"ROAD
WARRIORS: AGGRESSIVE DRIVERS TURN FREEWAYS INTO FREE-FOR-ALLS,"
read the headline of an Associated Press article in the Chicago
Tribune last year. "Armed with everything from firearms to Perrier
bottles to pepper spray and eggs," the text began, "America's
drivers are taking frustrations out on each other in startling
numbers."
Newsweek
warned, "ROAD RAGE: WE'RE DRIVEN TO DESTRUCTION." In January of
this year Time declared, "It's high noon on the country's streets
and highways. This is road recklessness, auto anarchy, an epidemic
of wanton carmanship. "Earlier USAToday had spoken of "AN `EPIDEMIC'
OF AGGRESSIVE DRIVING," and the Washington Times also reported,
"HIGHWAY VIOLENCE SAID TO BE SPREADING LIKE AN EPIDEMIC."
The
media couldn't talk enough about the awful carnage. Even a piece
by the columnist William Safire, on the death of Princess Diana,
was titled "ROAD RAGE IN PARIS." By July of last year matters
had become so serious that Representative Tom Petri, of Wisconsin,
called hearings before the House Subcommittee on Surface Transportation,
which he chairs. "It's a national disaster," Jeff Nelligan, a
committee staff member, said. "It's making our roads some of the
most dangerous places in the country."
By
the end of May there were about 200 citations on the Nexis media
database that used both "epidemic" and "road rage." In fact, there's
been a tremendous proliferation of the term "road rage" itself.
It was, apparently, coined in 1988, and appeared in up to three
stories yearly until 1994, when it began to catch on.
After
twenty-seven mentions that year the numbers escalated sharply,
to almost 500 in 1995, more than 1,800 in 1996, and more than
4,000 in 1997. Headlines notwithstanding, there was not -- there
is not -- the least statistical or other scientific evidence of
more-aggressive driving on our nation's roads. Indeed, accident,
fatality, and injury rates have been edging down. There is no
evidence that "road rage" or an aggressive-driving "epidemic"
is anything but a media invention, inspired primarily by something
as simple as a powerful alliteration: road rage. The term was
presumably based on "roid rage," referring to sudden violent activity
by people on steroids. The term, and the alleged epidemic, were
quickly popularized by lobbying groups, politicians, opportunistic
therapists, publicity-seeking safety agencies, and the U.S. Department
of Transportation.
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