Friday, June 08, 2007

Two Police Reports in One Day

I felt a pang of guilt today as I picked up the phone to call the local police. Part of me felt that they really didn’t need to come out to see me over a paint scratch on my car caused by a hit and run driver. In normal circumstances, I would not have cared. The trouble was, the guy who hit me was an elderly driver that no only didn’t see me, didn’t hear my horn, and I don’t think he actually knew that he had hit me. I avoided a more serious collision by some quick defensive driving to get out of the way of his backing vehicle. When I got out of the car to approach him, he had no idea what was going on and drove away.

I felt it necessary to make the call as I could see someone getting dragged all the way home under his vehicle one day. If this driver caused a more serious accident, I would hold myself responsible for not filing a report to help get him off the road. At least his family should know that he’s at the age where he should be chauffeured. Part of me felt guilty for wasting the police officer’s time on such a trivial matter and the other part of me felt that it was absolutely necessary for the safety of society at large.

I think I need reassurance that I did the right thing.

My second police report came later in the evening when I stopped in the middle of the road to assist a disabled person on street that appeared to be falling out of his motorized wheelchair. Unable to lift him myself, I flagged another passer-by and together we were able to get him upright. The man turned out to be drunk and a fair distance from his home. Neither the other passer-by nor myself had a vehicle that could accommodate such a large wheel chair. As we were scratching our heads about what to do (as clearly we couldn’t leave a disabled person low on batteries and far from home alone), a police cruiser came by which I promptly flagged down. Unfortunately, I think the officer had to slapped the guy with a drunk driving charge as a motorized wheel chair is a vehicle and he was on a public road. She took my name and address and I was free to leave once I gave her my side of the story.

Its tough to know you’re doing the right thing all the time. I hope I did today even though I think I caused some trouble.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home