Rage on rise as police see wave of aggressive driving incidents

In the last few weeks, stabbing, smashed mirror among violent altercations

A man stabbed in Vaughan. A passenger mirror smashed in with a baseball bat on Lake Shore Blvd. A truck ramming into another car in the Port Lands.

Each incident came in the last few weeks, joining a growing list of road rage incidents in the GTA.

On Sunday night, a 29-year-oldman was stabbed in Vaughan after a verbal altercation with another driver while both were stopped at a red light near Hwy. 27 and Ashbridge Cir. No arrest had been made as of Tuesday afternoon, and the victim has been released from hospital.

On Friday, the occupants of two vehicles at a red light at Lake Shore Blvd. W. and Strachan Ave. also got into a verbal altercation. One of the drivers then left his white Acura with a baseball bat and slammed it into the other car’s passenger mirror. Police have video and are looking for a suspect.

On July 17, an extended confrontation was caught on video in the Port Lands. A pickup truck can be seen turning and accelerating head-on into a car in the oncoming lane.

Further outside the GTA, some headlines may prompt a chuckle — like the 58-year-old Kingston motorist accused of biting the nose of a pedestrian who yelled at him.

Others, though, are deeply distressing. On Sunday night in Cleveland, a 4-year-old boy was shot in the head, moments after his mother had honked her horn to pass another car.

While “road rage” isn’t explicitly tracked by Toronto or Ontario Provincial Police — it’s often listed as a factor in other classifications like negligence, dangerous driving, mischief, traffic offences, collisions or other criminal offences — both forces have seen an uptick in aggressive driving recently.

In Toronto, there were 191 serious or fatal collisions involving aggressive driving in 2015, according to the police force’s data portal. Last year, that number rose to 213.

Fatalities related to speed, which the OPP classifies as a form of aggressive driving, are up nearly 45 per cent from last year, Sgt. Kerry Schmidt said. Their 2017 death count is 42. On this day last year, there had been 29.

The road rage incidents are happening in plain sight.

This week, Schmidt said he himself was driving down Hwy. 400 when, suddenly, a vehicle cut in front of another driver and intentionally slowed down to around 40 km/h.

“I’m watching this, in my police vehicle, like ‘what’s going on?,’ ” Schmidt said.

Clicking into business, he pulled the driver over. The driver’s son was also buckled into the vehicle at the time.

Schmidt cited a “arrive-just-intime mentality” on the part of drivers, instead of preparing to get there a few minutes earlier than scheduled, as a contributing factor to the cases he’s seen on the job.

“Anytime you’re being delayed by anything, you’re feeling violated,” he said. “Everyone thinks they’re anonymous out on the highway, they can do whatever they want, and that was certainly not the case.”

For Toronto police Const. Clint Stibbe, the issue of road rage can be far more personal, and therefore more difficult to untangle and pinpoint.

He urged anyone discussing solutions to road-rage to consider the bigger picture.

“You and I are speaking right now. I know nothing about you, you know nothing about me. I could go home to a house that’s just a nightmare. Stress, money, personal life, whatever. Maybe you’re going home to that,” he said.

“You have to look at it a little further outside just the vehicle event.”