Few years ago I witnessed a traffic accident in which a 16yo boy riding a motorcycle died.
I was the first to get to him trying to assess his condition and help. Those were his last moments. There was a lot of blood and I was helpless. I did my best but witnessed him dying anyway.
I was 32 years old. I never knew this boy. Nevertheless this was a life changing experience.
I'll never forget this neither will I forget having face his poor parents who wanted to hear about their son's final moments from the man who was there.
This experience will never stop haunting me.
I can easily imagine how devastating it can be for someone who's lost their friend. Especially when you're a kid.
If someone from your family experienced this, please don't go the "let's not bring this up" way.
That doesn't help.
The linked story and yours are both harrowing. But it has spurred me to action. Many years ago, my younger sister, a police officer, was off duty and just driving her car into town when she saw a car plough into another in front of her. She jumped out of her car and raced over to the drivers door, where she saw that the driver had a gaping wound in his neck and was bleeding out.
My sister hates the sight of blood, and faints when getting a needle, but to this day I don't know how she did what she did, which was to reach in and clamp her hand around his neck to try and stem the bleeding, while trying to talk to him. His wife was in the passenger seat, relatively uninjured but screaming hysterically at her husband's condition. My sister said that she looked into the guys eyes while she tried to talk to him and reassure him - she said the look he gave her was one of 'pleading sadness', and she watched while in less than a minute the life went out of him right there and then.
She only ever told me the story once, and our family has one of those stupid 'don't talk about it' rules, which after reading this, I intend to break. She seems fine to this day and doesn't show any outward signs of it affecting her, but next time I get the chance, I will see if she wants to talk more about it.
In English, the word "hero" can mean two slightly different things. As you're using it, it's a person who has performed some great feat in service to another, especially if that feat involves sacrifice. A hero in this sense is performing a selfless act.
But that meaning is a relatively modern extension of the original idea of heroes being "just" people who perform great feats. If you read the great epics, any people the heroes end up saving are often incidental. The heroic acts are for the glory of the heroes, a distinctly selfish act.
It's a bit difficult to explain, if you don't know the feeling. There's a reason I said "been through" rather than "done". Things can happen so quickly that you don't really apply rational thought to what you're doing. And as with all such situations, we tend to post-hoc rationalize what we did. So for a heroic[selfless] act to not be a heroic[selfish] act, it must be done solely for the good of those involved, not for any praise or glory for the "hero". It can make the act feel meaningless to receive praise for it.
You're often the clearest eye-witness to the event, but that doesn't mean you're objectively reliable. At best, you don't know why you did any particular thing. You might say "anyone would have done it." It feels bad to receive praise for a common act.
At worst, you second guess everything. You worry about the mistakes more than anything "right" you did. What if you hadn't hesitated for what felt like an eternity (when outside observers would probably say you sprung into action immediately)? What if you hadn't forgotten to carry your pocket knife today, so you could have cut the seat belt into a tourniquet (despite seatbelts being extremely difficult to actually cut). What if you hadn't pressed so hard during CPR that you broke their ribs (except CPR done correctly is very likely to break ribs)[0]? In emergency situations, the odds are against you, so even if you do absolutely everything right, you're probably not going to "succeed". It definitely feels bad to receive praise when you think you've screwed up.
That's why you'll see so many people say they "just want to move on." It's easier to bury the issue than deal with any one of those things, and it's highly likely the person is going through all of them. The most thanks someone will want is to see the person they tried to help walk away happy and safe; a thanks from that person will be sincere and will feel real. From anyone else who wasn't involved, it will only serve as a reminder of something the person would rather forget.
People don't want to receive praise when they don't feel like they deserve it. People feel like they deserve praise when they've done hard work and they've done it well. You want to thank a cop or EMT or doctor or search-and-rescue volunteer? Don't thank them for that one event over which they probably feel conflicted. Thank them for their choice to join their profession and their choice to continue to wake up every day and go back to it.
Incidentally, that's also why you probably shouldn't thank a soldier "for their service." You don't know why they joined. Some people have joined not out of a sense of service to country, but a sense of desperation to get out of a bad situation at home. And once they have joined, they can't easily un-join. Continuing to show up to be a soldier is not a daily choice. Or maybe they've joined for all the "right" reasons and they believe every day that their choice was the right one, the vast majority of military personnel are in support--not combat--positions, and that person might feel they are not deserving of praise because they are not in danger. Thanking a soldier for their service--especially if you're a random person on the street and only know they are a soldier because they are wearing a uniform--could be reminding them of lots of things outside of their control.
