October 13, 2009

The Audacity of People

As I was driving home from campus today, I witnessed a hit and run at a busy intersection. A woman and her young daughter were crossing a busy street, when a woman came screaming around the corner, making a left turn, right into the woman. I was the first car in line to turn right and it was right in front of me. The woman was hit in the legs and the force of it threw her back and onto her back and butt. She never left go of her daughter's hand. The little girl was unharmed, although I'm sure that seeing your mother hit by a car isn't exactly the best thing for a little one.

I immediately threw my car into park and got out. Two other men did too. I screamed "Are you ok?" at her as she slowly got up from the ground. I reached back into the car and grabbed my cell phone. The other men who were out of their cars were closer to her. I dialed "911." Clearly, she should have been at least looked at. The woman continued to stand in front of the car holding her daughter's hand, as she gave the driver, a young woman herself, a piece of her mind. The woman who hit her never even got out of the car, not when she had initially knocked her down, not as she slowly made her way back to her feet, not at all.

What was even more shocking than the fact that the woman did not get out of the car was that there were cars behind the driver who were beeping. Everyone clearly saw what happened, and you know, who cares? We have places to go, things to do, people to see. . .

Unbelievable.

And then, even more unbelievable is that the driver edged her car around the woman and sped off. I was on the phone with the 911 operator at the time and quickly regurgitated the license number as she sped off. The woman repeated it back to me and I hope to God that she got it. I didn't have time to commit it to memory or write it down. I just read it off and then turned right to try to follow her and make sure I was right.

The 911 operator kept trying to transfer me to the local police but it wouldn't work. I told her everything I could, and that the woman who had been hit was slowly walking up the sidewalk of the same street. I lost the car in a sea of traffic at a shopping center and that was that.

I drove back to the intersection and tried to find the woman and her child to see if she was ok and to tell her that she should really be seen by a medical professional, and to let her know that I had given the police the woman's license number, but she was gone too. I don't know if she went in one of the many buildings for help or if she got on a bus and went back to her life.

All I know is that people completely shock me. It absolutely blows my mind that if you hit someone with your car, you wouldn't immediately get out and make sure the person is ok. It is unfathomable to me that someone could just drive off, because I would never do that. And it's even more shocking to me that someone would have the audacity to honk their horn so that a victim who was just knocked down on the street would move so that they can all move on and go about their day.

I don't understand why people don't care about other people and why people don't possess common decency. All I know is that I am so thankful that I'm not one of them.