"Triplett parked on the freeway and tried to commandeer passing motorists to help her lift the vehicle off the man. Many ignored her pleas, driving through the accident scene as if it were an obstacle course, Triplett said.
It wasn’t until she stood in front of several vehicles and forced the drivers to stop that she was able to get enough help to lift the SUV off the injured man."
What do you think? Were people’s reactions the result of years of being told by police and troopers to stay clear of accident scenes – to get out of the way, let the professionals take care of it?
I don’t like to believe that people thought their help was needed and they didn’t stop.
There was a similar accident on an Illinois Freeway last month. My Husband and I came across it right after it happened. We stopped along with about 10 other cars. Everyone chipped in and was able to flip the SUV over.The guy trapped under it ended up with a broken arm that we could see, don’t know about any other injuries he may have had. There were 6 other people in the vehicle including a 6 week old baby. The driver who ended up under the vehicle was the only one with any major injury.
So people do stop for accidents, I don’t know why it was any different in Seattle.
I’m not sure what town this happened in but we recently saw video of an elderly gentleman, a pedestrian, hit by a vehicle in what appeared to be a downtown area. It was captured on survelliance video, as were the next few minutes documenting a number of additional drivers and pedestrians alike passing him by as he lay on the pavement without offering him any assistance at all.
I, for one, don’t trust good Samaritan laws and becoming involved in an accident, even peripherally, is a potential open door for reprisal in our litigious society.
Not long ago I was watching one of these “Wildest Police Video” type shows and I saw the worst case ever I ever encountered.
IIRC there was a line of people at the counter, ordering food. One guy was on a cell. A woman came in and cut to the front of the line. The guy on the cell phone must have said, “Yeah, this no class woman just cut in front of us” or something like that.
She was yelling at him but he ignored her and kept talking on the phone about her, which really pissed her off. So she went out to the car and got her bf; he came in and proceeded to pound the hell out of the guy, right in front of the other customers. Knocked him out at one point as I recall, picked him up and pounded more. Other customers standing two feet away. It was chilling.
The bf was on parole or something—big surprise. In a car, psychologically, maybe you’re in your own little world…but dayum, could you stand closeby and do nothing?
I agree. That, and a desire to avoid any crazy legal process that might possibly result–maybe a police report, maybe a witness statement, something for the insurance company…looking at the big picture, I’m sure that anyone would agree that jumping through some legal loopholes is a small price to pay for someone’s life, but in the heat of a moment, not wanting to get involved because of this might play a part.
For me, I think the biggest factor in avoiding an accident where someone needed help (although I hope I wouldn’t) would be the fear of making things worse.
It’s just not safe to stop on a motorway, even to render aid. You stopping your car may result in a collision in which more people are hurt or it may cause congestion which impedes the emergency services.
Also, it’s not always safe to move vehicles that have been involved in an accident. It can result in injuries to the rescuers or further injuries to the people in the vehicle. There can also be other hazards for which you are not equipped to deal with, or even aware of (hazchem, pressurised gases etc).
The initial step in rendering first aid is assessing the risk to yourself and others. If you get hurt you just add another casualty that the emergency services have to deal with.
Quite a few years ago (10 or so) a guy was walking across a busy street near the site in the OP and got run over. No big deal right? Happens all the time? Yeah, he got run over about 20 times after that before someone finally stopped. The cynic in me says they only stopped because they didn’t want to damage their car by running something over. He looked about like you’d expect someone to look who’d been run over about 20 times.
"Well, the guy in front of me didn’t stop … " might be one excuse, But the lady in the OP story was wearing a freaking cop costume. Pretty safe bet Joe Average could assume she’d be competent and the one in charge of the effort. I think it says something when people won’t render aid under those circumstances when a cop asks them to. Maybe she needed to start shooting out some tires.
People suck. Well, by my estimate about 90% of them do. I always stop at accidents if there aren’t any emergency vehicles there yet. I’m no EMT but I know how to stop a gushing artery. And yes I know about HIV but I reckon my odds of catching it from casual exposure to a random accident victim are about the same as my winning the lottery. And I know I could need Good Samaratin law protection if I screw something up (and for stuff like that I’ve got a liability umbrella insurance policy). But for as little as I value human life, I still can’t abide suffering when I think I can do something about it.
Case in point: A few years ago there was a local case of a Good Samaritan who stopped to help someone stranded on the side of the freeway. I think it was a woman who had had a flat tire. A passing motorist stopped to help change her tire.
A car driving down the freeway kicked up a piece of rubber (chunk of tire), hitting Good Samaritan in the head, killing him.
On rereading the article: She was on her way home from a shift that ENDED at 4:00 a.m. and people were late for the airport? That scene is about 15 minutes from the airport, maybe 20. When do flights usually start leaving in the morning that someone could be “late” at 4:30 a.m.?
Very strange. People in Western Washington seem to slow down and stop if they hear there might be a collision in another city.
Actually I’ve seen loads of people pull over to render aid after bad wrecks. When I was in L.A. I’d call 911 when I saw a fresh scene, and I was usually told it’s already been reported. I called 911 once up here when some kids were playing in the median, and was told it had been reported. So it’s surprising that no one had called 911, even though the wreck had just occurred.
FWIW if I was first on the scene or if emergency personnel had not yet arrived, I’d stop.
I obviously wasn’t there to see what the officer was doing and what the scene looked like, but my first thought on seeing a cop car parked at an accident and the officer waving at traffic would be that she was directing traffic away from the accident. If people weren’t looking too closely maybe a number of them assumed they should avoid “rubbernecking”, and get out of there to avoid congestion and keep from slowing down any approaching emergency vehicles?
On the highway, it can be hard to stop in time to assist with an accident without fear of causing more problems - if you pull off a ways past the accident, do you try to back up to the scene and risk slamming into another Good Samaritan who’s trying to pull over as well? If you have no real mechanical or medical skills, will you be of any help?
(I pulled over once when I saw a car hydroplane off the road. It was during a pouring thunderstorm, bad enough where I’d been considering getting off the road because I was having trouble seeing. I left my car where it was and ran along the shoulder towards the car, resting against a fence along the highway. By the time I got near, I managed to see that the driver had already left the car and was a fair distance from it by this point, heading up the nearby offramp towards a gas station.)
Well if I was standing in line and some guy starting beating the crap out of another guy I would leave the place immediately and then find a phone, I don’t have a cell, to call the cops. I’m not going to try to intervene and then get my ass kicked and end up in a hospital, but I’m a pussy so that might be part of it.
Lots of flights start leaving at 6:00 am. With the additional drive time, car return or parking, and security, 4:30 am can easily be running late for a flight with all the extra stuff you have to do these days. I have experienced it myself a few times.
Posting to “edit”: I was mostly thinking about early on, or cars further away from the officer. If there was wreckage in the road, as a driver I’d still be thinking about getting out of the way, and if I saw a cop moving out and talking to vehicles, I have to admit that my assumption would be she was telling them to move along, to merge over, whatever. I can’t explain those who were able-bodied and rejected her requests.
