The effect of road environment and type of vehicles on road rage in China

Abstract

Road rage has a series of adverse effects on driving safety, and many accidents caused by road rage occur in China. Thus, understanding the pattern of road rage has great significance to driving safety. In the present study, 33 video news was evaluated subjectively on the severity of road rage and environmental variables, the gender of drivers and the dimension of inducing events were coded according to the video. The results revealed that the road rage was more serious when the number of lanes was lower, and the rage vehicle and offensive vehicle were non-motorized vehicles. There were more cars and fewer non-motor vehicles in road rage during the daytime and fewer angry trucks in the urban areas. On the highway, the vehicles in rage involve more trucks and fewer cars. Moreover, drivers of cars were more likely to do discourteous offensive behavior and drivers of the non-motor vehicles were more likely to do slow-driving behavior. These findings can be applied to the design of intelligent transportation systems and the education of drivers to relieve road rage.