Road rage incidents have been going up across the country since the COVID-19 pandemic. And they can get serious — fast. More often now, they involve guns.
Here in Arizona, the Arizona Department of Transportation reports, in 2023, nearly 1,000 crashes were categorized as road rage. Nine people died. More than 300 were injured.
Kym Rogers, owner of AZ KAR Traffic School, an official Traffic Survival School licensed by the Motor Vehicle Division, says a whole lot more could have been, based on the cases she sees every day.
Rogers has taught driving school classes in Arizona for about a decade and teaches 8-hour courses for people who have committed serious violations — from DUIs to aggressive driving, to drag racing and road rage. She said she’s seen the rise in road rage in recent years.
Rogers joined The Show to discuss how often she sees drivers with road rage-related cases in her classroom.
Full conversation
KYM ROGERS: Well, more often than not, I'm sorry to say, because as you get to know the person and obviously I've got time on my hands within an 8-hour class day to get and dig deeper as to what brought them in here and to have them look at their actions behind the actual violation that they received. You know, then it gives me the opportunity to say what was going on in your life at that time? What was going on in your head? Where were you that day? And then as they start telling their stories, the more that they feel comfortable with the setting, with me and seeing where this class is going to go, you'd be surprised at the stories you do learn.
LAUREN GILGER: What about when it comes to explicitly road rage kinds of cases? What are the stories you hear?
ROGERS: Well, it's gonna be a very sad story because something's triggered it. You know, something going on in their world that they don't feel was justified or right, or that they were wronged somehow, someplace. And It can be the innocence of things. Another driver could have really upset them by coming onto the freeway. Maybe they cut them off. Maybe they flipped them off, you know, you never know what's going to trigger somebody's anger at that point because all these other factors. And when that one thing happens, regardless of how small we think it is, if we're the ones doing it, that's enough to make them just blow. And then that's when you see them coming into these classes because they have a whole list of things that the courts have ordered them to do, and I'm one piece of it.
GILGER: So I mean, like, how do you, how do you reach folks like that? Like how do you teach them to control their anger on the road? How do you get at the kind of why behind it? You're not a psychologist, right? Like this isn't, you're not a counselor.
ROGERS: I'm not. I think it's probably because the way the course material is worked. A lot of the information, and the message that is given to these students, for example, if it's a DUI, they've got to go through drug and alcohol screening, perhaps MADD classes. These are all geared around psychology, anger management. They're going to be seeing a counselor.
So these classes, in fact, our, our workbooks is based on a book that was written by Dr. William Glasser called the "Choice Theory." So he too was a counselor. So they all try to make it somewhat an agreement of what the overall goal is of that, what the message we're trying to deliver.
GILGER: It's interesting because it's so rehabilitative, I guess is the word that comes to mind.
ROGERS: And that's the idea.
GILGER: It's not punitive.
ROGERS: No, and that's, that's at least not the environment I want my students in. You know, I'm not sitting there in judgment and jury.
GILGER: Have you noticed trends over the years in the kinds of cases you see in these classes since you've taught this for so long? I mean, we've seen rates of road rage go up around the country and, and here in Arizona points as well.
ROGERS: Well, I have seen that as well and it's sad to me because it's like why? You know, there are times where I get youthful drivers into their room, and they've gotten their violations, and you get to talking to them and what I'm left with is the fact that they've never had any formal training behind the wheel. They have no idea what the rules of the roads are and so it's like starting from ground zero.
And that to me is a tragedy because what are we doing to them and what are we doing to the rest of the world that we're driving in? And no wonder there's people that are angry because they don't know how to interpret what's going out there. They're not interpreting wisely what's going out there.
You know, we're always told as a kid, you know, growing up, learning how to drive, getting your independence, you think of driving as an extension of just common courtesy, and people don't regard it that way. It's, I'm sorry to say that, but, and that's a huge generalization on my part, but that's what it boils down to.
GILGER: So if you're talking about the change you've seen, right, like in people kind of disregarding these common courtesy kinds of based laws, which is interesting that they are sort of just based in common courtesy.
ROGERS: They are.
GILGER: Do you worry that we've lost that sense of common courtesy in this culture today?
ROGERS: I do. I do. I mean, what do we hear all the time? I don't care what the subject material is, it's like we've forgotten that we're one another, we're human, you know, and that we have feelings and that, you know what impacts you might impact me too somewhere. It might be a rippling effect, but we're all in this together. And unfortunately we've lost sight of that.
GILGER: So that's pointing at a much larger problem. I'm sure that's kind of bigger than you can deal with in a class.
ROGERS: I wish I could, but I'm not qualified.
GILGER: But I, but I wonder this a lot when you see people mad on the road or see people kind of driving super aggressively on the road, like, is there a sense that you think people get when they're behind the wheel of a car and their windows are up and you can't really see who's driving the other cars that, that it's like they disconnected from the fact that these are other human beings driving?
ROGERS: Absolutely. They don't care. And they've shut that part of their brain off or whatever. I could give you an example. There was a study done where, for example, we're driving on a surface street road, and you see drivers that will zigzag out of lanes, which is an aggressive driving maneuver. Only to for you to meet them at the same red light that you're coming up on.
So they asked, OK, why do drivers do this? So that was their study. Well, the drivers would say, you know, “I'm running late. I can't, I'll be late for my work, otherwise I'll get fired. This is why I'm doing it.” OK, so then the question became, well, are they saving a lot of time by doing this? Do you know how much time they're actually saving? Seven to 8 seconds.
So you do the cost-benefit analysis. Is it worth somebody's life? Is it worth your car being damaged? Whatever. Is it worth that over 7 to 8 seconds?
GILGER: Do guns play a role in this often?
ROGERS: Often. You know, it's like I tell people, you don't know who's going to pull up beside you. You might get upset with them, you want to flip them off, you want to give them some obscene gesture. Or you cut it in front of them because they're not going fast enough for you, or whatever the circumstances are.
How do you know what they've got their car? They don't know you. And I've had students tell me, “Yeah, I, I was an aggressive driver, and I did this, and I saw them pull out a gun, and I got out of there,” and I'm like, yeah.
GILGER: What's your advice to other drivers on the road in, in terms of based on all the things that you've seen and heard from folks who come through your classes, how should we all kind of treat each other driving on the roads?
ROGERS: Step back, take a moment, take a breath, whatever it takes. Yeah, our first reaction might be to get really upset, but if we just step back, I mean, what's it gonna hurt if somebody has got in their heads that they're going to go and be ahead of me, if I just hang back a little bit. What are we talking about, a second or two, if that. And believe me, by doing and having that more relaxed approach, you'd be amazed at how more relaxed you are.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to an editing error, this story has been updated to correct the spelling of Kym Rogers' name.
