We drivers have learned that we actually have a few seconds after a light turns red to safely pass through an intersection. This is a learned behavior. I believe there is no way to reverse this situation. Drivers anticipate this time gap, and eliminating it would cause many more accidents. I should have specified that the 2.8 crashes per 100 million vehicle miles traveled refers only to passenger-car crashes involving fatalities.
Nobody doubts that a lot of drivers are angry, rude, or inept.
But we have no evidence that they are more so now than they were a few years ago, or that they are causing more accidents. Federal data show that accident rates, injury rates, and death rates have all fallen per vehicle mile driven. Further, virtually every road activity that Ronald Dyke considers dangerous is already illegal, and the laws are widely enforced. That doesn't include obscene gestures, but First Amendment considerations aside, I think most would agree that we want rudeness and incivility scorned by society, not controlled by cops. The behavior that Rob Lewkowicz describes is common.