'Road rage' in eye of beholder
Debate focuses on shooting
By Eric Gorski/The Gazette
Story editor Valerie Wigglesworth; headline by Rhonda Van Pelt
The term is a catch phrase rather than a legal definition, a quick and easy way to capture the angst that can entangle the harried 1990s driver: road rage.
It makes for a snappy headline or lively water-cooler talk.
Applying it to real events can be as tricky as negotiating construction on Interstate 25.
On Thursday, the 4th Judicial District Attorney's Office received the completed police reports on an incident that's provoked debate about what qualifies as road rage: a shooting last week between two
motorists that left one man dead.
Detectives have raised the possibility that the fatal shooting was self-defense. Assistant District Attorney Dave Gilbert said a decision about whether charges are warranted against the surviving driver may be
made by the middle of next week.
Lt. Ken Hilte, spokesman for the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, said last week the case didn't qualify as road rage. Someone else might look at those same facts and disagree.
"There is no widespread agreement on what road rage is," said Stephanie Faul, spokeswoman for the American Automobile Association's Foundation for Public Safety. "The term is quite fluid."
Though not all of the details have been released, Hilte said he still feels comfortable with his initial assessment of the July 1 incident that began with a fender bender and ended in homicide. Here's why:
John R. Harrell, 39, the driver of a red Dodge pickup that triggered the crash at Powers Boulevard south of Stetson Hills Boulevard, had a blood-alcohol level of .34, more than three times the legal limit,
toxicology results showed.
That was the likely reason Harrell rammed a blue Ford pickup driven by 37-year-old Christopher Bispo, Hilte said.
The two drivers didn't provoke each other with shouted words or aggressive driving before the crash - typical ingredients of road rage, Hilte said.
Second, Bispo said he gave chase not to exact revenge but to jot down the license plate number and call 911, Hilte said.
A few minutes later, Harrell pulled over on the shoulder of Dublin Boulevard just off Powers, and Bispo parked behind him.
According to witnesses, Harrell stepped out with a gun, Hilte said. Bispo announced that police had been called, then he retreated to his truck to get his weapon.
Detectives have not said publicly who fired first, Hilte said. Bispo was shot once in the abdomen and Harrell was fatally shot in the chest.
Some might argue that regardless of what happened before the shooting, it's still considered road rage because weapons were brandished and people were shot.
"I could see how someone would say, 'Someone's dead. This is the ultimate road rage,'" Hilte said. "There's an initial tendency to say, 'We have two guys driving down the highway slinging lead at each other.'
It wasn't like that."
John Larson, a psychiatrist and director of the Institute of Stress Medicine in Norwalk, Conn., argues road rage is the culmination of a series of retaliatory exchanges between irate drivers.
He even assigns "degrees" of retaliation. Only when one driver intentionally damages another driver's vehicle or injures another driver does the term road rage fit, Larson says.
Leon James, a University of Hawaii psychology professor who's studied driving behavior since 1977, defines road rage as "a persistent state of hostility behind the wheel, demonstrated by acts of aggression
on a continuum of violence, and justified by righteous indignation."
He does not believe an intentional violent act must occur for a confrontation to be called road rage. If a driver exacerbates a situation with a gesture or maneuver instead of driving away, that's road rage, he
says.
The American Automobile Association used the term "aggressive driving" when it released a major study on the subject in 1997.
The study, which found a 51 percent increase in such incidents from 1990 to 1996, defined the term as "events in which an angry or impatient driver tries to kill or injure another driver over a traffic dispute."
About a dozen states in the past year have adopted or considered laws that specifically address aggressive driving, James said. Colorado, which doesn't have such a law, has taken a different approach.
Trooper Chip Broshous, spokesman for the Colorado State Patrol, said troopers have de-emphasized catching speeders and increased ticketing for violations such as following too closely or improper
passing.
The state patrol and local police agencies also have singled out aggressive drivers with charges of reckless driving, a more serious offense than most traffic violations and one that requires a court appearance.
John Henry, co-chairman of Drive Smart Colorado Springs, a nonprofit that promotes traffic safety, said it makes sense that the public and the police might not agree on what qualifies as road rage.
"I think people pretty much use aggressive driving and road rage interchangeably," he said. "But to law enforcement, I think their concern is aggressive driving and at what point does that go over the line and
become out-and-out assault."