It's a pretty common thing to witness unfortunately in poorer countries with bad road conditions and lots of motorbikes. I have seen firsthand a few terrible accidents in which multiple people died in horrific ways.
I also saw a thief beaten to death pretty much right in front of me, which haunts me even more. I witnessed it from my balcony and by the time I got downstairs (with the intention of stopping it) it was too late. There was also a suicide in my neighborhood where a young boy jumped off his balcony from about 5 stories up. I was out exercising so fortunately I didn't see it, but when I got back my neighbors all told me and the next day I saw photos in a newspaper taken right near my apartment of a monk blessing the boy's body. My wife as a child also saw a foreign English teacher jump off a tall building. It can be really depressing living in an impoverished place.
This experience is precisely why you should never ask a war veteran if they've killed someone. Many times they have, but more often than not they've had to watch someone they were close with die.
It's a nice hope, but the people initiating the wars are not the ones who fight the wars. We'd have less wars if bankers and politicians had to fight in them.
> It's a nice hope, but the people initiating the wars are not the ones who fight the wars
True enough, but wars tend not to last long after they lose public support (or the population 'suffers from low morale'). Having veterans speak out and seeing flag-draped coffins on the front pages tends to do that (see Vietnam), which is why modern governments try to control the war narrative ("embedded" journalism, psy-ops, etc)
This sounds like a line from Riker on STTNG. Paraphrased: "Maybe if we felt everyone's deaths as closely as we do the ones close to us, human history would be a whole lot less bloody."
Maybe if everyone had to serve we'd achieve the same. Forcing people to talk about some of their profoundly dark times often because they needed a job isn't the way to go about it.
The realization you might be called on to kill your fellow man or have another human kill you over imaginary lines and ideals might be enough to get the point across....
WW2 made Europeans and east Asians anti war -- the people in whose countries the wars were fought. It's only Americans and Canadians who view WW2 as the "good" war. Our countries got to play the hero role and beat the super villain, we were largely untouched (relative to what other countries suffered), and at the end there was years of economic prosperity. What's not to like?
Yes - I tend to the view that WW2 in Europe was a continuation of WW1, while the War in the Pacific was essentially an independent conflict going on concurrently. Even from that perspective, Germany was not facing an existential threat in 1939, yet chose war.
One of my neighbours is a Vet and I've never asked.
I have listened when he's brought it up on his own accord, when he's been on both ends of war violence [giving it or receiving it]. They're not the prettiest images to imagine, let alone experience first hand as he did, but it's mine to listen and his to tell.
I had a similar experience, and I'm a bit slow to process extreme emotions so in crisis I'm very calm. A few days later though, it hit me while I was in the shower and my guard was down; I started shaking and I didn't know why. I literally dropped the washcloth and realized that I was crying, then I realized why, and it all hit me. As you say, it's one of those things that never quite heals, it just... skins over a little. Sharing does seem to help.
I'm the same way. I recently opened up to a friend of mine about a traumatic experience. They wondered why I seem so calm all the time, I'm the calmest person they know. It helped me alot just to talk to them about it, even though the situation was long gone, it haunted me for years. Yet I never showed any emotion over it on the outside, even though on the inside I was not right.
I'm glad that you came to the same conclusion about talking helping, like you it was difficult before that. In my teens and early twenties a lot of people just assumed that I was weirdly calm. It's not easy for people like us to open up and say, "It hits me, it just takes time to process and it all happens inside of my head."
"I was the first to get to him trying to assess his condition and help. Those were his last moments. There was a lot of blood and I was helpless."
Those first ten seconds are shocking. For me it was understanding ^control^, the lack of control and the fight to get it back. The situation you were presented @bitcharmer is binary and anything other than a win can be seen as failure.
For me it took a long time to understand that whatever I did, I had no real ^control^. Understanding control, the complete lack of it, in extreme situations like the one you describe lets you move one step closer to understanding death. To understand what it is like in @bitcharmer shoes, read happened in a similar situation back in 2012 (non fatal) https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/7949327460
I find it interesting that for some people it is a truly humbling and transformative event, and others it's a debilitating one. Wish I had explanation for the difference though.
