‘I honestly thought we were done’: Texas road rage victim shares ordeal, calls for change

What started as a normal Sunday for Michelle Goodwin and her family in the spring of 2022 turned into a terrifying ordeal that she thought would cost their lives.

Michelle’s husband, Randy, picked her and their son Garland, 21, up from work at AT&T Stadium in Arlington the afternoon of May 22. They made dinner plans as they headed toward home on Interstate 30. But at Eastchase Parkway in Fort Worth, “the craziness started,” Michelle Goodwin said.

The Goodwins were driving in the left lane when a Jeep Rubicon tried to pass them on the left shoulder, Michelle said. Then the driver cut off the vehicle the Goodwins were passing and came up beside them on the right, she said. Randy moved over as far as he could, but the Jeep’s driver hit the center of their back wheel and tried to spin them.

The maneuver shot the Jeep Rubicon across the highway, and the Goodwins kept going.

“Next thing we know, the guy is in front of us,” Michelle said. “He stops his vehicle at an angle in our lane in front of us. (He) comes to a complete stop, gets out of his Jeep and is standing in front of his Jeep.”

Michelle stopped taking video with her phone and called 911. Randy backed up and went around the Jeep. The Jeep’s driver jumped back in his vehicle and took off after them.

The chase lasted from Eastchase Parkway to the Summit Avenue exit in downtown Fort Worth. Michelle said that a couple of times they hit over 100 miles per hour.

Garland, who is visually impaired and at a high risk for retinal detachment, took off his glasses so they wouldn’t break and damage his eyes if they wrecked. As Randy sped in and out of traffic, Garland prayed his retinas wouldn’t detach and he wouldn’t lose his vision.

“My kid is in the backseat and there was nothing I could do to protect him,” Michelle said.

The term road rage was coined in the late 1980s to describe a string of fatal shootings on Southern California freeways. Nearly four decades later, violence on roads around the United States still terrorizes motorists, with no end in sight.

Kristin Lowman with the Dallas Police Department said the number of road rage incidents has increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We don’t know definitively what is driving that increase, but ... they do believe that there is an increase that’s past ... the pandemic,” she told the Star-Telegram in a phone interview.

Lowman said road rage can take many forms, but one thing all the incidents have in common is aggression. Sometimes drivers express their anger toward other motorists verbally. Other times they use physical violence, including assault or discharging a weapon.

Michelle Goodwin said the Jeep Rubicon chased her family for 11 minutes, but it seemed like forever.

“I honestly thought we were done,” she said. “Because I just knew at some point on one of those overpasses he was going to ram us, and we were going to go off the edge.”

Close to the Summit Avenue exit, the Jeep’s driver got in front of them, she said. He rammed the Goodwins’ vehicle, knocking it into another car. Then the driver backed up and got ready to ram them again. Two patrol vehicles from the Fort Worth Police Department arrived at that moment and the Jeep’s driver took off toward downtown.

Road rage statistics in North Texas

North Texas police departments have different approaches to tracking road rage incidents. Road rage itself is not a crime under Texas law, but many of the acts connected with road rage are criminal offenses.

Dallas Police Department records show 807 road rage incidents in 2022 and 868 in 2021.

Lowman said those numbers include a variety of offenses from criminal mischief to assault. A crime analyst reviews the reports, and if offenses meet certain criteria they are marked as road rage in the report.

The Fort Worth Police Department reported 154 road rage incidents in 2022 and 184 in 2021. Spokesperson Melony Ebel said reports have a field that officers can check to indicate road rage incidents or road rage can also be mentioned in the report narrative.

The Arlington Police Department reported 14 road rage incidents in 2022 and 19 in 2021. Spokesperson Tim Ciesco said those numbers may not reflect all road rage incidents in the area.

“Because ‘road rage’ is not a criminal offense we can charge someone with, when officers submit reports about a road rage incident, those reports get classified in our records system as something else,” Ciesco told the Star-Telegram in an email. “For example, if a driver displays and points a gun at another driver, the actual criminal offense being committed is Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon. So in our records system, that report would be classified as an Aggravated Assault.”

Ciesco said officers can add an extra label to the report indicating it was generated from a road rage incident but they don’t always remember to do that.

Local police departments also have different approaches to combating road rage.

The Dallas Police Department, along with five other law enforcement agencies, formed the North Texas Road Rage Task Force in January 2022.

“Over the last few years, you know, police departments had seen an increase in the number of road rage incidents,” Lowman said. “And it was ... in Dallas not only happening on freeways and things, but also on streets that are connecting where people are living and working.”

The task force holds regular enforcement campaigns. Every few weekends they target aggressive driving in a specific area and increase the number of patrols on the road.

Spokesperson Tracy Carter said the Fort Worth Police Department has used public service announcements to remind motorists to exercise patience on the roads.

