People really are assholes.
Green, 49, taken to the unit for “agitation,” keels over out of her chair at 5:32a.m., according to the time stamp on the video. She had been sitting about 3feet from an observation window. Two other patients were in the room.
Green is lying facedown on the floor, her legs splayed, when a security guard strolls by at 5:53 a.m., looks at her for about 20 seconds and then walks away.
She is writhing on the floor, thrashing her legs, about 6 a.m., when her medical chart contends she was “awake, up and about, went to the bathroom.”
Green rolls on her back at 6:04a.m. She stops moving at 6:08 a.m., but two minutes later a security guard pushed his chair into camera view.
He never gets out of the chair, but looks at Green and scoots away. A female patient who was in and out of the room finally brings a clinic staffer to check the woman and a crash cart is summoned.
The medical chart claims she was “sitting quietly in [the] waiting room” at 6:20 a.m., although she was already dead. The cause of death is still under investigation.
And second, there’s this:
Triplett was still in uniform and on her way home at the end of her 6 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift when the cars in front of her began braking and skidding on Interstate 405 just south of Highway 900, she said.
She saw a woman crumpled in the middle of the HOV lane, Triplett said. An injured girl sat nearby. In the right lane, a 1990 Ford Explorer lay on its side.
Cars kept pushing through the lane between them, driving over photographs, CDs and clothing that had been scattered when the SUV flipped over. Shattered glass glistened under their brake lights.
The accident had just happened. No one had even called 911, Triplett said.
When she got out of her car to help the woman, Triplett didn’t see the 18-year-old man trapped beneath the driver’s-side door of the Explorer. But then she heard him screaming.
…Triplett knew she couldn’t lift the SUV alone. She tried waving down cars, which were still passing slowly in the lane between the victims, but nobody stopped. Some people said, “Sorry, I’m late for the airport,” or told her they had to get to work as they drove by.
People were callous, Triplett said. One car brushed her leg as it passed.
“I was more of a nuisance to them than someone they wanted to stop and help,” she said.
She said she “felt very helpless” — something she wasn’t used to feeling as a state trooper.
“Finally, I decided to forcibly stop cars and ask people to get out and help me save this guy,” she said. “I basically stood in front of the cars until somebody got out.”
Yeah. Because when people refuse to help, it’s always because they’re “frozen in fear and have herd mentality.” Or so I’m told.
Bullshit.
Yes, yes they are.
My theory is that hell is other people, thus I must navigate its depths daily. And it is indeed populated with the proverbial anuscavities.
No, it’s not, but after this I damn sure wish it was. And I’m not a bit surprised the second story was the west side of Washington State.
What we’re seeing is a growing trend of humanity’s blatant disregard for the emergent basic human needs of one another. Simplistically, I blame self-inflicted technological isolationism.
EDIT: As usual, you have a most eloquent point:
New article casts doubt on ‘bystander effect’
Here’s one where they watch and even help the thief:
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:05 pmLet’s not forget that poor little baby boy that was stomped to death by his father. No one helped. This kind of stuff is gutwrenching. Breaks my heart.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:08 pmI am speechless. It is just as well because what would come forth is a torrent that would blister ears. We have grown very callous, indeed. What am I saying? Callous just isn’t strong enough to describe the heart of someone who could allow people in mortal distress to go unaided.
30 years ago my car died on a county road one morning. I had barely pulled over and rolled to a stop when the next three cars behind me pulled over to see what help I needed. This was during the morning commute.
I’d probably still be there if it happened today.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:11 pmIt’s disgusting and pathetic and makes me sick to my stomach.
The second story happened in my neck of the woods and my husband knows the Trooper (actually worked with her this last Sunday).
I told him I don’t know what I’d do and he nodded his head. He knows how I am…I literally FREEZE. For Pete sake…I spilled my water on my desk and couldn’t even move for a good minute … I just froze and couldn’t think of what to do. That is why I’m not on our company’s emergency team.
But I’d like to think that if I was going slowly on the freeway and being ASKED to stop that I would. If given instructions I’m good at following them, robot like, in an emergency. I just can’t think of what to do on my own. It’s very pathetic.
Luckily, her insistence, training, and awesomeness saved the boys life. He is critical but alive. Prayers to him and his family!
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:25 pmI’d like to see a billboard erected at the site of the accident just telling those passing by that if they were one of the many people who didn’t stop and offer help at the recent accident that they should be ashamed of themselves.
