The 22-year-old motorcyclist told police the driver of the other vehicle tailgated and yelled at him. When he pulled over on the Arundel Expressway, the driver stopped, too, and then charged him with a hammer.

So the motorcyclist pulled out a handgun and shot him. Anne Arundel County Police found a 51-year-old man dead on the side of Route 10 on Nov. 7 in what they described as another case of road rage.

Maryland prosecutors and law enforcement are taking aggressive steps to curb what they say is a growing trend of violent clashes between motorists. Enraged drivers aren’t just laying on the horn or flipping the bird, officials said. Seemingly minor traffic conflicts are escalating quickly into criminal encounters, some of which have turned deadly.

Maryland State Police formed a special initiative over the summer to investigate gun violence on highways and have since made 14 arrests. A coalition of state’s attorneys have raised concerns about road rage incidents with Gov. Wes Moore and are beginning to court sponsors in the General Assembly to introduce bills in the upcoming session that would make it easier to charge crimes committed in a vehicular setting.

It’s hard to know for sure how widespread the problem has become, though an analysis by The Trace of data kept by the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive shows road rage shootings surged fivefold between 2014 and 2023.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration defines road rage as an intentional assault by a driver or passenger with a motor vehicle or a weapon that occurs on the roadway or is precipitated by an incident on the roadway.

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However, the term doesn’t appear in Maryland criminal code, which can make it difficult for police and prosecutors to define and track.

Motorists who called Maryland State Police to report road rage have described such dangerous behaviors as aggressive speeding, braking, tailgating, and weaving or cutting off other motorists, said Elena Russo, an agency spokesperson. Some incidents escalate to verbal confrontations, physical intimidation or the brandishing of firearms.

Anecdotally, officials believe criminal cases stemming from road rage are rising, particularly in places where major highways slice through suburban communities, such as Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Howard counties.

“You’re going to see more road rage in communities where there are more commuters driving, more opportunity to get angry at the next person, more opportunity, if you have the weapon, to misuse it,” Howard County State’s Attorney Rich Gibson said.

The Maryland State’s Attorneys’ Association, headed by Gibson, met with the governor in August and identified road rage as a top priority heading into the next legislative session. The prosecutors are floating ideas such as adding road rage to the state’s criminal code or expanding definitions of assault to include “in a vehicular setting,” Gibson said.

These days, Gibson prosecutes most cases stemming from road rage as first- or second-degree assaults.

“I don’t think that either fully captures the specific harm engendered by this particular problem,” he said.

The legal standards for such charges hinge on an intent to frighten. If a victim reports they weren’t scared by another motorist’s aggressive behavior, prosecutors may have a harder time arguing their case.

Road rage incidents also occur in high-speed settings, which make confrontations dangerous. Police recently pulled data from a victim’s vehicle that showed he reached speeds of up to 100 mph in Howard County while trying to escape a motorist who shot him in the wrist, Gibson said.

That incident took place around 2:15 a.m., but they are happening at any time of day or night, Gibson said. The common factor is the vehicular setting, he said.

“People tend to get very aggravated [on the road], more so than they would in an elevator or walking down the street,” he said.

Human beings already tend to assume the absolute worst motives behind other people’s behavior, said Dr. Joseph Barnet, a faculty member in the University of Maryland’s psychology department. It’s a shortcut the social sciences refer to as “attribution bias,” and it saves people mental energy in high-sensory situations, such as traffic.

Barnet, who studies how social interactions affect behavior, has conducted research on aggression and violence. People tend to become less empathetic and more aggressive when they lose their sense of identity, he said.

“We act in ways that are not characteristic of how we would act when we are in close contact,” Barnet said. “You see it a lot in large crowds.”

Drivers can experience such a loss of identity on the road, he said. Heavy traffic mimics the feeling of being in a large crowd. Yet people are isolated inside of their own vehicles, creating a sense of anonymity.

“We’re more likely to see other people as obstacles being in our way and disruptive of our goal,” he said.

The American Psychological Association says both environmental factors, such as crowded roads, and psychological factors, including displaced anger and high rates of stress, can exacerbate anger behind the wheel. The demographic most likely to perpetrate road rage is young males, according to the association.

Some research also suggests motorists can behave more aggressively if they keep a weapon in their vehicle; it’s a phenomenon Barnet called the “weapons effect.”

Maryland needs to adapt its law to match the type of crimes being committed, said Scott Shellenberger, Baltimore County state’s attorney. He pointed to lawmakers’ decision in 2002 to define carjacking in Maryland criminal code.

The state already has a law on the books that defines aggressive driving, said Del. Luke Clippinger, an Anne Arundel County prosecutor who chairs the House of Delegates’ judiciary committee. Some bills were introduced last session to strengthen the penalties for vehicular manslaughter and reckless driving, but those initiatives failed, he said.

If state’s attorneys want further changes, Clippinger said he’d like to see hard data and examples to illustrate the prosecutorial hurdles they’re facing.

Since the state police kicked off a highway gun violence initiative in July, they have investigated 38 cases, most in Baltimore and Prince George’s counties.

In Howard County, Gibson’s office has pursued 11 criminal cases stemming from road rage incidents since 2023 — a noticeable spike from his first four years in office.

“The numbers don’t lie,” Shellenberger said. “For me to have eight cases [this year] ... that’s pretty remarkable when you’re talking about something you rarely saw years and years ago.”

Police are still investigating last week’s Anne Arundel case. The motorcyclist had a permit to carry the handgun, police said, and is claiming self defense.

But that’s not the only recent road rage incident to turn fatal. A shooting and brawl in Taneytown in July left a 36-year-old Westminster man dead and three others injured.

Still, police and prosecutors’ efforts are reactionary. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there’s no evidence that aggressive driving laws have any effect on aggressive driving and related crashes.

For motorists who feel they are the victim of road rage, state police advise them to keep a safe distance and avoid encouraging further confrontation. They should instead drive to a public place or a police station. Motorists who feel they are in danger should call 911 and provide a description of the vehicle and location if possible, Russo said.

The proliferation of dashcams and video footage have helped investigators track down road rage offenders after the fact.

In the meantime, prosecutors like Gibson want to spread the word that Maryland authorities are cracking down on road rage.

People aren’t their worst moments, he said, but they must face consequences.