That Ain’t Right
27 Feb
Posted by: admin in: Adverse
Events, Injuries,
Public
Injuries, lawsuits
A Denver man pushes three people out of the path of a speeding
pickup truck only to get struck and injured himself. To add
insult to injury (literally), the man, suffering from
bleeding in the brain, ruptured spleen, broken bones, and a
dislocated shoulder, was issued a jaywalking ticket by a nearby
state trooper. Uh… thanks?
This is a perfect example of some of the things that go wrong in
our society. Frankly, it should have been the state trooper,
getting paid a comfortable annual salary to drive around and harass
people, that pushed those people out of harm’s way. But to punish a
citizen who risked his own life to help someone is just unjust in
the extreme. Where was the trooper when these citizens were
trying to get across the street in a snowstorm? Why wasn’t he
providing protection for them? How convenient for him to
show up after the fact and start pinning tickets on victims!
I smell a fully justified lawsuit coming on, and I hope that
trooper gets it. It’s one thing not to do your job. But it’s
something entirely worse to show up after and penalize the people
who did your job for you.
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One Response
Shaun
02|Mar|2009 1After reading an article about the accident, what seems to have happened was that the man was escorting the two ladies across the street from his bus, but he was doing so in the middle of the street, not on a crosswalk. While something like this is usually not a problem, in this case there was a truck coming. While the truck was probably going too fast given the conditions, unless there is a designated crosswalk, vehicles have the right of way. Had the man been escorting the women across the street at the corner or a crosswalk he may still have been hit by the truck, but in that case then he would have had the right of way and not the truck.
Also, it’s not as if the officer came strolling along during the accident, wrote a ticket on a whim, and then left. The ticket was a result of an investigation into the accident that had been undertaken after the police had been called to the scene. In cases like that, someone has to be written up for it. While what the man did was selfless and heroic, he was, strictly speaking, breaking the law by jaywalking and thus would be at fault should any accident occur. Had he not been helping the people cross in the middle of the street in the first place, the accident might never have occurred (which is why there are jaywalking laws).
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