Give ’em a brake, don’t be an accessory

I usually drive home from work around the same time every Thursday night. For me, the Power Inn and Howe Avenue exit is my relief from the parking lot we call Highway 50. As I approach the stoplight, I am surrounded by droves of CSUS night students, all taking the same exit. I repeat this process every Thursday, the only difference being the CSUS stickers changing in front of me.

This past Thursday was different. The traffic from the Watt Avenue entrance was abnormally heavy. As I crept closer to my familiar exit I noticed a figure standing on the right shoulder, holding his head, with red blotches all over his face. In slow motion, my eyes revealed several wrecked cars, sprawled over the freeway.

After pulling some shirts from my trunk and attending to the injured man, I played Frogger getting across the freeway. Vehicles swerved around me with drivers determined to be on their way. One woman with a broken arm, another crashed vehicle still running. Wreckage everywhere, and sympathy no where to be found.

Slowly, other vehicles stopped to render aid, but encountered the same difficulty I did with getting to the victims.

Still waiting for emergency response to arrive I was handed some road flares by a woman I can only describe as a concerned mother. With a battered Ford Thunderbird in view, I tried to cross the off ramp, causing a student to slam on the brakes of his white minivan. As he waved his fists angrily for me to get out of his way, he was totally oblivious to the chaos around him. I stared at him and thought to myself, “What a jerk.” He squealed by me, and off to class he went.

How can this occur in a time when we need peace and prosperity? We are the most sovereign nation on Earth, but our arrogance and carelessness for human life is horrific. Some of the best events in my life happened to me this past week, but so have some of the worst. Being late for work is annoying, and being late for class, that’s annoying too, but not caring for human life is horrible.

I’m not asking that everyone branch out of their comfort zone and help hands-on; it is well within a student’s rights to be an innocent bystander. However, making a situation worse makes us accessories to the problem.

My mom used to tell me when I started driving that the slower your’re going, the less damage you’ll do. In the future, be late to work, be late for class, be late to a dinner date, and let those with an ounce of humanity help those in need.