Road Rage:

Unsafe and Aggressive Driving By Road Type

A continuation of Aggressive Driving

Part 2.6 Unsafe Driving By Road Type

By now you should know that speeding is responsible for many of the accidents today.  Safety-wise it could be very beneficial to know where most of the speeding occurs.

In this survey 43% of the men and 44% of the women had reasons for speeding.  Age was a predictable pattern with speeding reducing as age increased.  Time for speeding also had a predictable pattern.  Most speeding occurred between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.   It was at its highest 9 a.m. to 3 p.m..

Most people, 83%, felt that if they were to drive 10 m.p.h. over the speed limit they were likely to get a ticket.  25% of them still speed by that amount at least once a week.  The number 1 reason for speeding was that they were late for something. 

Here is the break down of where people speed most of the time:

• 32% Rural Interstate
• 31% Urban Interstate
• 23% Rural Highway
• 29% Urban Highway
• 20% Rural Residential
• 20% Urban Residential

The survey also asked what types of roads that they always speed on.  61% said they speed all of the time in Urban Residential roads.  I guess that would explain the saying that "The most likely place to get into an accident is near the home."  Speeding to the neighborhood grocery store!

Summary from this chapter was:

Overall, the majority of drivers said they see vehicles driving at an unsafe speed all or most of the time on all road types, particularly interstate highways. Over two-thirds of the drivers said they had personally exceeded the safe speed some time in the past year, with little variation by road types. The most often mentioned reason for exceeding the safe speed was being behind schedule. Even though many drivers said they had exceeded the safe speed, the majority felt that increasing the speed limit would result in more crashes. More than half of all drivers felt that driving up to 9 miles per hour over the speed limit did not warrant a ticket and three out of five felt there was at least a 5 MPH leeway when enforcing speed limits.

Drivers found unsafe speed and unsafe driving behaviors present on all road types, but more frequently on interstate highways. Aside from speeding, the most often encountered unsafe driving behaviors were other drivers weaving in and out of traffic and tailgating. Drivers felt these behaviors, along with driver inattention, were the most dangerous.

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Information provided by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration