Truck Stop Public Violence - How To Handle It?

stacks · Jun 27, 2021

It’s something that’s becoming more common truck stops tend to invite low life’s they cover many different Categories , sometimes the Security Ain’t no better

lovesthedrive · Jun 27, 2021

My father told me when I was a kid. Always be respectful. It takes a mminor insult to start a fight. Much of the aggression out there can be found that a tired driver may have acted aggresively and irritated some one.

bad-luck · Jun 27, 2021

GhentSaintPeters said: ↑

im a new driver, only been driving a since January 2019, and tonight was the 1st time I've experienced anything like this OTR. And yeah, I'm an OTR driver driving nationally.

So tonight at the truck stop it's dark and I'm in the back of my cab on my bed, playing around on my phone. I hear loud voices. Weird, but ok, whatever.

The loud voices turn into crying and shrieking, with the shrieking sounding more like anger and not scared. If that makes sense.

I pull the curtains back and look up front out my drivers side window, and the team drivers who have been parked beside me for the last few hours are now in between their truck and mine, screaming and shouting at each other.

This escalates about 10 seconds later into a few haymakers being thrown and one of them being shoved into THEIR (not mine) back of the cab.

I now do not know what to do. But here's the thing - they are both female, black and yelling at each other in a dialect that the lower class speaks in. Now look, I'm not trying to be mean or hateful or anything, but this is important to note because I am a white male.

This all happened very quickly but I decided not to intervene or step outside and instead I grabbed my hammer just in case one of them tried to make a go at me in my cab (obviously they wouldn't, but heat of the moment instincts kicked in on my part). I was ready to call the truck stop inside and 911 if it looked like death or serious injury would have occurred.

However, after I grabbed my hammer, the skirmish had ended and one of the females got back in the truck, while the other sat down beside the front tire of her truck and was crying very loudly. The female by the tire was the one who had lost the skirmish.

Now, for this instance I think I was 100% in the right to do what I did.

For one, the fight ended quickly. Two, it was two females going at it.

If I would have intervened, either one of them could have filed bogus assault charges on me. Or maybe they had weapons. Or maybe somebody else would see a white male in the middle of two brawling black females and thought I was the aggressor? You know?

So many things could have gone wrong if I had intervened. And again, it all ended within 15 - 20 seconds and both females were in a position to run safely into the store or smack dab in the middle of the parking lot to get help if the situation was dire. Therefore, they both felt safe enough not to get help if either one of them felt that they needed it.

So again, in this case, I believe with all things considered, I made the right choice by staying out of it and not intervening. Not my business, I'll stay out of it.

Now here's my question for you guys - What should I have done if this was a male beating on a female? Or if even the actual event that happened that I just described, what if that event became violent where it looked like somebody was going to get seriously hurt and it wasn't just a quick skirmish with a few haymakers thrown in?

On the one hand, I would think I would have to intervene to save a life.

On the other hand, I've seen stories of a male beating on his girlfriend in public, another male tries to stop it, then either the couple presses charges on the male who intervened on the females behalf or worse, the female then joins in on her abusive boyfriends side? Whose to say any occupants involved don't have weapons or aren't high out of their minds?

It goes without saying I come from a lower middle class (and safe) background. This event has me a bit shook (I'm sure I'll sleep great tonight).

I'm thinking calling the inside of the truck stop and/or 911 would be the best option in these scenarios where the violence escalated. There's just to many variables involved for me to stop something like that, you know? I have a lot of living to do myself and a family who loves me as well, you know?

But on the other hand, humanity has to step in at some point, right?

I don't know. I hope I don't have a situation happen like this again and I definitely hope I never have to make a decision on violence that escalated into dangerous territory. Thoughts? Please tell me public physical violence is rare OTR and I won't have to deal with this again?
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Absolutely nothing! You did the right thing, welcome to trucking!

Moose1958 · Jun 27, 2021

People got to stop attacking those Truck Stop Buffets! Now that's real violence!

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