Won’t work, but it’s a thought.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:25 pmHey Rachel…
What’s with the nasty raw slab of meat on the sidebar? It’s grossing me out.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:53 pmI don’t know what to say. Lots of people just plain suck.
A similar incident happened for me around 12:30 a.m. back when I was a pizza deliverer in 1980. My attempt at a 3-point turn wasn’t good and my back wheel dropped off the road. Two guys walking, who I had passed 5 minutes before, jogged up to my car and helped lift me back onto the road. When I thanked them, they said “Anyone would have done the same thing”. Apparently that is no longer the case.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:54 pmThat behavior is rare in the red fly-over states. Who was the Democratic pollster that said if he ever got hit while crossing the street, he’d hope the next person coming down the road was a Republican. This was based on his door-to-door encounters with “Rs” versus “Ds.”
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:55 pmIsn’t there any kind of good samaritan law that requires people to help in these situations?
If so, can’t traffic cams get the plates of every car that did not help and issue them citations, at the very least?
Seriously, don’t make fun because I got the notion from a Seinfeld episode, can somebody tell me - does not some sort of law like that exist? Kind of a fine line - I’m sure - when it comes down to running around in traffic, but to do NOTHING should be punishable.
Good. Friggin. Grief.
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:03 pmNope, no one is required to help those in distress. Something about slavery, I guess. Good Samaritan laws are laws that protect those who do stop to help from being sued by those they tried to help, should something go wrong and the victims look for a scapegoat. Gawshamighty, I lurve humanity. What lovely things humans are!
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:13 pmI’ll never understand that kind of lack of compassion. Could it have something to do with the Seattle area being 90some% populated with liberal types? I witnessed a serious accident on the I-10 freeway here (Phx, AZ) a couple years ago, I stopped (pretty scary on the freeways around here, everybody thinks the speed limit is warp 9), fortunately to find nobody with serious injuries. By the time the DPS (state police here) arrived, there were so many people who stopped to help the DPS guys were politely asking people to leave to reduce the risk of a secondary wreck. I know liberals will take offense to my theory, but I spoke a very liberal neighbor about it later that day and he said I was out of my mind for stopping and then went on to recite a long list of all the terrible things that could have happened to me! Wimps!
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:20 pmI see this kind of behavior a lot, even here in Wisconsin. I call it ‘willful ignorance’. If it does not directly affect a person, they simply DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE IT, and when it DOES affect them directly, it is a nuisance, a time-waster, and suddenly becomes THE MOST IRRITATING THING ON THE PLANET. The only way to get through to people like that is the way the trooper did: “Finally, I decided to forcibly stop cars and ask people to get out and help me save this guy,” she said. “I basically stood in front of the cars until somebody got out.” You got to inconvenience them to make them even remotely act human.
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:38 pmMy take on it is the school systems’ push for the last many years of the Code of Personalism - YOU are special, YOU are special, YOU are special - to the point where the victims of this now think, I am TOO special to be put upon by others, that others do not count in the grand scheme of life because, simply, they are ‘others’, and not the all-powerful ME.
Or maybe I’m just talkin outta my a$$?
As a counterpoint, I live in a decently-sized metro area (Sacramento) and every time I drive past the scene of an accident where people have made it to the side there are always several undamaged cars pulled over as well.
When they haven’t made it to the side yet, there’s generally emergency vehicles on-site as I’m usually driving during work commute hours and they’re pretty quick about clearing accidents during those times.
Sacramento’s slightly blue— the result of being in the midst of farm country in a blue state. If it weren’t the capitol it would probably be red.
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:42 pmThis reminds me of a concept introduced by Douglas Adams in the “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” series. It was called the SEP Generator and served as a cloaking device. SEP stood for “Somebody Else’s Problem”, and the idea was that, if you turned on the SEP Generator, you would immediately become somebody else’s problem, so, even though you weren’t really invisible, nobody would care what you did or notice your existence.
Apparently, Washington has many SEP Generators running around… and many people susceptible to their effects.
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:58 pmAmen, David, I was just about to make that connection, too. I have done it here before, believe me.
Not all Washingtonians don’t give a crap about each other. I’m STILL a pull-overer and a help-offerer — I just use my trusty cell-phone as an intermediary and keep my taser close at hand.
Just a small snip — I was walking with the Dean and mucky-mucks of our college the other day and, without thinking, bent to pick up some trash and throw it away. He looked at me, laughed, and said “you make the people around you look better vicariously,” to which I replied “nah, I’m just bucking for a raise!”
