Many do it and many die.
A new AAA study of aggressive driving found some interesting conclusions:
About 60 percent of traffic fatalities are related to aggressive driving in Pennsylvania.
Bucks and Delaware Counties had the highest percentages of deaths (62 percent) due to aggressive driving in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia's rate (47 percent) was lower than any of the nearby counties to its north and west.
Three-quarters of drivers think they're in the top half in terms of careful driving.
Almost 80 percent of drivers complain about aggressive drivers, but nearly half admit they exceeded the speed limit by at least 15 m.p.h. during the previous month.
The national study, by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, looked at crash data from 2003 through 2007, as well as scientific literature, surveys and polls.
In that five-year period, 192,069 U.S. crashes killed 212,997 people, and 106,727 of those crashes involved at least one aggressive driver.
"Aggressive driving" was broadly defined to include speeding, changing lanes improperly, driving on shoulders, illegal passing, failing to yield right of way, ignoring signs, failing to signal, and speeding up to run a yellow light, as well as some other careless or reckless behaviors.
According to PennDOT, 4,636 of Pennsylvania's 7,699 deadly accidents could be blamed on aggressive driving.
Here are the number for Philadelphia and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties:
Bucks County: 207 of 333 fatal crashes were related to aggressive driving (62 percent).
Delaware County: 102 of 164 (62 percent).
Chester County: 163 of 269 (61 percent).
Montgomery County: 177 of 290 (61 percent).
Philadelphia: 262 of 563 (47 percent).
The survey concedes that the problem might be overstated, since investigators often can't distinguish a mistake from an intentional act.
Maybe the driver just didn't see the stop sign.
Also, the image of the typical aggressive driver is someone moving recklessly around other vehicles, but only one vehicle was involved in half of the "aggressive driving" accidents included in the report.
As some might ask: Is losing control while speeding alone on a highway an example of aggressive driving?