Aggressive driving has been a concern in the United States since at least the 1990s. In recent years, Wisconsin legislators have attempted to enact penalty enhancers to punish aggressive driving, defined as a series of specific traffic offenses occurring in a chain of events that collectively define a single act of “aggressive driving,” but the legislation has failed to pass. This synthesis report is divided into three sections: Legal definitions of aggressive driving and their enforceability, which is divided into subsections on comparisons of state aggressive driving laws, recent legislation, and the effectiveness of these laws; general resources on aggressive driving, including major studies that address both the prevalence and definition of aggressive driving, including its distinction from road rage; are road rage and aggressive driving overhyped?, which includes studies addressing the media dramatization of road rage, as well as studies confirming the prevalence of aggressive driving as distinct from road rage. A summary of general conclusions from these sections follows. (Author/publisher)
Abstract