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:06 pmYes, Seattle is BRIGHT BLUE. There are stories about people encouraging suicidal folks to just jump already (off the bridge) because they were stopping traffic. It’s pathetic.
Yeah…liberals are the ones that care. *rolls eyes*
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:08 pmSpoodles Says:
That’s part of it.
Another, and bigger part, is that this is one of the symptoms of sliding into a more liberal, statist government. You see, the more the government takes control of people’s personal lives, the more the government claims responsibility for people’s mistakes, the more you are going to get people who worry only for themselves.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/conservatives_more_liberal_giv.html
You see, conservatives and libertarians and the like, they’re more likely to realize that the individual has power - the power to help, and the power to change things.
But truth be known, this isn’t a terribly new problem. Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan for a reason - even back then people would cross the road to the other side or avoid the guy.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:11 pmSomething similar to the first article happened to my grandparents. On December 21, 1984, my grandmother took my grandfather to a hospital in Tampa because she believed he was having a heart attack. They were checked in and told to sit in the waiting room. He died while he was waiting for his turn. This was a 69 year-old man complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath!
She sued the hospital for negligence but she lost because the jury was told that “he would have died anyway.”
This world is going to hell in a handbasket…
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:13 pmI agree with you watcher and with the red/blue state differential. I think it also goes back to the victim majority and groupthink mentality of liberals. ‘There are professionals to handle this, see the cops are already on site so I shouldn’t stop and get in the way…’ AND liberals are used to, and agree with, passing laws to protect the few not the many. This has significance, because everyone has heard a story or four about good samaritans getting sued(the primary means for successful victimhood). If you are always looking for victims and how to be one yourself, you are probably also looking for ways to not be the target of a victim.
I would go a step further than hoping to have an emergency in a blue state rather than red. If I do stop to help, I hope I am helping a non-liberal, just because if anything goes wrong I will still be more likely to be thanked than sued.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:15 pmIt has nothing to do with potentially saving a libtard life, it is self preservation. Think about it, if you judge the hearts of others through your own heart, you wouldn’t stop to help a fellow liberal. They might find a way to blame you. A significant majority of non-liberals won’t consider the law or suit implications before helping. Anyone who does consider the law first (a very groupthink sort of concept) will be much less likely to help an emergency situation. They will, however, be the first to criticize a professional for any problem from being late to the scene to an overworked doctor making a mistake of any proportion.
I am not surprised. I think reading & hearing stories like these over and over and over has a numbing affect on me. To the point that I am surprised that the woman wasn’t sexually assaulted.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:32 pmThis is starting to get ridiculous. A little story:
I was buying AC filters at Home Depot on Sunday. There was an old lady standing in the aisle and looking confused and a little upset, so I asked her what size she was looking for. She showed me one that she said was the right size but the wrong mfg. So, I looked around for a bit and found it. It was up high, so I tracked down an employee to get a ladder to get one. The lady thanked me very effusively, which kind of surprised me. It wasn’t really that big a deal.
Then I realized it. She was probably that grateful because she had been in similar situations before and no one took the time to help her. It made me sad. It also made me want to go out with a baseball bat and give some people ‘courtesy lessons’. The latter feeling is starting to predominate.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:48 pmYes, it absolutely can. Remember, there are two Tribes: the Pink Tribe and the Gray Tribe. The Gray tribe will always offer to help, even at great risk to oneself, while the Pink Tribe, the whiny titty-babies, will studiously avoid the trouble. Like Tim’s liberal neighbor.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:12 pmWhen I was hit by a car while on my motorcycle, people stopped to help. Despite the fact is was 10 PM on very foggy night. Despite the fact that it was a busy single lane highway. Despite the fact I was laying in the middle of the highway with more broken bones than I care to think about, they stopped, and put a blanket over me, and got out flashlights and flares and directed traffic around me, and woke up a nearby farmer to call 911 (this was 1994). Some of them even came to visit me in the hospital a few days later, to make sure I was OK and to thank me for wearing a helmet so they had someone alive to help.
When a drunk driver crossed the center line and hit me head on on a single lane highway, so many people stopped to help that the first responders had to tell people to go back to their cars so they did not get in the way. One woman even took my dog to the local animal hospital while my passengers and I went by ambulance for treatment.
When some idiot on his cell phone plowed his sports car (doing 90mph) right into the back of the half-ton pickup (doing 60mph) that was traveling right next to us, my wife watched it all happen and pulled the car over while I checked to make sure she could as I called 911. We both ran to the truck and helped about 4 other people get the guy out and make sure he was OK (the sports car tried to run but only got about half a mile before his car gave out).
