Road Rage UK: The UK’s Main Causes of Road Rage

Road rage is a broad term which is caused by a wide number of irritating driving nuances. However, most of these can be boiled down to one or two actions which prompt an aggressive response. In a poll of over 18,000 drivers (conducted by the AA), these were the six things that topped the list of most frustrating driving habits:

• Tailgating – 26%
• Talking on a mobile phone – 25%
• Hogging the middle lane – 23%
• Lane drifting i.e. moving across several lanes at once – 10%
• Overtaking on the inside – 7%
• Driving too slowly/speeding/littering – 3%

Whilst some of these are actually illegal and others are just plain annoying, they all seem to prompt a road rage response from UK drivers. In fact, 78% of drivers have admitted that they have experienced some kind of road rage and more than half of those drivers stating that it’s a daily occurrence. It’s natural that with all this road rage going on across the country, there are some common phrases we share:

• Go on then, move! – 72%
• He’s not even looking! – 67%
• Of course, it’s a BMW! – 64%
• You’re welcome! – 58%
• You could park a bus in there! – 41%
• Are they actually blind?! – 28%

Yes, so maybe we’ve removed some expletives from the list but we’re sure that you’ll relate to some of these road rage rants all the same! It seems that we’re never short of words when another driver has annoyed us. Surprisingly, a considerable majority of us (66%) said that we were reluctant to use the horn which is designed for such occasions. So, instead of talking about it (or beeping our horns) what should we be doing about all the road rage out there?

There are a number of ways that we can bring more peace to our roads and motorways. Here are our top tips:

• Plan your journey – The less likely you are to be in a rush, the less likely you are to get exasperated with delays or other drivers.
• Apologise – If the incident is your fault, openly acknowledge that with an apologetic raised hand. This can diffuse the situation.
• Ignore aggressive drivers – Avoid eye contact or interacting with a road enraged driver, it will only make things worse.
• Stay in your vehicle – Under no circumstances should you exit your vehicle to talk with an enraged driver, this could take the situation from frustrating to dangerous very quickly.
• Pull off the road – If you have been in a road rage incident, pull over and take the time to calm down before driving onwards.

It seems that as long as we have cars, we’ll have road rage. However, the next time you can feel your blood boiling over someone speeding, drifting or simply being downright stupid, take a second to remember that road rage isn’t worth it. The only thing that can come from it is even more bad driving.