Dean DeSoto, 70, who runs a traffic safety nonprofit that partners with San Antonio’s city and county courts, has been teaching his aggressive driving class for 26 years, and in that time, he has come to believe several things. One is that what goes on in the country will play out on its roadways. Another is that anger on the roads is getting worse, the Washington Post reports. Across the country, the number of people injured or killed in road rage incidents involving a gun has doubled since 2018, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group. There is no uniform definition of aggressive driving across law enforcement agencies and no national database to track it, but DeSoto has been keeping his own tally, including cases in Texas involving guns, knives, ice picks, 2-by-4s, tire tools, PVC pipe, plumbing pipe, bats, hammers, shovels, hatchets, ball bearings, marbles, frozen water bottles, bricks, stones and, in at least one instance, a spear.
On the road, the incidents can begin and end in as little as 30 seconds. But another thing DeSoto has come to believe is that more than just reckless behavior, the cases are a measure of the country’s stress, trauma and polarization, and that made them part of a larger, longer story. “So let’s start,” he says. Most of his students don’t want to be here, and DeSoto knows this. They are here because they have been ticketed, fined and sent here by a judge to learn how to manage their anger and anxiety on the road. They take their seats, and he begins to read aloud from a list of their citations, most of which look like speeding violations. “90 in a 65 … 94 in a 65 … 102 in a 65 … 105 in a 65 … 112 in a 60.”