Not everyone is an asshole.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:14 pmSheesh, woman dies in the hospital waiting room, and they STILL call out for nationalized/ socialized health care. More dead people in hospital waiting rooms is what we’ll get if that happens.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:16 pmI know exactly what you mean, Snowdog. I’ve been there a lot of times. It’s as though the elderly cease to exist for younger people. (Take a tip, yutes: it’s not contagious; and you’ll be there someday.)
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:41 pmIt would never dawn on me to NOT stop and help someone with an emergency in any way I could; and it sounds as though the people who come here are the same. As far as being sued by some libtard because everything may not have worked out perfectly: I’ve always figured that if they do that, I’d just have to hunt them down and finish what the accident started. (haven’t been sued yet).
I think that people have been so conditioned by the nanny state that they feel they have no moral responsibility toward society in general - and that anything at all must be taken care of by the government or the “proper authorities”; even an emergency demanding immediate action to save a life.
I wonder if the liberal/conservative division has something to do with beliefs about morality, too.
As a conservative/libertarian (I know they’re not the same - it’s just that whenever I’m torn over an issue then it’s between those two viewpoints), I have no problems discussing morality even if I’m not out-and-out religious. You can believe in the Golden Rule even if you think the arguments over the ordination of women are stupid, or even if you’re an atheist. You clearly don’t have to believe in God to see that the kind of world where people help each other is a world that you’d like your children to grow up in.
Throw out morality altogether though according to the idea that it’s too judgemental and too associated with anal Victorian fathers ordering piano legs to be covered up, add a touch of “not my problem”, and a pinch of “you have no right to judge me” and I think that’s, basically, a recipe for Asshole.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:57 pmBill(Mamba1-0),
I understand what you are saying about the nanny state and I think that is a large component. However, some of it is also how you are raised (and the two are not mutually exclusive). I was raised to be courteous and helpful, especially to older folks and to ladies. If I wasn’t, my Mom would have been very disappointed and then she would have knocked my ass sideways. And that’s if I was lucky. If I was unlucky, Dad would have been brought in to elucidate further. I am glad they taught me as they did. A lot of the people I know that were not raised in that fashion seem very narcissistic and unhappy.
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:58 pmWay back in college we discussed this from a psychology/sociology standpoint. People behave oddly to follow the herd, and rationalize it to themselves afterwards. Candid Camera, anyone?
The difficulty in breaking the herd mentality is proportional to the number of people around. That’s why it will be easier for a couple of guys on a country road to help out than it will for hundreds on a major interstate, regardless of your location and political affiliation.
One good thing though, is the solution is relatively simple. You need to break people out of the pack. Point at an individual, and tell him what to do, specifically. This draws the person into a one v. one situation, where helping is the instinctive thing to do. It won’t always work, but the odds are in your favor. Asking a crowd for vague help is likely to be useless.
On a different note, I find it incredibly ironic that people who decry the increasing statist mentality would simultaneously wish to force bystanders to be good samaritans.
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:07 pmWell, what do you want from non-transcendent philosophy and relative morality? Something resembling the “human” religion looks exactly like what is described in both these stories.
I reject any human attempt to put some guilt trip on a fellow human for acting according to the superior, intelligent, and calculated science of survival. Even if it looks like negligence. Looked perfectly logical to me. And isn’t that what must be considered, above all?
Why should anyone be compelled to act in any interest but their own, since everything is science, logic, and we’re all just meat bags?
Also, add a good dose of government subsidized “caring” and “support” that is exacted from me and given to lazy strangers, and why should I bleed one more drop of my life for any stranger? I am daily waylaid by the Law to provide for others in need, and those in need expect the Government to help them, not me. So… drive on to work in order to comply.
Side note to those who think government-paid caregivers will actually, um, care. Take a good long look at that video. And go on not embracing family and children as a social value. There’s not enough money in the world to make someone care for you like a loving family can.
Childlessness is a valid choice, but no one who has children has them solely for the hope of loving care in their later years. However, that is the way it’s worked since the beginning of time. The madness is to expect you’ll have enough money put by to provide human and loving comfort for your declining years.
You may just be left on the floor to die.
Go ahead. Transcend that.
****
Sorry. I have a horrible toothache and even my well-paid dentist doesn’t care for another week. So yeah, I think I just stunk the place up with my rant.
:sigh:
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:16 pmOh Yeah, that’s just sick and wrong.
Big time.
