Several recent Gazette headlines, though seemingly unrelated, in fact converge to spell trouble for transportation in our state. Too much rage, not enough sobriety and too few lanes to drive on are brewing a perfect storm on Colorado’s highways and roads.

Given the chilling news of stranger-on-stranger shooting deaths in two separate incidents on Interstate 70 in the Denver metro area this past summer, it probably came as little surprise Wednesday to learn in The Gazette that Colorado is one of the worst states for road rage. Forbes Advisor looked at 10 metrics from a survey of 5,000 American drivers to determine that Colorado experiences the third-worst road rage nationwide, behind Utah and Missouri.

As The Gazette reported, 14% of Colorado drivers say they’ve been followed by another driver who then exited their vehicle to yell or attempt to fight with them. And 46% of drivers said they had been threatened or insulted by someone else on the road.

Meanwhile, in a bid to curb driving under the influence, the Colorado State Patrol released data this week on the leading causes of what the State Patrol called the “violent trend of fatal crashes across the state.” Of the fatal crashes investigated by the Colorado State Patrol from January through July 2022, 21.6% were caused by a driver traveling outside of their designated lane and 18% were caused by a driver who was impaired by alcohol, marijuana and/or other controlled substances. Unsurprisingly, impaired driving and lane drift are related.

“Law enforcement knows the telltale signs of impaired driving, like lane violations, and go out of their way to stop it because of the deadly consequences of this inexcusable choice to drive intoxicated,” said Col. Matthew C. Packard, chief of the State Patrol. His troopers responded to more than 375 injury and fatal crashes in the first six months of 2022 due to lane violations, and issued 2,936 citations for impaired driving from January through July of this year.

Alongside all of that, transportation scholar Randal O’Toole wrote in The Gazette’s Perspective section last Sunday of state transportation policy makers’ attempts to run Colorado motorists off the road – figuratively speaking, of course. O’Toole, a nationally renowned critic of mass transit, said stubborn attempts to force Coloradans out of their cars and onto buses and trains haven’t worked and will continue to fail.

O’Toole criticizes Colorado policy makers for refusing to expand highways and add lanes to accommodate the state’s steady growth.

“…the Denver Regional Council of Governments … wants to cancel planned highway expansions for fear they would lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions,” O’Toole writes. “Partly for the same reason, the city of Denver is turning roadway lanes now open to all vehicles into exclusive bus or bike lanes. … experience shows that such policies do more harm than good to both the economy and the environment.”

Add it all up – too much rage and recklessness, too little room to drive – and it becomes clear why the commute home from work is usually miserable and too often dangerous. State and local government can’t fix all of it, and law enforcement is doing what it can. The least our transportation visionaries can do to alleviate the stress is to back-burner their utopian pipe dreams about a mass-transit-driven future – and add lanes to our highways.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board