you have to wonder why people aren't getting the message with that many citations being handed out.
My wife and I travel up to Seattle several times a year and we are always on the alert after having numerous near misses from extremely irresponsible and aggressive drivers.
I just hope that the Courts are hammering some of these people that are caught, because they are putting hundreds, if not thousands of people at extreme risk with their driving habits.
Published: May 6th, 2008 01:00 AM
If you drive, you’ve met the road-ragers.
They use other cars like slalom poles, weaving in and out of lanes at 75 or 80 mph. They ride your bumper, flashing their high beams, when traffic makes it impossible to move aside.
They cut in in front of you with inches to spare. To avenge a perceived insult, they tail you menacingly for miles.
There’s the road-raging duel, with two maniacs passing and braking in front of each other at 85 mph. More dangerous yet are the berserkers who throw rocks and other objects at their victims, jump out at intersections and start fights, ram other vehicles and even shoot total strangers.
What all aggressive drivers have in common is a reckless indifference to the safety of others. They frequently cause accidents.
Studies suggest that most crashes involve aggressive driving. In many cases, ragers push each others’ buttons – with, say, the “highway salute,” an insult that apparently makes retaliation mandatory.
So we can’t help but applaud the Washington State Patrol’s recent crackdown on road rage, which has been spectacularly successful in the Puget Sound region.
To catch the road-ragers, the patrol has deployed “aggressive driving apprehension teams” in 40 unmarked vehicles that look like anything but a police car. A driver swerving maniacally through heavy traffic may be shocked to find an innocent-seeming Dodge Charger suddenly closing on him with lights flashing.
The patrol has also retooled its reporting system to red-flag citations issued for aggressive driving. Recipients of those tickets rarely find clemency if they take them to court.
The state’s stealth tactics are catching a lot of aggressive drivers. In Pierce and Thurston counties, six troopers on aggressive driving patrol nailed 6,017 offenders in 2005, 7,337 in 2006 and 9,810 in 2007.
That’s an impressive trendline. In King County, though, the results have bordered on miraculous: from 9,874 citations in 2005 to 17,206 in 2006 to 26,694 in 2007. That county’s five aggressive-driver busters appear to have made a real dent in the problem: Driver complaints about aggressive drivers have fallen from 1,401 in 2005 to 1,067 in 2006.
Troopers don’t seem to be doing anything different in King County; they just operate in what the military calls a “target-rich environment.” There are apparently a lot of road-ragers to be caught on that county’s heavily congested stretches of Interstate 5, I-405, I-90 and Highway 167.
Any law-enforcement agency deserves the public’s gratitude when it successfully targets a group of offenders who put everyone at risk. And the WSP rage-busters provide yet another benefit: the pure satisfaction – after nearly getting run off the road a few miles back – of seeing the culprit pulled off on the shoulder, a stern trooper standing by his window.
Good on the WSP in the Pugetopolis area for treating this problem seriously. But you have to wonder why people aren't getting the message with that many citations being handed out.
My wife and I travel up to Seattle several times a year and we are always on the alert after having numerous near misses from extremely irresponsible and aggressive drivers.
I just hope that the Courts are hammering some of these people that are caught, because they are putting hundreds, if not thousands of people at extreme risk with their driving habits.