As experienced Virginia accident injury attorneys, my colleagues and I report on numerous traffic accidents, many of which prove fatal. But we also see the occasional case in which the at-fault party is guilty of more than a lapse of concentration or being distracted and causes a wreck because of road rage.
In September 2011, I reported on a road rage accident on I-95 in Richmond, VA, that left 24-year-old Christopher Lee Fisher with injuries that that later took his life. Police said the driver of a red pickup truck with North Carolina (NC) license plates cut Fisher off and then slammed on the brakes. On October 13, 2011, police in North Carolina identified a vehicle that matched the description of the at-fault pickup and arrested a man and woman in Wake County, NC.
I am appalled by road rage incidents like this that often have tragic consequences. I still remember a case from 2009 in which three young people perished in West Virginia (WV) when another driver rammed their pickup truck and pushed it into the path of a tractor-trailer.
Although we may think road rage crashes are rare they are more common than many people believe. A report commissioned by AAA revealed that more than 10,000 crashes were caused by some form of road rage between January 1, 1990 and August 31, 1996. Further, at least 218 people were killed in road rage wrecks, and nearly 13,000 drivers suffered injuries, according to statisticalforecasting.com.
DM