Paleo Par? Oh hell... messed my own name. d’oh!
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:24 pmThere is a world of difference between the ‘big city’ dorks and ’small town’ Americans. Last month, I arrived on the scene of a one-vehicle roll-over accident in eastern Washington. Emergency vehicles had not arrived yet. I was about number twelve on the scene. The locals were organized and assisting. I waited for awhile, and every car that arrived, stopped to see if they could help and then either moved off the road to assist or moved on. I soon realized I would be more in the way than a help so I left. I saw the emergency vehicles about a minute later.
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:50 pmIt certainly could be that their lives are so busy they don’t want to be bothered with stopping and helping.
Then again, we live in a society that is law oriented and not cult of personality oriented. Or, so I’ve been told by academic experts for years. This must mean that people are afraid of being sued in this litigious society.
Your call, kids. All of you out there in Rachel Lucas ‘blog land are smart and can answer this question from your own views, observations and perspectives.
I grew up in the middle of nowhere and you learned to help yourself and your neighbor and a stranger. But, those were the days before Charles Manson and his “family” and The Hillside Strangler (Kenneth Bianchi and Victo Buono) and the Nightstalker (Richard Ramirez) and Melvin Belli and Johnny Cochran.
Now, I better see a cop’s uniform and flashing red lights and a marked patrol car. Otherwise, I’m drivin’ through, pullin’ over down the road and callin’ the cops on my cell and reporting what just happened. No way I stay.
And, yes, to say this goes against my nature and my parental training. But, there are those who would bank on what my parents taught me about right and wrong to a. commit a crime against me or b. sue my ass into oblivion.
We are almost a decade after 9/11. and three decades or more after the lawsuit lawyers and their legislator buy offs won.
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:51 pmHaverwilde,
I have to agree, we came up behind a different accident on the same side of Washington, a motorcycle appeared to have clipped the rear end of a pick-up. He had been swept across both lanes, there was an arc of broken bike all the way across.
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:14 pmThere was one man on a cell phone two people layimg flares and directing traffic and half a dozen people trying to decide whether they could assist in moving the bike off of its owner. He appeared to be able to talk to them.
We arrived after all of this industriousness had started and helped most by moving along.
I have been on the bad end of situations like that and would have stopped in a minute otherwise.
Years ago I was traveling around 2:30 am in the morning in January, headed home with two young teens in the car. I saw an overturned car on the other side of the road. I didn’t think twice - I stopped, called 911 on the cell, and got out to help.
It was a remote country highway, yet another woman (again, with kids in the car) also stopped. Then two young men stopped and helped get the passenger door open. One of them took off his jacket and covered the teen girl who had been driving the car.
By the time the EMTs got there there were half a dozen or more cars parked on the side of the road with people wanting to help.
Oh. I live in a very red state - Texas.
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:17 pmI understand the “bystander effect” when you’re watching something take place that you would have to move towards in order to take action. People can freeze.
But to actually drive around a flipped car and injured people and ignore someone who is in your way asking for assistance? Yep, they’re arseholes.
I had an car accident in which no one was hurt but we were stranded and our cars were blocking the lane. People just drove around in that aggressive, impatient, “you’re in my way” manner that they do (and so do I, when someone’s driving too slow in the fast lane). It was as if my having an accident and being stuck in the middle of the road with my undrivable car, was something I did to personally inconvenience them.
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:35 pmThe last time Rachel pointed out a story like this, I pointed in turn to the classic study — Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior (Darley & Batson, 1973) — that compared the helping behavior, or lack thereof, of various people put in a Good Samaritan situation. It reveals some pretty unpleasant aspects of human character!
But this time? I’m dumbstruck. This goes so far beyond anything described in that study — I doubt the investigators could even have imagined this level of depravity.
If that poor woman wasn’t the guard’s problem and wasn’t the problem of the person monitoring the surveillance cameras (assuming there even was such a person), whose problem was she? That
hospital’sdungheap’s response (the solution to crappy employees is more employees?) makes me want to hurt someone. Badly.As for the shitheads who drove past the trooper, words don’t even begin. A trooper is trying to flag you down for assistance, and you’re in a f***ing hurry? That’s sure as Hell not the way I was raised, or my kids, either. Dammit, if you can help, you must help. Period. Otherwise, you’re just a waste of oxygen.
I need chocolate now.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:06 pmWhere was this, Haverwilde? Just curious.
and this, Nylecoj? Again, curious.
