I came up on a wreck this morning on my way to work. I have no idea what happened but the end result of the collision was an older Buick on it’s roof about 30 yards down from a Volvo with a crunched front end.
I don’t know where the driver of the Volvo was, I assume he was one of the men standing around or the guy on the phone. The driver of the Buick though was out of the car and walking around. He was injured-ish, some cuts on his face, a little bit of blood on his forehead. It was nothing serious.
The passenger of the Buick was trapped inside but uninjured (thankfully). The driver of the Buick tried to punch out a window, but I successfully convinced him that doing so might do more harm than good considering his friend was alert and moving inside the vehicle and was in no immediate danger.
The response time of the Hoover Police Department wasn’t bad. I pulled up probably 60 seconds after the wreck happened and they were there probably four minutes after I got there.
What this gets to is how people respond in situations like this. You think about a car wreck, house fire, etc. and how you think you’ll leap out of a car, rush to the aid of those who need it and have your picture plastered on the front of every newspaper in the land. (The weird thing about this is I had a dream last night about a plane crash that I was witness to)
In reality it was a pretty uneventful event. I stopped, as did many others, assessed the situation and tried to figure out if I could help. There were probably three of us. Others slowed and asked if they could help but there really wasn’t much any of us could do. One guy was on with 911, another was talking to the passenger, and I was somewhat tending to the driver.
My lone contribution was the attempt to find something in my backseat to wipe the blood off the driver of the Buick’s forehead. Since I wasn’t about to hand the guy a sock or a pair of boxer briefs, I just tried to convince him to sit on the curb until the police and fire department arrived. (Really, I don’t think that was crass. He was cut but he wasn’t bleeding profusely. In that situation I don’t know how I’d take someone handing me their drawers as a first aid device)
Now had the car been on fire ala ‘Crash’ things might have been different. That’s the question I asked myself on the way to work. How would I have responded had there been a true emergency? Would I have kicked out the window and drug the guy to safety or would I have stood by screaming ‘Somebody do something!’ like a 12-year old girl.
I hope it’s the former, but I don’t want to wish ill will on someone to where I might ever have to find out.
