No surprise: NJ ranks high for road rage

I know, we’re all in a hurry and our roads are congested, but is that an excuse for road rage? There must be some reason, as a new study says New Jersey is the sixth worst state for road rage; the data was compiled by a website called Consumer Affairs.

Here’s how they got their numbers: they compared the rate of speeding/careless driving tickets, accidents, fatalities, and traffic incidents involving gun violence to discover which states have more reckless drivers.

You can argue about the metrics they used to determine road rage, but we’ll accept them for now.

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Here are some of the highlights, or lowlights about New Jersey and road rage:

🚗 Getting flipped off on the Jersey Turnpike is a rite of passage for many drivers. But the state has very few road rage incidents involving guns, and the rate of fatal accidents due to aggressive driving is just above the national average.
🚗 However, a nationwide-high 72.8% of fatalities on the road in New Jersey are due to aggressive or careless driving. New Jersey also has one of the highest citation rates in the U.S.
🚗 According to Consumer Affairs, our road rage score is 36.20 (for comparison, the worst state, Louisiana, scored 47.32).

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Here are the stats that made up the score:

🚙 Road rage incidents with a gun per 100K residents: 0.07
🚙 Accidents with fatalities due to aggressive and/or careless driving per 100K residents: 5.00
🚙 Percentage of accidents due to aggressive and/or careless driving: 72.1%
🚙 Aggressive and/or careless driving or speeding violations per 100K residents: 2.69

Believe it or not, not only is Louisiana ahead of us, so are New Mexico, Montana, Colorado, and Arkansas. There are a lot of angry people all over the country.

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Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Bill Doyle only.

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Source: No surprise: NJ ranks high for road rage