I am married to a volunteer EMT who services this area, so I was wondering if he happened to be anywhere near so I could feel great about him being gone all the damn time : ) (Well, this was before his own horrible accident. from which he is currently still recovering).
Oh, and since I am trained in first responding, I could have easily been one of the “helpers”. I’ve done that quite a number of times. Usually, it’s just calming down the victims or directing traffic, because that just needs to be done.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:23 pmWow.
I’ve worked on locked psychiatric units. I’ve known (and sometimes fired) some less than perfect staff, but that story makes me want to vomit.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:26 pm14 Karat:
I was traveling south from Spokane near Rosalia. The minivan appeared to have been traveling north, lost control and ended up top down. It would have been approx. May 22nd.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:33 pmThanks to the personal injury lawyers who will rectify this situation.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:59 pmThanks to the government for rectifying this situation.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:01 pmMaybe liberals are just assholes?
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:21 pmHaverwilde,
Not our immediate area — more south, but I know lots of folks from there. My children used to attend school in a little schoolhouse in a tiny, wide-spot, slow-down, blip of a town that can be seen from highway 195 just south of that exact location about 20 miles. I know all the EMTs, first responders and officers who service that immediate area.
Good on you for being so willing to help. That’s just what we do in this tiny little piece of America. And that also seems to be the kind of person you are. A little skepticism is healthy (hence I am packing defensive “weaponry”) but when we stop unilaterally caring about our fellow man to the point that we see them at their most terrified and vulnerable, yet continue on our merry farking way, is when I give up and cloister myself within the confines of my own conservative commune.
Thanks for this. It means a lot to me to have eastern Washington portrayed in this manner, because it is really the way we live over here. I hate being lumped in with the coastie libtards (they know who they are, and I have “met” those here who AREN’T) whose festering existance now typifies this state: it really is like two vastly divergent universes within a 400 mile stretch of highway.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:53 pmIn high school I encountered a recent car accident on the way to my first speech contest (about 1969, no cell phones). I recognized the mother and sister of one my sister’s friends - the mother had a cut lip, no other injuries visible on any of those involved. I drove the lady to the hospital - I was a bit late, but they rescheduled my event.
How could I have done anything else?
And, yet, today I have neighbors that lost family members because they stopped to help the wrong person. Cops and sheriff’s departments come down hard on someone that doesn’t “wait for ‘competent’ authority” to take over. At the theater I work at, company policy is to never call an ambulance for an injured guest - it makes the company liable for the usually exorbitant ambulance cost.
Within her work group, i.e. her fellow troopers, I expect the expectation is for everyone available to pitch in to help. That goes for most work groups. But harsh realities, depending on where you live, intrude when you get outside your group. There are the criminal, the insane, and the desperate as well as the sue-em minded that punish, cruelly, any attempt at good deeds.
I can almost see it going both ways. But I tend to stop.
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:06 pmOn the plus side, stories like this remind us that when you see someone in need of help you had better take the time to help them as nobody else will.
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:28 amSome of what you are seeing is the effect of years of getting penalized for helping others. Wasn’t it in Texas that someone was drowning, a guy jumped in to help, got the person to shore and was ticketed by the police for interfering with rescue operations even though no one else was doing any rescuing? And then if you try and help someone, something goes wrong, lawyers sue you.
I never used to wonder just how much trouble was going to be inflicted on me but I do now and have for years (but it doesn’t stop me). The government thinks they should have the monopoly on Help.
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:11 amAbout 8 years ago I happened on a single car rollover on the freeway just before sun up. The first vehicle on the scene was a semi truck who’s driver, a short skinny little guy, was on the radio calling for help as I stopped.
Looking up the highway I could see an overturned vehicle, three people laying on the road and a debris field that covered about 400 feet of the interstate.
I asked the driver if he had been up there yet. He paled, started shaking and said “no, I won’t go up there.” Since the help his radio call summoned was at least 20 minutes away I headed up the road. The first thing I came to was the overturned vehicle. I quick examination showed me that the sole occupant in the front passenger seat was dead.
The first person I found on the road was in the same condition. Next I found a 16 year old girl who didn’t appear to be seriously hurt. Several cuts scrapes and bruises, but in severe shock. She was sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees rocking back and forth and moaning. I tried to get her to lay down but she resisted. So I left her to check on the fourth victim. This old man was still alive but I’m not sure how. It looked to me like the car had rolled over him, possibly more than once. But he was conscious and talking. He tried to get me to help him sit up but I refused. So there I was trying to comfort a dying man, keep an eye on a young girl who was in severe shock, and all I had to depend on was a single CPR class and 20 year old boy scout first aid training.
