BOISE -- Starting August 1st, nearly 50 law enforcement agencies throughout the state will take an aggressive stand against aggressive driving.
We've all seen aggressive driving or even road rage. Idaho State Police Cpl. Jens Pattis sees it on Idaho roads every day.
"You go out there right now, you'll see it within five minutes," said Pattis.
He says the reason for the campaign against aggressive driving is easy.
"Approximately 50 percent of the crashes involve aggressive driving," said Pattis.
Idaho Transportation Department statistics show that for the last three years, from 2009 to 2011, aggressive driving lead to the deaths of 228 people, and 1,434 more people were seriously injured.
"Everybody at some point in time is going to be running late to a meeting, running late to work, we have to get people to slow down," said Pattis.
Josephine O'Conner with the Idaho Transportation Department says Idaho is actually one of the top states in the country for aggressive driving deaths and injuries per capita.
"Traffic crashes are not an accident,” O’Conner said. “It's something that we control, our behavior when we get behind the wheel we need to slow down, we need to pay attention and we need to be mindful of other drivers.”
O'Conner says previous campaigns against drunk driving and encouraging seat belt use worked, so why not do something against aggressive driving.
"Idaho is actually doing the opposite as far as national trends go with the decrease in fatalities," said O'Conner.
And that's a good thing since she says more Idahoans, ages 4 to 44, die in car accidents than any other way.
"Our goal is zero deaths. From 2010 to 2011 we did drop that by 20 percent; our goal is to drop that by 100 percent. We don't want any deaths," said Pattis.
ISP and other police agencies will have extra patrols out from August 1 to August 13 looking for people driving aggressively.
ISP will focus on Highways 55 and 21 making sure the drives into the mountains are free of aggression.
