ALLENTOWN — A New Jersey man is dead after a highway crash that state police in eastern Pennsylvania are investigating as a case of road rage.

Police say 62-year-old Peter Venditto, of Milford, N.J., died Monday after he lost control of his pickup truck and it flipped over into a ditch along Interstate 78 near Allentown.

A Lehigh County woman told police Venditto had begun chasing her after she made an obscene gesture at him for braking suddenly in front of her and forcing her to swerve.

Venditto's truck went off the road when the woman, 39-year-old Alicia Meitzler, of Whitehall Township, had to brake because of traffic that was stopping on I-78.

Venditto was pronounced dead just before 1 p.m. at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.