Georgia Injury Law Blog
While driving down the highway, you don’t expect to be the victim of gun violence, but that’s exactly what happened to a man in Troup County on July 14. He was driving on I-85 South near Hogansville when a van in front cut him off. He blew the horn and proceeded to use the Hogansville exit when he was followed and then shot. One of the bullets went through his car and pierced his leg. Police pursued the suspect who was arrested and charged with aggravated assault and discharging a firearm from a moving vehicle. The injured man was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Such extreme occurrences are rare, but aggressive driving and road rage are not. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration distinguishes between aggressive driving and road rage. Aggressive driving is a traffic offense, and includes actions such as tailgating, weaving in and out of traffic, running redlights, changing lanes without signaling, and speeding in heavy traffic. Road rage, on the other hand, is a criminal charge that includes rude hand gestures, forcing another car off the road, bumping another vehicle, brake checking or flashing lights to intimidate other drivers, confronting other drivers, and physical assault, including physical assault with a weapon. One type of road rage, gun violence in vehicles, has gone up since 2020. The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that measures injuries from gun violence in vehicles, shows that injuries and fatalities rose after 2020, peaking in 2022 with 148 people killed and 421 injured.
Exact statistics of road rage can be difficult to determine, as states measure it differently or apply instances of road rage to other criminal categories. As of July 2026, only ten states have laws directly penalizing road rage. In Georgia for instance, there is no law specifically against road rage, so prosecutors apply laws against aggravated assault, terroristic threats, reckless conduct, criminal damage to property, and weapons offenses. However, the Department of Transportation does track fatal crashes caused by poor driving. While Georgia is not one of the top states, the city of Macon, Georgia was cited in 2021 for being the top fourth city in the U.S. for these fatalities, with 10.2 fatal crashes per 100K people. This city’s rate of aggressive driving is also double the national average.