Suddenly the girl screamed. She had come to her senses enough to notice the body in the road near her. She attempted to stand up and run away, but tripped over the debris and fell. I yelled at the semi truck driver to get his ass up here and quiet her down. The driver waffled for a moment, then ran over to the girl. He tried to quiet her down but in the process he also saw what had freaked her out. He immediately started puking his guts out. But once he was emptied out, he managed to grab the girl and move her over to the shoulder of the road near the old man and I.
By this time there were over 50 cars stopped behind the truck and my vehicle which were both parked sideways across the highway blocking both lanes. But no one else approached the accident scene.
For what seemed like forever I sat talking to the old man while the girl shut down again and the driver kept looking at me like he wanted permission to run away. I felt like I should have been trying to do more to help the old man but I had no idea where to even start with someone who so obviously (to me) shouldn’t even be alive.
Suddenly two things happened at once. A highway patrol car came flying up the interstate from the other direction and slows down to make his way across the median, just as some clown comes walking up through the accident scene. He picks his way through the debris, stops and pukes where the semi driver had, then walks over to me and asks “How much longer you all gonna be, I’m running late.”
I was so stunned I couldn’t even respond. But the semi truck driver lets out a scream to rival the young girls, jumps up to his feet, charges over to the clown, and just as the highway patrol officer gets out of his car, punches the clown dead in the face.
Over the next few minutes, an ambulance showed up, the old man I was tending died, the girl passed out and the next two times the highway patrol officer turned his back to investigate the accident scene the driver hit the the clown again - as hard as he possibly could.
My father who it turns out, knew the highway patrol officer found out for me that the girl had been driving and fell asleep. The man in the car had been her uncle and the older couple on the road her parents. When Dad told his friend that I had been on the scene he asked “He wasn’t the short little guy who kept cold cocking this asshole was he?”
Dad confirmed that I hadn’t hit the guy but not from lack of desire, I just had other things to worry about at the moment.
The officer did pull some strings and got some protected medical information for my Doctor. After the accident I discovered that my hands and arms were covered in blood and I had collected several small cuts and scratches in my hands. Due to the highway patrol officers help, I was able to avoid several more years of hepatitis and HIV tests.
So if you are the stop and help type. Make sure there are rubber gloves in your car’s first aid kit. If you don’t have a first aid kit in your car - stop being an idiot and get one.
Final note - no charges were ever filed against the semi truck driver, who in spite of his fears and delicate stomach, really came through when he was needed.
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:21 amWhat State was that in? I didn’t see anyone mention it in the comments either but it sure sounds like experiences when I lived in Southern CA.
Never mind, I looked up I405, and yeah it is southern California. go figure.
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:23 am“Who Really Cares” by Arthur Brooks details a lot of the liberal/conservative divide on compassion that people have mentioned here. Most of the book is really dry statistics, but the best part is the introduction by the author. The author was a hardcore dyed-in-the-wool liberal who was baffled by the result that conservatives give more to charity, give more to friends, volunteer more, give more blood, etc. So he kept rerunning the numbers and kept getting the same result. You can practically see him shaking his head in bewilderment.
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:59 amI’m the type who can’t even pass a snapping turtle struggling across the road without stopping to haul the ungrateful bastard to the ditch, so this sort of thing always appalls and annoys me.
If you think you’re the sort who would stop to help someone, let me throw in a recommendation from my own experience: make sure you have a small emergency pack in your vehicle. I carry a basic first aid kit plus jumper cables, a North American atlas, mylar emergency blankets, flares, a flashlight, bottled water, bungee cords, and a CB radio. These supplies have been invaluable to me when I’ve been stranded and have also allowed me to provide assistance to others. Stowed in a tote bag, they hardly take any space but can make a world of difference.
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:02 amWow. I’m trying to figure out how this turned into a “liberal v. conservative” battle, when it’s clearly a “jackasses vs. us” battle.
Because you know, I AM a liberal. And I’m no exception to any rule…I help older people at the grocery store (I’m both tall and have grandparents that I would hope would receive help in a similar fashion), I volunteer with an at risk youth, hoping he will learn by my examples, I will stop at an accident if no one is there (if there’s a myriad of cars, I don’t stop, as many above have mentioned, I’d get in the way - and it’s not like I’m a doctor/nurse/EMT, so I don’t bring any special skill to the table), and so on.
