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news

Road Underage

By Jaime Woo

2007_11_29_Adolescents.jpg
Road rage in the city is nothing new. Torontoist covered incidents of road rage violence between motorists and cyclists in 2006 and 2007, and the Sun reported on Monday that a cab driver was shot at in a road rage incident. Most coverage focuses on road rage and adults, but new research from Ontario suggests that adolescents are more likely to be victims of road rage.
In a study recently published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers from the University of Toronto looked at responses from a 2005 province-wide survey to determine how many students in grades 7 to 12 had been victims of road rage. About 53% of adolescent students had been victims of any form of road rage (compared to 41% of adults), 9% had someone threaten personal injury or vehicular damage (compared to 6% of adults), and 6% had someone attempt or succeed in personal injury or vehicular damage (compared to 4% of adults). Because road rage victimization and perpetuation are linked, the authors of the study are concerned that the exposure to road rage could affect adolescents to engage in riskier driving behaviour. One factor for collisions is road rage, and over a third of all adolescent deaths in Canada are a result of automobile collisions.
The study also notes that road rage incidences appear to be localized: students from western Ontario and Toronto had a higher prevalence of road rage than students from northern and eastern Ontario. Furthermore, students in Toronto had by far the most occurrences of someone attempting or succeeding in personal injury or vehicular damage. (Consequently, among adults in Ontario, the main perpetrators of road rage are younger people, males, and people living in Toronto.) The research does not provide any solutions to road rage, but does solidify Toronto’s title of “road rage capital” of Ontario.
Now that age, location and gender have been looked at, how about a study that correlates road rage to car make? It would finally answer the question of who’s the worst: minivan, SUV, or Civic drivers? (Or all of the above?)
Photo by sniderscion from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Comments

  • spacejack

    Man I hate cars. If there’s one thing that would make me want to leave the city it’s the traffic and all the stress it creates. Of course then I’d probably end up living somewhere where it’s impractical to walk/bike/transit everyanywhere.

  • spacejack

    O noes! I can’t has strike tagz?

  • Jaime Woo

    Hey Spacejack, I think our system uses and for striking! So every anywhere.
    At least living in Toronto allows alternative transportation. Living in the ‘burbs without a car is near impossible.

  • David Newland

    Snip:
    Logistic regression analyses revealed that being a victim of shouting was significantly related to region, driver’s license status, and grade.
    Heaven forbid that anyone should be a “victim” of shouting.
    If a teen driver cuts you off, the polite thing to do is inform his or her parole officer!

  • Jaime Woo

    It’s still pretty traumatizing for a kid to get yelled at, especially when younger drivers are still learning to drive.
    I wish the paper had gone into more detail over what constituted shouting. There’s a big difference between someone muttering in their car versus rolling down their windows screaming and pumping their fist.

  • David Topping

    Strike HTML tags (whatever form they take) aren’t allowed in the comments. The list of allowed tags is right below the comment box. (Starts with “tags allowed:”)