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It took me a dozen seconds to realise that it was a car. Caught in the road crossing just before the stopping place. I got off and headed into the opposite direction -- and there I saw a dead man lying on the platform. The first I saw. Later an eyewitness driver told what happened: a car with twqo onboard came to the crossing at speed, broke through the closed barrier, crashed into the concrete roadside barrier on the other side, and before the pasenger could jump out, the train hit them. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Was everyone on the train all right? Physically, at least?
Train drivers in that situation are given psychological counselling, and don't have to return to work immediately. The one who was involved in the accident had claimed he was ok.
Given the Paris metro statistics, each metro driver will witness a suicide in his career... So it's not specific to Hungary.
The amount of "Grave accident voyageur" - the notice the RATP gives in such a situation - is staggering, a very regular occurrence. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
I sympathize.
One way to talk about it without talking about it is to discuss how death has been relegated to the backyard, how it's been mystified, hidden. How surprised we all are.
Who here knows how to clean a corpse? Rien n'est gratuit en ce bas monde. Tout s'expie, le bien comme le mal, se paie tot ou tard. Le bien c'est beaucoup plus cher, forcement. Celine
This is the reason why I said that where death is gone in our societies is important. We don't really know how to react, overwhelmed as we are by the sight of blood and probable pain. People with the best reaction call those who know better, the doctors, and that's it. Who will dare put their hands on a wound to stop bleeding?
The reason why I mentioned cleaning corpse is that even the natural death of our parents scares us. We call those who know better, yet again. We let strangers intervene in the middle of difficult moments because we are utterly unprepared, taken aback by something we live with everyday, our body.
I know my great grand mother knew how to clean corpses and she was just a farmer who probably had never left her village. Rien n'est gratuit en ce bas monde. Tout s'expie, le bien comme le mal, se paie tot ou tard. Le bien c'est beaucoup plus cher, forcement. Celine
We're idiots
Coming days you will think a lot about this incident and by your saying 'we're idiots' you are preparing your 'manual' for next time to be not 'an idiot' again. The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)
Oh, but I do. "I won't gaze at it like those for whom a car crash is spectacle." And "I shouldn't step on anything police would consider as evidence". Wrong manual. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
For someone untrained and unequipped it was the right manual. With any head injury spinal cord involvement must be assumed. When a person has damage to the cervical vertebrae moving the head even slightly could severe the spinal cord and kill them.
You did what was right.
You cleared the area and put yourself in a safe place -- when a car is mangled like you describe the danger of it catching fire is very real. By doing so you allowed the responders clear and ready access to the victims and didn't increase the emergency by becoming a victim yourself. She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
i hope you are with good friends, and are strong enough to let your own emotions and thoughts flow where they may. We're all virtually here for you, with respect. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
Have you been (recently) trained in First Aid? If you have, perhaps only then one might start to walk down that road.
Take it slow.
The other evening I took our child to the theatre and we took the tube back just one stop. When we got into the train there was a man collapsed on the ground. Everyone just avoided him, but nobody was doing anything. I decided to activate the emergency alarm but waited until we got to the next station (our destination) as there's no point in alerting the driver in the middle of a tunnel. The driver called someone in the station and waited for a few minutes until someone came down. A woman came over from the next car over and when she saw the man on the groung she said "he's just drunk asleep". I felt very uncomfortable throughout. I was convinced people must be thinking I was unnecessarily delaying their journey. I also did not want to do anything with the man myself. I just meekly waited for staff to come and do whatever they needed to do. But, to the woman's dismissive comment I thought, if any of us passed out in the tube for whatever reason, wouldn't we want help to be called? We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
I'd say it is far removed from the one DoDo was in today though since I was obviously moving and capable of sorting myself out. Frankly if I had been in that situation today and thought about trying to help, I doubt I would have because I just wouldn't have known what to do, I'd have been too shocked by it. That's a different reaction to one of not wishing to be inconvenienced by stopping to help someone.
my first reaction would be to try and let the person know, without touching or moving them, that they weren't alone, or worse, surrounded by people who remained oblivious to their plight.
getting proper medical attention should also obviously be a top priority..
but only just less important would be trying to express solidarity and compassion.
that's a great story in magnifico's roundup this morning about an illegal immigrant who gave himself away to being arrested as the price to help a child who was in a car accident.
he should be offered an honorary citizenship! 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
I also remember seeing someone on the ground in a station, apparently a drunk diabetic (only found out afterwards). Someone had already called the firemen, and when I enquired about it, and seemed ready to stay a bit, they took the next train... Better behavior. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
Back in the 80's I was in Londen with a friend and two girl friends. We were on the tube, destination Victoria station. Tube overcrowded. we, first time in London feeling uncomfortable. Suddenly, 2 meters away a man collapses...people moving up to make place he can fall on the floor and everybody looking elswhere. Man on the floor starts to shake hevemently and making loud strange noises. My friend and I make are way to the man by pushing violently people aside. The same moment, from the opposite side, a very young woman kneels near the man's head and put her fingers in the mouth of the man to grab his tongue. She gave us instructions what to do and said this was a heavy epileptic case. Fucking nobody else was doing something to help and people were even reluctant to make some place.
Suddenly , the speakers gave a loud beep and a very quiet voice announces the train wouldn't stop in Victoria station because of a bomb-alert.(It was the very same day an IRA bomb exploded in Tower museum, killing German tourists).
Nah, train accelerated while my friend and I were trying to hold the violently shaking man on the flour to avoid harming himself and the young woman franticly trying to keep his breath going on.
2 minutes(ages) later the train stops, everybody is leaving and other people enter the train. I couln't find an emergency thing whatsoever, so I ran to the door and can yell to a man in uniform "call an ambulance" he replies "are you sure?" and I say "godverdomme yes!" The man starts to run and I feel the doors are closing, the girl friends came to help to keep the doors open so the train couln't leave. Angry people all around, luckily after a few minutes a professional rescue-team arrived and took the man with them. Nah, welcome to London. The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)
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