I remember once being on the bus in Ann Arbor (I am a born and raised Michigander, though have lived in DC and now am in AZ) and many of us saw a man dragging a woman out of a station wagon. A lot of us were yelling at the driver to stop, but there was traffic, the driver didn’t understand - I still can see that woman’s face in my mind. If that makes me a pathetic liberal, well, hand me my sash so I can parade in it all weekend.
This is not about liberals or conservatives, because the Golden Rule is neither blue or red. Remember: verba movant, exampla trahunt. I want that on my gravestone.
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:08 pmYou know, it’s a good thing I’m not a state trooper. If I had been in that situation, I probably would’ve started shooting tires out until someone agreed to help. Officer Triplett has the self-control of a saint.
Seriously, it’s one thing for a woman to die because a hospital is full of incompetent staff. It’s another thing to see a bunch of assholes drive OVER the debris from a major car accident.
I mean, come on! What kind of a putrified mass of congealed rat droppings do you have to have in place of a human soul that would allow you to do such a thing?!
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:20 pmBrooke - you’re laboring under a mistaken impression. You identify yourself as “liberal”, but don’t realize that when people here are speaking negatively of Liberals, we’re talking about the Communist/Socialist type of Liberal that has become represented by so many of the leaders of the Democrat Party, many Celebrities, and most “Journalists” working in the Mainstream Media.
As I have told my wife on many occasions, the personal values and ethics you talk about on this site are far more in line with modern Conservatism than modern Liberalism, which has gone way to the Left of what it used to be. It’s just when you start talking about what the Government needs to do “for everyone” that you seem to be closer to the Liberal viewpoint.
And, viewed in the light I describe above, the Golden Rule is very much a red-state phenomenon than a blue-state one. Conservatives (and many Libertarians) believe that the Golden Rule and it’s implied ramifications are essential not only to themselves, but to society as a whole. Liberals (again, as described above) don’t care about how they should treat others, they only care about how THEY are being treated, and how they can pull themselves up by pulling someone else down (class warfare, accusations of Racism, Sexism, Imperialism, etc), and expect the Government to be the solution to all their problems, either real, suspected, or fantasized.
You have made comments here which show you to clearly be not in the category of Liberal as the term is used here on this site. There’s really no reason to get upset over discussions of Liberals (here, at least), because they’re not aimed at you.
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:24 pmBrooke:
It’s verba movent, exempla trahunt, ya liberal maroon … you better get it right if you want it permanently etched on you gravestone! (JK — SRSLY).
I agree with you. Let’s just say that from my experience rural people tend to be more conservative, and the logistics of being a rural person mean there are fewer people to get to know and fewer government services available to “help” when there’s a crisis. When your nearest neighbor is a mile away, you gotta be more self-reliant, but also more willing to give of yourself when that neighbor needs a hand or you need a favor.
EDIT: Brooke, JK MEANS “just kidding” — seriously!
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:28 pmIf the worse thing I do today is get a latin phrase wrong (pre-epithet, thank God), then it’s a good day. As long as people get the point.
And LOL, I know what JK means.
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:33 pmDontcha mean “epitaph?”
Brooke, you’re teh cool.
Edit: WayneB — DOOD!
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:59 pmThis is too fricking funny. Thank god tomorrow is a holiday!
Sure, if cool = CRAP SPELLER!
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:01 pm14 Karat - you might want to check that spelling again, yourself, on that last one. Heh.
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:20 pmWayne - if I call myself liberal, and everyone here throws around the term liberal like it’s a dirty word, and then someone says, “But we don’t mean you” - what exactly does that mean?
Is it that I’m not liberal? I assure you I am. Just because I was in favor of the SC overturning DC’s gun ban doesn’t make me any less liberal than Nancy Pelosi. I’m sure that I have views that would set you hair on fire. (Shout out to Jamie Gorelick.)
Is it that you don’t know many liberals and have never talked about world issues? Only you can answer that.
Or is it that we all just throw words and titles around at each other, so that when nothing gets accomplished, we can all just point the finger at each other?
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:20 pmIn a drivers meeting for a club racing event a couple of years ago, the person in charge recounted how, at the last race, a car crashed and caught on fire. Several other drivers stopped their cars and pulled the crash victim to safety.
We were admonished not to stop for future accidents if the car was on fire, as this could be a safety hazard. There was silence for a second, and then another driver said that he’s be goddamed if he would continue racing while someone else burned to death.
And so the admonishment was duly ignored.
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:28 pmThis happened in liberal land where the mantra is “we need to help people….and by we I mean someone else”
July 10th, 2008 at 10:15 am