About that title...

If you've worked in law enforcement in California, you've no doubt seen the ubiquitous CHP Collision Report form (aka the 555).

Since my job is handling traffic collisions, I do a lot of 555s (several hundred a year). 

Here you'll find my ruminations about collisions, and the world in general, as I attempt to make sense of it all. 


Sunday, December 6, 2009

Gettin' by, with(out) a little help from your friends.

Nowadays, it's a given that just about everyone over the age of, say, four, has a mobile device of some sort (iPhone, Crackberry, whatever). What strikes me as odd is that virtually everyone who's involved in a crash, no matter how minor, feels they need to summon additional people (SO/parent/friend/relative) to the scene. 

The end result of this is that two-car, non-injury collisions end up with five vehicles and a dozen people milling around by the time I get there (most of whom want to offer input into the report for a crash they weren't present for).

Didn't self-sufficiency used to be a valued part of the American character? If you had a problem, you took care of it. Period. You didn't need three other people to come out and hold your hand (someone poking around the barn in the middle of the night? Grab the Winchester off the wall, and go TCB).    

                 
Look, if you're a high schooler who just crunched Dad's car, then maybe he should be present (especially if you're violating the terms of your provisonal license by carrying your minor friends.  But I digress.). But when a forty-year old, well-dressed man's biggest concern at the scene is, "I gotta call my wife," because he dinged her Escalade, well...something ain't right. For God's sake, dude...man up. (His wife's comment, BTW, after leaving work and driving all the way to the crash: "I don't know why he called me (sigh)."

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