I've never had a personal tragedy like the scope of the author's, but her essay hit me nonetheless in reminding me of all the times I've avoided "tricky" topics with friends and family, and how in retrospect, this avoidance contributed to relationships drifting apart over the years. I was both happy how the author's bravery led to an eventual reconciliation, and sad thinking about relationships that I didn't prioritize enough.
“Could you just start at the beginning and tell me everything?”
Nobody talks about death, especially violent death. This quote stands out the most. Do you want to know why people who have been there don't talk? It's the interruptions, the funny looks and having to answer stupid questions. So if you are in the company of someone and they talk about it, it's probably because they trust you. Let them talk it out to the end, interruption free.
When I do talk, it's quietly to mates who were there and those who have been in similar situations. There is no great divide in understanding, no interruptions and plenty of trust.
Incidentally this article made me think about people who save other's life, sometimes at personal risk. I am not thinking about big hero - like actions (which are of course fantastic) but rather Joe passing by and somehow saving Bob's life.
I had two cases like this in my life. In one of them I saw a car rolling over on a highway and stopped to see if the driver was fine (alive, actually). He was there, breathing, and there was petrol all over the place. I got him out before the car shared to burn (quite slowly, nothing like in movies).
I did not even think once about my safety, I did not think about anything, actually. There was strictly nothing heroic in what I did because brain was not involved at all.
I wonder if others have this as well - for me a hero is someone who realizes what he or she can loose and despite this take the risk to help someone. This was not my case at all and would not be either if my children were at stake, for instance.
I wonder if it's the same talking to a psy as to a relative. It's much less grave, but years talking to various psychologists didn't damp by emotions about my first break-up, especially because they don't want to talk about the past, they only want to talk about the future.
Many many years ago, when I was one and a half years old, I had a brother who was three. He had red hair and a bright smile (I've seen the pictures) and a curious nature. Inexplicably, he slipped from everyone's sight one day and fell into the river and drowned.
The resulting silent implosion in my family led to generations of pain and guilt and alcoholism and silence. Each parent, each sibling, suffering in guilty silence, and locking away their emotional selves from those that need it.
The silence solves nothing folks, take it from me, it solves nothing.
Am I the only one who was extremely confused by the writing? I think the whole effect was just lost on me, because I went from thinking her brother was the one who died, to thinking he was the driver, to finally getting to the part where she actually says explicitly that he was the other boy in the road.
It was a long truck - a landscaping trailer hitched to its back.
I would guess that sharp enough movements would not have done something constructive, so if the vehicle was already coming right around a curve, or going fast enough, they could have let off a little to go "straight" or continued to go "right", but going left would have done nothing reasonable.
In the article, though, the driver phrases it as them being too close, and turning just meaning hitting one or the other, so perhaps they came out into the street and he was just going too fast.
There was an investigation and court case about the accident, as the article mentions. If the driver would have been guilty, probably he would have been punished.
I think some pretty unfortunate situation arose, maybe the children were also not careful enough, it doesn't really matter anymore. The driver had to make a decision in a split second. Probably he already instinctively did some action by the time he got to think about the situation, and the "decision" is a rationalization of a situation he was just as well victim of, where he also didn't have any control.
If the driver would have been guilty, probably he would have been punished.
In USA, this assumption is usually wrong. Drivers who kill pedestrians are rarely punished, no matter what the circumstances. The only vehicular deaths that less often result in punishment are those of cyclists. Not coincidentally, we learn right at the beginning of TFA that the police report claimed the "boy was crossing the street on his bicycle" even though that was entirely a lie. This is a sort of code, written by a "normal" adult who empathizes with drivers and not with pedestrians, which other such "normal" adults can read and understand without having to think. Only extraordinary acts of driving cruelty, like killing a child in a suburban cul-de-sac or mowing down a parade, can break through the stupor of official carelessness and lead to consequences. When multiple automobiles are involved, LEOs and prosecutors can empathize with both parties, so justice isn't so uncommon.
I'm not sure where one can find justice in this situation. People generally don't go out with the intent to kill in their car. There are many people who drive with far too little care. If I am honest, I have done it before in my life. I don't think I know a single driver who hasn't.
