Modeling Road Rage

One of my guilty pleasures is watching auto racing on television, an interest that traces back to my childhood, when my father took us to midget, sprint car and stock car races throughout the Northeast. Auto racing suffered a tragedy this month when Tony Stewart, three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion, driving a sprint car on a dirt track in Canandaigua, NY, ran over and killed fellow-driver Kevin Ward, Jr., who was standing on the track. The incident was unusual only by virtue of its sad ending.

In racing, it's common for contact to occur when one car passes another. It doesn't always cause a accident, but when it does, it is most often the slower car that is left spinning to the side of the track. The passing driver typically denies that the accident was intentional; his victim usually has a different interpretation. It is not unusual for the victim to exhibit signs of road rage, for example, standing on the track and yelling or shaking his fist at the other driver as he passes the scene of the accident.

On the lap prior to the fatal accident, Stewart (#14) spun out Ward's (#13) car, bringing out the caution flag. The video shows what happened next.

You can hear Stewart hit the throttle just before he drives past Ward. (The video doesn't permit us to locate the source of the sound, but eyewitnesses claim it was Stewart.) Stewart may have responded to Ward's anger with some road rage of his own. On a dirt track, drivers will sometimes deliberately spray dirt onto someone standing on or near the track. However, accelerating suddenly on dirt can cause the car to fishtail, sending its rear wheels toward the outside of the track. Stewart's right rear tire struck Ward, pulled him under the vehicle, and killed him.

Stewart's actions were reckless but almost certainly not intentional. It's doubtful that he will be prosecuted, since Ward assumed a great deal of risk by walking on the track. He may, however, suffer professional consequences, especially given his long history of on-track aggression. (For example, when Stewart was taken out in an accident he attributed to fellow NASCAR driver Matt Kenseth, he threw his helmet at Kenseth's front windshield. Later he threatened Kenseth with retaliation in a television interview.) Stewart's greatest risk will be loss of corporate sponsorship and income from television commercials.

AAA reports that aggressive driving, broadly defined, is a factor in 56% of fatal auto accidents. A 2013 article by Christine Wickens and her colleagues summarizes what is known about the causes of road rage, which they define more narrowly as aggressive actions on roadways resulting from hostility toward another driver. Since little is known, the article functions as a road map for future research. They divide the causes into personal, i.e., men exhibit more road rage than women, and situational, i.e., it occurs when aggressive intent is attributed to another driver. Not mentioned among potential causes is observational learning and imitation of the behavior of role models.

NASCAR and other racing sanctioning bodies have been quite tolerant of aggressive displays on the track, probably because they think they increase the sport's popularity. But drivers like Tony Stewart are liked and respected by racing fans, and their actions might serve to legitimize similar aggressive actions on the roadways. Are changes in the popularity of auto racing on television correlated with changes in the frequency of aggression on our highways? (NASCAR's ratings have tailed off in recent years. Has road rage also declined?)

There has been relatively little research on the effects of specific events shown or reported in the mass media. An exception is research on suicide contagion, a problem which has become timely following the death of Robin Williams. Suicides increase in the country in the week following the suicides of well-known people. The effect is greater when person who commits suicide is real rather than fictional and there is evidence suggesting that contagion is more likely to occur when there is a demographic match between the model and his or her imitator. These studies could point the way for future research on the connection between televised incidents and road rage among racing fans.

The Stewart incident has brought about at least a temporary change. NASCAR has announced that drivers will not be permitted to leave their cars following an accident until they are escorted off the track by the safety crew. (Of course, there are exceptions, such as when the vehicle is on fire.) NASCAR claims that this has always been the rule, but if so, it hasn't been enforced. If this change is permanent, it could impact not only driver safety, but audience safety as well.

Now, NASCAR, what about those threats of violence in post-race interviews?

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