To combat road rage, you must first understand it

CANBERRA - Australian crime experts are struggling to define just what is road rage as reports suggest violence by angry drivers is rising.

The statistics available indicate that tens of thousands of drivers a year are victims of violence, running from obscene gestures to being physically attacked or run off the road.

And, a new paper from the Australian Institute of Criminology says, many cases of road rage are not reported.

Principal criminologist Russell Smith's paper urges the improvement of statistics to help devise strategies to reduce driver anger.

Smith says the problem of defining road rage is notoriously difficult because it can range from "selfish" driving, to hostility involving verbal abuse and obscene gestures, to violence including severe tailgating, driving another vehicle off the road, and assault.

Because of the emotions involved, it is also hard at times to determine who was the aggressor and who was the victim.

Consequences included financial loss, public liability and insurance costs.

Smith says a 1997 Victorian survey found that 14 per cent of the 800 drivers questioned had been a victim of severe road rage in the previous year, and one-third had been a victim at least once since they began driving.

Last year a survey of 2400 drivers by insurer AAMI found that 4 per cent of victims claimed to have been physically assaulted by another driver.

A West Australian survey of 1200 drivers reported that 13.5 per cent had suffered serious road-rage attacks that involved other drivers acting aggressively or violently towards them.

Victimisation rates in Victoria of between 1 and 5 per cent would mean that between 33,000 and 165,000 of the state's 3.3 million licensed drivers have been road rage victims.

Smith says studies have indicated that road rage tends to be under-reported, especially compared with rates for other assaults.

Australian figures for the latest international crime victimisation survey showed 37 per cent of assaults or threats were reported. But in a WA survey, only 21 per cent said they had reported incidents of road violence.