Down Trend-Driven Road Lies Folly

Road rage is back in the headlines. Well, not back in the headlines. It’s still in the headlines.

Road rage is news, big news, and getting bigger all the time.

This is how we do things in America. A couple of cars crash into each other. The drivers get into a fight. One or both get arrested. A similar episode occurs a few days later.

Suddenly, we have a trend.

The trend needs a name. Somebody decides to call it “road rage.”

Presto. Before the psychologists and sociologists can finish scratching their heads, road rage is all the rage.

Police departments launch massive enforcement plans to combat road rage. Special interest groups publish studies and issue news releases using road rage to make the case for highway construction, road improvements, tougher traffic regulations. Congress holds hearings to consider anti-road-rage legislation.

Congress has to get involved, of course. It’s an established fact that no problem of any kind, anywhere in America, can be solved without congressional involvement.

It is only a matter of time, as we know, until the president unleashes the vast bureaucracy of the United States government in an all-out war against the greatest threat to civilization since the nuclear arms race: road rage.

Many experts attribute the rise of road rage - often referred to as “aggressive driving” - to the frustration felt by drivers who must deal with increasingly crowded streets and highways. The number of vehicles on the roads has steadily increased but the capacity of the roads has not.

It only figures, then, that an organization concerned with highway improvements would latch onto the road rage issue to promote its campaign for new and better roads. And what better time to do it than the past Labor Day weekend, when many law-abiding motorists out for a harmless holiday drive quickly found themselves scrambling to evade hordes of crazed drivers who apparently saw themselves as competitors in a demolition derby.

“Motorists are facing increasing stress on the roads, in part because we have not kept up with the tremendous increase in travel by widening and improving roads,” said William M. Wilkins, executive director of The Road Information Program (TRIP), in a news release distributed by the PR Newswire.

“Certainly drivers should be encouraged to adopt more courteous and considerate driving habits,” Wilkins added. “But our nation has failed to provide relief to motorists by making needed highway improvements, even though we are currently taxing motorists enough to allow us to significantly increase highway investment.”

TRIP is absolutely correct in pointing out that the roads in this country can no longer handle the traffic on them. It surely won’t be long until the highways and byways of America are completely overwhelmed by the relentless onslaught of cars, trucks, buses and sport utility vehicles.

Imagine: total gridlock, from sea to shining sea.

Wilkins listed some improvements that are desperately needed: “Upgrading two-lane roads to four lanes, building new roads, where appropriate, and adding turn lanes and new interchanges.”

Such construction, he said, would “dramatically help improve traffic flow and reduce the severity of congestion. This, in turn, would help reduce the stress on motorists and reduce road rage.”

But would it?

A new USA Today-CNN-Gallup Poll on road rage reveals that nearly 75 percent of motorists believe that other drivers are more aggressive today than they were five years ago. But only 13 percent of those polled admitted to driving more aggressively.

What a surprise. It’s always somebody else who tailgates, who carelessly cuts people off, who recklessly weaves in and out of traffic …

And it is always someone else who goes nuts and retaliates against the perpetrator of such highway insults.

It’s everybody’s fault but our own.

I’m guessing that it might take more than new roads and extra turn lanes to solve this one.

xxxx