Road rage shootings kill or injure someone every 18 hours: analysis

A person has been killed or injured in a road rage shooting every 18 hours in 2021, an analysis done by Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that works to stop gun violence, found.

The group analyzed data collected by Gun Violence Archive and discovered that road rage incidents involving firearms have been on the rise since 2018.

A third of road rage incidents involving guns that occurred from 2016 to 2019 ended in death or injury. That number moved to 50 percent from 2020 to 2021.

That increase has led to a monthly average of 42 deaths in the last 12 months. 

The monthly average for road rage shooting deaths was 22 for the prior four years, according to the analysis.

“Both the number of road rage incidents involving guns and the number of people wounded or killed have been going up each year, and they are on track to reach an all-time high in 2021. We don’t know definitively what’s driving this apparent increase, but the pandemic has brought all kinds of new stressors into people’s lives, as well as record increases in gun sales,” Sarah Burd-Sharps, director of research for Everytown, said.

“We’ve seen a national increase in shootings, and the data strongly suggests that this increase has played out on streets and highways, too,” she added. “These trends don’t seem to be slowing, making action from policymakers even more urgent than it already was.”

One couple is facing murder and accessory charges after shooting and killing a 6-year-old boy on his way to kindergarten during a road rage incident earlier this month.