Truckers empathize with driver arrested for recent road rage shootings
A truck driver was arrested after shooting at two men in a pickup in Georgia on Monday. Now, fellow truckers are empathizing with his frustration.
According to CBS 12, truck driver Theondra Ransom fired shots after a pickup repeatedly swerved and hit the brakes in front of him, and other drivers say the pickup’s behavior is typical in the life of a trucker.
“Yeah, I see a lot of road rage out on the road,” said Katie Strickland, a truck driver of three years.
“These drivers out here that drive regular cars, they don’t have a sense of respect for us. They don’t care if they slam on brakes in front of us or pull out in front of us, they’re on their phones. Cars pull out in front of you. I’ve seen cars try to run into you or run you off the road, and they look at us like we’re money tickets to them. They feel like if they get in the accident with the truck, they’re going to get paid, and they don’t realize we can’t stop.”
“Mostly what I see is cars, cutting me off thinking that we can stop as quickly as a car,” said truck driver Hubert Palmer.
“We can’t stop as quickly as the car. It takes the length of a football field to stop us.”
Officers with the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office that was involved with the recent shooting, say that road rage is fairly common, but actual shootings as a result of road rage is rare.
“One major thing that we see throughout is just people, people losing their cool when it comes to driving on the roadway with other people,” said Sgt. Josh Bogdanow.
“We get calls on road rage incidents where a weapon has been brandished and or produced. A lot of the time that we deal with that, it’s because somebody has held up a weapon, not necessarily pointed it at somebody else,” Bogdanow explains.
Officers advise that the best course of action in any road rage situation is to keep your distance, refrain from antagonizing, and contact 911.