The problem (or lack thereof, I suppose) is that there usually aren't any consequences to that lack of care. People drive terribly badly all the time and even still, death is quite uncommon. Think of the worst drivers you know. How many of them have killed people?
We all need to drive much more carefully. Would harsher penalties bring that about? Perhaps. I really don't know. But I certainly would not call it justice to destroy yet another person's life in retaliation for being stupid and unlucky at the same time. One death seems unjust enough for me. Adding more misery to the pile does not make me happier.
Speaking as a person who has mostly given up driving (I have driven less than once a year in the last decade), I would prefer simply to make licenses almost impossible to get. Most people are not able to take the task seriously enough, no matter what the risk, IMHO.
More than punishment, road design goes a long way towards changing behaviour. When your neighbourhood's streets are designed for high speeds, people will drive at high speeds. Saying "I hit the kid accidentally", to me, seems a bit like saying "I decided to shoot my gun in random directions and accidentally hit a kid, so it's not my fault!". But I am apparently in the minority. It was most appalling when I lived and worked in LA and my coworkers would joke about murdering bicyclists without a second thought; never mind the fact that I kept my helmet on my desk and clearly cycled to work.
I'm also a cyclist, and rarely drive anywhere; but with two kids it's often easier. I definitely started driving more carefully as I've gotten older, had kids... I used to drive way to fast on the highways, now I often find myself realizing that I'm driving to slowly.
The big switch for me was getting rid of the urgency related to driving (I also became a safer cyclist for a similar reason, expect cars to do the wrong thing and they won't disappoint you).
The idea that roads exist for cars is pervasive, and anyone who uses it for anything else is assumed to be in the wrong. Anything that slows down the cars, is the thing at fault.
The next time you've left late, are running late, are about to miss something; you need to consider is that extra 2 minutes and the higher risk of getting in an accident worth it? Try and enjoy the time you have to yourself, rather than trying to end it so quickly.
> The idea that roads exist for cars is pervasive, and anyone who uses it for anything else is assumed to be in the wrong.
I feel like I'm often in the minority on HN when I say this, but: roads (in car-heavy areas like the US) exist for cars.
I don't say that to mean "and therefore what happens to anyone else is their own fault."
I take that to mean: "and therefore proper safety requires building transportation infrastructure that properly separates modes of transportation that differ enormously in their speed, agility, and relative safety."
Building bike highways physically segregated from car highways: yes!
Painting white stripes on the side of the road that both cars and cyclists have to regularly violate: sadly, no.
I agree with you. But there aren't a ton of options in the short term. So widening roads, or taking away a shoulder, dedicating a lane to bikes, ideally adding at least plastics separators, worst case lines.
But this means drivers giving up some of the speed/lanes to bicyclists etc.; there seem to be a lot of people who fight this.
I'm a driver. In the past, I've been a cyclist. At other times, a pedestrian. I mean to say, I'm not saying this from the perspective of a guy who drives and has never cycled and can't empathize with people who live a different way. If my current living situation allowed me to resume cycling, I'd be happy to! But-
As a driver, in NYC, bikes on the roads are incredibly dangerous to everyone involved (though, admittedly, mostly the bikers). You can't drive in the city for a day without seeing bikers regularly violating the rules of the road: wrong ways up one-way streets, jumping onto sidewalks, etc. Generally, just acting like cars when they want to, like bikes when they want to, like pedestrians when they want to.
That's not why I'm against sharing the road with them! That's why I'm in favor of heavily enforcing existing laws on bike usage, with a merciless iron fist until people who ride bikes act like they understand that they're meatbags riding around in a pinball machine of 1-ton iron rockets.
I'm not even against sharing a road with them because enough of them exemplify the above that all of them, as a result, are unpredictable, and unpredictability is the most dangerous thing on the road. I kind of imagine the enforcing, iron fist, etc. will take care of that eventually, too, if we actually do it.
I'm against it because they're vulnerable little meatbags. A slight hiccough on the road between two iron rockets means someone's paying out an insurance premium and getting some fender repairs. The same accident with a bicyclist ends in a trip to the hospital, if not a funeral home. One person's dead, and the other is carrying the moral (and possibly legal) weight of a murder, because someone thought it was a good idea to play tag in a busy factory. My opinion may not hold across all locales: certainly I've been in cities that had far less busy roads, with far fewer and smaller cars (Europe), where this same statement does not ring true. But in NY it does!
