Road rage 'a real and big issue' in Singapore, as drivers bemoan sense of entitlement on roads

SINGAPORE — A man’s ugly, aggressive driving behaviour was so traumatic that Ms Dhurrga Ettikan still remembers it vividly after 12 years. A driver came up behind her, overtook her by moving into the lane to the left, then veered back in front of her car and slowed down to about 60kmh on the expressway, which had a speed limit of 90kmh.

“He was very reckless and changed lanes without signalling,” she said, adding that she was honking and flashing her car’s lights on high beam to urge him to stop hogging the road. “When he finally let me go, he showed me his middle finger,” Ms Dhurrga, now a 36-year-old marketing director, told TODAY.

While there is no official data on reports of road rage in Singapore, motorists who spoke to TODAY said such behaviour is fairly common. Facebook pages of community watch groups that document road incidents, such as SG Road Vigilante, generate thousands of views and hundreds of often angry comments.

SG Road Vigilante told TODAY that it has received about 50 videos depicting road rage incidents or driving disputes so far this year, compared to about 70 for the whole of last year. Road rage incidents can take a variety of forms including aggressive honking, tailgating, "brake checking" or deliberately braking abruptly in front of another vehicle, shouting or making rude gestures.

A spokesman for Roads.sg, another community watch group on Facebook, said he believes that road rage incidents often boil down to drivers’ sense of entitlement — that they have the right of way on the road. But with the proliferation of car dashboard cameras and ease of sharing footage on social media, he believes that the number of road rage incidents has actually gone down over the years because people are more cautious of being shamed publicly.