Badge of Honor - Yesterday when driving home in need of a work out to ease away some of the stress of the day, my day got more stressful. I was sitting at a stop light talking on my cell when a taxi cab came flying past me on my left. All the cars in front of me were stopped, but like always happens when there are cars stopped and a car in a parking lot trying to maneuver through, the car in front of me waved a Mercedes through. (Note to self, don't wave a car through, that is considered giving someone the authority and your assurance of safety and what happens next is on your head) Back to the taxi, it t-boned the Mercedes and sent the woman inside the Mercedes flying around inside! She some how had the composure to maintain control of the wheel enough to not bounce back off the taxi and the curb and into the cars that she had just weaved her way through. I hung up the my cell and called 911 to let them know that there was an accident and pulled my car off to the side to go try and help the woman in the Mercedes. Me and about four other people all run up, all on our cell phones, all trying to get to the scene first and be the hero.
Side thought: what did people do when there was an accident before everyone had a cell phone? I remember I was at my Boy Scout meeting and we were in my Scout Leader's driveway and we saw an accident and we actually had to go inside to call the police! We actually went inside to use the phone!
Anyway, back to be being the hero. The Fire Department got there and we all found out that fortunately the taxi hit about six inches behind the driver side door and caught the frame of the car and not the woman. While we, the heroes, were all trying to tell her not to move, not to do anything, to wait for the emergency crews, she starts crawling out the passenger side! There goes out chances of bringing her back to life in front of the news cameras that I'm sure were on their way. The FD sees that she is fine, no cars caught on fire, and decide to pack it in. Now what happened next, not sure, but I think it went something like this.
"FD to PD, there is nothing going on out here, just some people and their banged up cars."
"PD to FD, so you're saying we don't need to send a team very quickly and we don't need to send out best?"
"FD to PD, roger. Send the rookies."
"10-4"
And that is just a guess, but since it was thirty minutes later when a very old cop car pulls up with some very young, and not so bright looking, police officers, that is what I think happened. When I walked up to the police officer to 'give my story' he told me that it wouldn't be necessary and that they'd just get the story from the people in the accident. I figured that he didn't understand that I had missed my work out to 'render aide' and that I had had the best view of the whole thing so therefore it would be in his best interest to take interest in my side of the story. He didn't agree. So I asked his partner who was still in the cop car, on his cell phone, talking to a buddy called "Dude" about where they were going to flash their badges to get some action later that night. And, while I know he may have been new, he must not have quite passed the "become a cop" test yet, because I asked him some fairly simple straight forward questions about what I saw and how I figured the investigation should have gone down, and he was still thinking about getting his first beer and couldn't put a sentence together that I could understand.
Public service announcement: Unless someone is injured in a car accident, you don't have to wait around to give your side of the story. Check to make sure that no one is hurt but then you are free to go. If you want to, you can give your contact info, but that is only if you want to win the 'good citizen' badge from troop 316.