The Arlington Police Department has a hotline residents can call to report aggressive driving. The hotline, 817-459-5389, is for non-emergencies only, Ciesco said. If you’re involved in a dangerous situation, you should call 911.

Using the information that callers provide (such as vehicle description, license plate, where they saw the aggressive driver), Arlington police work to track down the registered owner of the vehicle and send that driver a letter, notifying them that another driver reported them to the hotline and encouraging them to drive safe.

This month, Arlington police launched a website as another way for residents to report aggressive drivers. On the police department’s website, select the option that says “Submit a Road Rage/ Aggressive Driving Report Online.”

Michelle Goodwin said something needs to be done to curb road rage, and she doesn’t feel Fort Worth police took her family’s incident seriously.

Michelle called 911 when the incident started and showed officers the video she captured on her phone. Nevertheless, she said, the initial police report stated her family was at fault because they hit a car when the Jeep rammed them.

“They didn’t put any of the information in there that we gave them about the guy trying to chase us and the fact that the guy hit us twice and tried to run us off the road,” she said. “None of that was in there.”

The Goodwins eventually got the report corrected and police arrested the Jeep’s driver in July, but the incident still haunts Michelle nearly a year later. The driver received three years of deferred adjudication probation on three counts of aggravated assault in a plea agreement in February, according to Tarrant County court records. If he successfully completes the terms of his probation, the convictions will be wiped from his record.

“(Road rage is) real,” Michelle said. “Is it an anger management issue? Is it you know, just bad driving ...? Who knows, but they need to find a way to identify what road rage truly is.”

Gun violence and the psychology of road rage

Experts say a disturbing trend is an increase in the number of times guns accompany road rage incidents.

Two people were injured in an apparent road rage shooting in Arlington on April 3. Two drivers got into an argument, and one of them pulled out a gun and fired, wounding the other driver and his passenger.

Just two days later a semi-truck driver told Arlington police that a car cut him off and he had to slam on his brakes. The car’s driver then got out of his vehicle, walked over to the semi and pointed a gun at the driver. He didn’t fire and no one was injured, but Ciesco said investigators were trying to identify the suspect.

The number of road rage deaths involving guns has doubled over the last four years, according to the nonprofit research organization Everytown Research and Policy. At least 70 people died in U.S. road rage shootings in 2018. By 2022 the number increased to 141.

The same held true for gun injuries. At least 176 people were injured in road rage shootings in 2018. In 2022 the number of victims jumped to 413.

Someone was injured or killed in a road rage shooting every 16 hours in 2022, according to Everytown Research.

Claudia Sanchez, a 33-year-old mother of three, became a road rage victim in August 2018. The driver of the vehicle Sanchez was riding in got into an argument with Lyneisha McCuin, a Haltom City woman.

Police said the driver threw a metal object, possibly a lug nut, at McCuin. She pulled out a handgun and fired into the other vehicle, hitting Sanchez in the head. Sanchez died from her injuries the following day.

A Tarrant County jury recently found McCuin guilty of murder, and she was sentenced to 35 years in prison March 29.

Not all deadly road rage incidents lead to arrests and convictions, however. Sometimes the aggressor just disappears.

Paul Paulus, the dean emeritus of psychology at the University of Texas at Arlington, said vehicles provide a sense of anonymity and that makes road rage perpetrators feel safe. It is almost like putting on a mask, he said.

“As soon as you’re identified, you’re less likely to be aggressive,” he said. “But if you can’t be identified, if you’re more anonymous, you’re more likely to aggress against people, especially when you get frustrated.”

Rather than being an isolated issue, Paulus said, road rage reflects the increased violence in society.

High inflation, political polarization and a media culture that fuels anger are all contributing to society’s frustration, according to Paulus, and people are less able to cope with their frustration.

“COVID has had a very disturbing effect on people’s social skills, social sensitivity,” Paulus said. “I think the fact that we were separated from each other, our social skills are reduced. We don’t have the feelings of connections we had before.”

Lowman, the Dallas police spokesperson, said there are things drivers can do to reduce the risk of becoming a road rage victim. Show courtesy to other motorists, obey traffic laws, don’t tailgate and don’t flash your headlights at other drivers, she said. Don’t engage an aggressive driver and remove yourself from potentially dangerous situations. If you feel threatened, drive to a police station or somewhere you feel safe.

If you see another motorist act aggressively toward another driver, don’t engage with the aggressor and don’t follow the aggressor, Lowman said. Get as much information as you safely can, like license plates, color, make and model of the vehicle, and call 911 to report.

Michelle Goodwin is thankful none of her family were injured, but she said more needs to be done to track and prosecute road rage incidents.

“(Road rage) needs to be humanized, it needs to hit close to home,” she said. “People need to realize it can happen to them at any given point in time and until that happens, there won’t be any changes.”