Pandemic-Related Road Rage Has Police Scrambling for Solutions

As people have become more stressed and tensions have flared more easily due to fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, road rage incidents have spiked around the country in the last year and a half and police are struggling to keep up, reports Pew Stateline. Just in the past several months, a six-year-old boy in California riding in a booster seat was shot to death in June while his mother was driving him to kindergarten because she gave the middle finger to someone who cut her off; a 47-year-old mother of six in North Carolina was riding in the passenger seat with her husband in March on the way to the beach to celebrate their anniversary when she was fatally shot during a road rage incident; and a 49-year-old man died in April in Washington D.C. after being shot in the head in an apparent road rage incident.

In 2020, 42 people a month on average were shot and killed or wounded in road rage incidents, according to a recent report by Everytown for Gun Safety, a national gun violence prevention organization, nearly double the monthly average for the four years prior. If the trend continues, Everytown projects there will be more than 500 deaths or injuries involving road rage incidents with guns in 2021. So far this year, someone has been shot and killed or injured every 18 hours. In response, some police departments have started tracking road rage incidents, while others have set up task forces or held news conferences alerting the public about the problem. However, despite efforts by some agencies to track road rage cases, Police find it nearly impossible to predict when they may turn violent.