BC drivers’ bad behaviour is causing road rage: study
Posted Jun 28, 2011 08:24:56 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A lot of us don’t signal when we’re driving, don’t want to let someone merge into our lane, or get distracted still by our cell phones — and a new study reveals it’s making others really mad.
The Ipsos Reid survey conducted for ICBC found only 40 per cent of respondents did not believe they had been discourteous on the road in the last three months. Eighty-two per cent had been irked by a driver signalling late or not at all, 73 percent had been tailgated, and nearly half had been cut off by someone.
“Half of the drivers we surveyed said they’re less courteous today on the road than they were five years ago,” Adam Grossman with ICBC tells News1130. “At the same time, about the same number of people believe that they haven’t been discourteous to other drivers.”
“We can easily spot discourteous behaviors in others, but we don’t perhaps notice when we’re doing these things ourselves.”
Grossman explains ICBC is concerned about discourtesy because numerous studies have shown it’s a major cause of road rage. “A common characteristic of road rage incidents is that they don’t happen all of a sudden, they escalate. And a road rage incident is almost never one person’s fault”.
His advice? Pay more attention to what you’re doing on the road, whether you’re driving, biking or walking — and being courteous can actually be contagious.
