SALT LAKE CITY — Just last month, the Utah Department of Public Safety reported an 11 percent increase in aggressive, road rage related crashes statewide from 2022 to 2023. Now, state lawmakers are attempting to crack down on the incidents.
Chris Mortensen was driving on Interstate 15 in Oct. 2022 when police he was cut off by another driver. Both men got off the highway and began arguing in a gas station parking lot where the suspect, Rodrigo Monroy, pulled a gun and shot Mortensen in the chest, killing him.
Mortensen's cousin, Brandon Merrill, said with four children, the shooting destroyed his family.
"This type of action, where we start to physically either intimidate or try to hurt somebody, that's something that is incomprehensible to me," said Merrill.
The Utah Highway Patrol says they've identified 32 incidents of road rage just in the past year.
"We were able to identify circumstances that would meet the definition of what we're talking about right now. It's almost for sure, not all inclusive of everything that we've been involved with, but it's a representation of that defining road rage statutorily will help us better scope exactly," explained UHP Col. Michael Rapich.
House Bill 30 in the current state legislative session deals with road rage amendments and was heard Friday in the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice standing committee.
"This bill is important because, number one, it defines road rage," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Paul Cutler (R-Centerville). "It helps us to collect data and measure, is this problem getting worse or are we all just imagining that it's getting worse?"
The bill increases penalties for bad behavior on the road such as trying to crash into other drivers or trying to knock them off the road. Cutler says the most important part is that it will take fines from road rage and put them towards an education campaign to raise awareness of what to do should drivers find themselves in similar situations.
"It helps to be able to clearly define the problem when we're doing outreach and we're trying to educate people on that," Rapich said.
The bill passed unanimously in committee and will now head for a vote in the full House.
"This has been something that we've needed," said Rep. Matthew Gwynn (R-Farr West), who is vice chair of the committee and the Roy police chief.
Gwynn shared one concern with the bill was that law enforcement may arrest people for using speech or hand gestures toward another driver.
"There was enough concern about it that we decided to do an amendment that would explicitly protect speech or gestures so that they wouldn't be used as evidence or criminalized in a road rage case," he explained.
As the bill continues to move forward in the legislature, Merrill is hopeful it will help prevent incidents such as the one that devastated his own family.
"This kind of gives a clear outline of what road rage is," he said, "and it gives steps, there's infractions, there's misdemeanors and so, to me that is really important."
