Blowing through stop signs, red lights ranks highest on Canadian ‘Road Rage Index’

Canadians are an angry bunch behind the wheel, according to a new study on road rage that surveyed adults across the country.

The “Road Rage Index” from Pollara Strategic Insights found blowing through a stop sign or a red light is the number one most anger-inducing habit for motorists in Canada.

The study, which was conducted in January, surveyed 1,510 random Canadians over the age of 18.

Dan Arnold, chief strategy officer at Pollara, says the study was done to show just how angry people are while they’re on the roads right now.

“I see a lot of middle fingers out on the road and I don’t know if it’s because I’m a bad driver or because people are angrier, but we felt it was important to quantify that level of anger that we see out there,” he said.

Arnold says nearly two-thirds of Canadian motorists also admit to being guilty of at least one of these anger-inducing driving habits.

“People, to some extent, were willing to admit that they don’t always follow the rules,” he said. “The numbers might actually be higher than this because people are going to be shy about some of these habits.”

However, Arnold adds most of those cases are just people admitting to driving too fast.

Photo radar and people driving too slow were the least anger-inducing habits, according to the study. Talking on a cellphone, being cut off and speeding up when someone is trying to pass all ranked in the middle of the scale.

To his surprise, Arnold says gridlock traffic ranked fairly low on the list, with only 17 per cent of people being reportedly angered by this habit.

“It does seem like the things that get people really annoyed are more when they see one person doing something wrong,” he said.

“But traffic is… hard to take it as anything else than just a reality of life.”

With files from John Ackermann.