I'm sorry. If the cost of removing that ridiculous situation of danger is a short-term lack of bicycle commuting while we build responsible infrastructure, I'm OK with that. But for what it's worth, I'm also OK with kicking in my tax dollars to build that infrastructure.
I'm not anti-bike, just anti-this ridiculously unsafe road interaction.
So you personally fight giving dedicated infrastructure to cyclists, but you also talk about "...while we build responsible infrastructure..." - which is it?
Painting lines on a road full of cars, that require bikes and cars to intersect in non-bike-exclusive areas every 150m or so isn't dedicated infrastructure: it's throwing bikes amidst the cars and pretending paint will keep people safe. It's irresponsible infrastructure.
I made the specifics of my concerns very clear. You ignored the entire post for the sake of superficial contradiction. You look very smart on the internet; kudos.
>I used to drive way to fast on the highways, now I often find myself realizing that I'm driving to slowly.
That's called getting old.
>The next time you've left late, are running late, are about to miss something; you need to consider is that extra 2 minutes and the higher risk of getting in an accident worth it?
If it wasn't a pretty good trade-off less people would do it. Do you avoid swimming in the ocean because of sharks?
"If it wasn't a pretty good trade-off less people would do it"
As a counter-example, note the profound inability of most people to accurately gauge risk. Examples include: worrying about second-hand smoke outdoors, in parks, without caring about auto emissions; dedicating billions of dollars to fight terrorism and not more dangerous things like furniture tipping over; moving to the suburbs because they're perceived as safer for kids (less crime!), even when the longer commutes such a move requires put those same kids at more risk.
Also, it's worth noting that risk is displaced from people in cars to other road users when people choose to drive. If you think about what someone means when they say it's dangerous to cycle, walk, or ride a motorcycle, the usual reason is that you'll get hit by a car (though in the case of motorcycle it's a bit more complex, since single vehicle crashes are common)
Perhaps, though I prefer to think it's being more aware of the risks.
> Do you avoid swimming in the ocean because of sharks?
I don't think that's a good analogy. I can't control a sharks behavior, and I specifically try to ignore the idea of them when I'm surfing. But, if there's a shark sighting that day or week at my favorite beach, yes, I'll not get in the water.
In terms of driving, there's a lot more control you have over reducing the risk, than you do of a random shark getting you.
Also, shark attacks happen three orders of magnitude less frequently then automobile deaths. 30-40/year vs 30,000-40,000/year in the US; yes this is partly due to more people driving, but I'll take surfing to driving any day of the week.
Another entry in the long, long list of reasons why I'll never move to the US.
I'm having trouble imagining the environment that would give rise to such comments. Carelessness? Callousness? Either way, I don't want to be there. Ireland is nicer, and Denmark will be nicer yet.
Funny you should say that. I moved to Ireland a few years ago, and just returned from a week-long trip to Copenhagen yesterday. It was bliss for the cyclist.
Interestingly, I had thought that separated infrastructure would be the primary benefit, but even on roads with shared space, the drivers were _vastly_ more considerate than where I've lived in the US (all California), with the potential exception of Berkeley.
> There are many people who drive with far too little care. If I am honest, I have done it before in my life. I don't think I know a single driver who hasn't.
I think that's exactly the point OP is making. We have this culture of driving two-ton machines around with little care. It's so culturally institutionalized that when things inevitably go wrong, we sweep it under the rug even though we'd harshly punish a similar level of negligence in a different context.
Yes, that's it exactly. It's interesting for me to recognize the little "tells" that point out the contradictions we habitually ignore, that must be ignored to continue living as we live. This sort of routine police report falsehood is one of those. Of course there was no bicycle involved, they were fishing for goodness' sake. There was no bicycle at the scene, mangled in the way the boy's body was mangled. However, the cop on the scene had decided that the driver (and perhaps more importantly his employer and that employer's insurance company) should not be held responsible for driving too fast. (Can you stop when you notice children in the road? No? Then you're driving too fast!) The most effective way to ensure that irresponsibility was to place the boy beyond the pale of potential victimhood, on a bicycle.
