It happened right in front of me. The speeding ambulance going the wrong way running right into the girl who was about to cross. She was right behind the backside of a bus, which was parked close to the centre of the road (!), so anyone would not be able to view her from the frontside of the bus. The ambulance was travelling at speed going the wrong way, siren blaring. As she stepped out from behind the bus, the ambulance ran right into her, a sickening thump making me exclaim what had happened. I still don’t know which is the worst…that I could not help, that she met with the accident or is it something else entirely?
I do know where the blame goes though. This incident presents the attitude of everyone here perfectly, the attitude of FUBAR.
In grade school, back in grades 1, 2, we were taught to ALWAYS look both ways before crossing the road, something that I do out of habit now even when I know the road is empty. I understand that being in a high-speed piece of metal is a death risk, I would exercise due caution then. I also understand, which is an absolutely disgusting failure of policy makers here, the implementation of allowing emergency services to bypass traffic laws is wrong here. Speeding ambulance going the wrong way, bus driver who parked his bus slap bang in the middle of a busy road, a traffic warden who was sleeping on the job, carelessness of a pedestrian, so where you going to place the blame? It was all of them occurring at the same time that led to this accident.
Many of you will be quick to point out the doings of either the pedestrian or the ambulance driver here, my questions are, what was that bus even doing halted close to the centre of a road in heavy use? Why did the woman not use the pedestrian over-bridge that was a mere 10m away? What was the traffic warden doing? Was he even in the vicinity?
So this incident represents the result of an amalgamation of three levels of failure. Each entity failed to carry out their responsibilities correctly and the end result was that someone paid for it.
Does everyone here need to be taught common sense? (One does not simply “teach” common sense.)
Breeding common sense requires sacrifices of atleast an entire generation, if not several, who then inculcate and pass on the values.
Unfortunately, none in this country is willing to make the necessary sacrifices. Instead, the older generation is too busy giving excuses and laying blame. The young learn it and they learn well, shortcomings in this regard are dealt with by those guiding them. So twisted logic and laying blame are passed on in addition to what the next generation picks up.
This has led to the current social, legal, even economic situations. At this rate, it won’t be long before a situation arises where the people are forced to choose “fight or flight” (I don’t know whether we are there nor am particularly interested in answering that as this post is not about how close are we to the end of the world country).
Don’t really know where the point of no-return lies, I do know we are hurtling at breakneck speed towards there. With no real sign of stopping or slowing down. Don’t point out “encouraging” signs to me, recent developments (they are “vehicles” for change that can be abused to spread wrong very fast and very wide) are very few and they are no way the changes of a fundamental nature which is what we require now. Simple example, to teach a child the simple mathematical function of addition, one has to ensure they are taught how to count properly. Else teaching them addition will see some very funny results. Similarly, the changes occurring now are just addition skipping the critical step of learning counting. Funny results will thus ensue using the very same vehicles we thought would lead to betterment.
So our focus should be on teaching the basics and not just on how to give more people access to the basics (there is a very subtle difference between the two here, lot like “hate the play not the player”).