A trucker recently honored for aiding an injured driver said he stopped to help because "something clicked inside of me that I needed to help this person,"
The Truckload Carriers Association recently named truck driver Ron Allen, from Big Stone Gap, Virginia, a Highway Angel for stopping to help a man who was run over by his own truck. Allen drives for Maverick Transportation out of North Little Rock, Arkansas.
TCA explains:
On Dec. 10, 2022, Allen was driving through Morristown, Tennessee on an interstate highway at about 5:30 a.m., when it was still dark. He was in the left-hand lane and saw a U-Haul Truck that looked as if it was coming toward him, traveling the wrong way on the road.
“The lights were coming toward me,” he said.
As he got closer, he confirmed it was a U-Haul rolling across the road.
“It went across the road into the median and got stuck there,” Allen said. “It happened right in front of me.”
He got on the shoulder to allow the truck next to him to get over and avoid the U-Haul, and while pulling over, he saw a man on the ground, almost in the lane, holding his leg. Allen and another motorist stopped to check on the man, and as the other individual dialed 911, Allen got in the U-Haul, which was now wrecked in the woods, and put it in park. He said the injured man told him he thought he put the mid-size truck in park after stopping on the side of the road, but actually it was in reverse. When the U-Haul driver had exited the truck he rolled his ankle on the rumble strip on the road, and at that point, the door pushed him down and the U-Haul ran over his leg.
Allen grabbed the injured man’s cell phone and jacket from the crashed U-Haul, brought both to him and helped him put his coat on. The injured man had a compound leg fracture and his bone had punctured skin. Allen waited until emergency personnel arrived at the scene.
“The reason I stopped was something clicked inside of me that I needed to help this person,” he said.