It would be interesting for a sociologist to do a study of police reports on deaths of cyclists in traffic. Whenever the report didn't include a picture of a mangled bicycle, the sociologist could interview witnesses to see if they would mention a bicycle without being prompted to do so. We might find that mischaracterizing pedestrians as cyclists is a very common thing.
This is being far far too apologetic for the completely rotten culture of driving. It starts with the traffic engineers. They call themselves that, but they are monkeys replicating designs from a 90s guidebook designed by older monkeys, with evidence never entering the picture. They care far more about keeping free parking spaces than validating the safety of their designs.
It goes on with the drivers themselves, but you have covered that well. I'd just add that if you are operating a 2 ton machine and kill someone doing it out of recklessness or a lack of due care (which is the case in the vast majority of deaths, even collisions), of course there needs to be a penalty or it goes on. Killing someone with a gun because you left a bullet in and knocked the trigger is a lot more dramatic but not very much different. Not even a criminal penalty necessarily, but maybe just a 5 year driving ban. Right now in most countries it is basically impossible to lose your license, ever. If you do, you just drive on because the penalty for driving without is laughable.
The final component are the car manufacturers, or more generally vehicle standards. Why exactly do cars need >70hp motors? I've driven a transporter fully loaded approaching 3 tons up the Tourmalet with that kind of engine. It did just fine. Nobody chauffeuring their breed the mile to school in the inner city needs a car an iota more powerful. And the engine is just the first thing in a long long list of issues. I don't think there is any other machine out there with a similar level of risk and damage caused that is so severely lacking in the most basic safety devices or generally designed and engineered with blatant disregard for these factors.
'yazbo you appear to have been hellbanned. I can't see why, so you might be able to appeal to TPTB and get it reversed?
To see this, open this thread in an incognito window. Your comments will probably disappear. I'm replying to the comment above yours because I can't reply to your comment.
> But I certainly would not call it justice to destroy yet another person's life in retaliation for being stupid and unlucky at the same time. One death seems unjust enough for me. Adding more misery to the pile does not make me happier.
I second that.
>Speaking as a person who has mostly given up driving (I have driven less than once a year in the last decade), I would prefer simply to make licenses almost impossible to get. Most people are not able to take the task seriously enough, no matter what the risk, IMHO.
I actually live in a rural area. But I can see your point because I can't convince my wife to give up her car. We live about 2 km outside of a small town, so it's still close enough to walk to the grocery store, bar, restaurant, etc. We're also about 2 km from the bus terminal. It costs about $25 round trip (each) to get to the nearest city and we'll go every month or two. Expensive, but still quite a bit cheaper than a car.
There are more rural locations than this so I can see the need (especially if you are a farmer, or something similar). Dangerous driving is more or less accepted in society, but if you depended on your license and had it routinely removed (as opposed to fines) when you acted poorly, I think it would go a long way to improving the situation.
But we also need to improve support for people who choose not to drive. I grew up in Canada and it is much harder to live the lifestyle I live now. Not impossible, but you have to give up a lot more.
The idea you describe is called risk compensation [0], and it has huge effects on many different human behaviors. It doesn't directly apply in this case, because the risk that matters for this is personal risk to a driver, not externalized risk to other travelers. Or maybe it could affect driving, but only if the Law re-internalized such risk by punishing drivers who kill pedestrians, which it doesn't do even though it would in any civilized society. The other re-internalization option would be for pedestrians and cyclists to travel in heavily armed packs...
A few more stories about idiotic drivers ending up behind bars for life would have an infinitely better calming effect than all the signage in the world, imo.
It seems more like a rationalisation. In the brief moment between seeing the boy and swerving it is unlikely that he had the time or situational awareness to consider his options. By believing that he would have killed a boy anyway, regardless of his choice, he avoids judging that he could have made the wrong choice, and so he avoids crushing doubt and regret.
And perhaps caused the oncoming car to swerve and hit both kids, or killed a family of six in a minivan.
The problem really isn't what happened in the moment where the decision had to be made, but what led to that situation.
Could the driver have driven more slowly, did the kids cross without looking, was he looking at his radio right before this happened? The answers to those questions seem much more important than the 100ms he had to decide when the kids were right in front of him.
