Posted on 09/14/2006 8:13:36 AM PDT by weegee
A woman is dead after she was struck by several vehicles while trying to run across Southwest Freeway Wednesday night.
Police said around 10:25 p.m. Wednesday, a woman attempted to run across four lanes of traffic on the 6800 block of Southwest Freeway near Hillcroft Avenue when she was struck by an unknown vehicle traveling north
The driver of the vehicle did not stop.
Her body was then struck by at least 4 more vehicles and an 18-wheeler. None of the vehicles stopped after striking the woman's body except the driver of the second vehicle.
Police said motorist may not have realized what was happening.
The woman's identity is pending verification.
The sort of people who run across big freeways at night are likely to have pretty rough associates. If some of the drivers realized what they'd hit was human, their reasons for not stopping may have been similar to yours (in addition to the extreme danger of stopping on a freeway).
Maybe the old woman was quite reasonably thinking that it was pretty inconsiderate of you not to stop and get the cat out of the street and see if it had an ID tag with phone number. Sometimes you can't help hitting an animal, and can't save the animal. But you may well be able to minimize the grief of its owners, and of children who might find their beloved pet mangled in the road. The pain of not knowing what happened to a missing pet, and the efforts many people go to in trying to locate a lost pet, are considerable. Just a couple of minutes of your time might have alleviated some of that. Hopefully someone else, like the old woman, did the task for you.
It's not about being "thoughtful" it's about be responsible.
There is no "aid" to render at a point but the body must be recovered for the family, if nothing else. And to keep her from being reported "missing".
Dialing 911 should still result in eventually submitting a statement to police.
There is an exit at Hillcroft, and Bellaire/Fondren, and Beechnut/Gessner on the southbound side and Chimney Rock, 610, and Newcastle on the northbound side.
Here in Detroit we have pedestrian bridges that cross the freeways. Pedestrians are NOT ALLOWED on a freeway. You never have to walk more than a couple of blocks to find a bridge over the freeway. Don't they have them in Houston?
"Thank you! I adore Houston. Been here all my life. No other city is quite like us."
I think that my home town is a very vibrant, positive city, more so though than any where else I've ever lived.
In my experience, it's can do, capitalist spirit is unmatched.
Exactly!
What's odd is that there aren't more of us natives here. Three of every four people I meet are transplants.
The 59 is elevated near hillcroft. And the feeder roads pretty busy itself. Cant understand what the woman was trying to do.
Bump
Not necessarily. It's likely that a whole bunch of people called 911, mostly saying things like "I think I saw a car hit a person, it could have been an animal but I'm not sure", or "I hit a large animal that's lying in the road, and it's big anough that people might swerve and cause an accident trying to avoid it, if isn't moved off the road", and not necessarily giving their names. Now that police know it was a person, they're no doubt trying to trace some of those calls, to try to find witnesses who might be able provide useful information, and some people have probably voluntarily called back, now that they know it was a person.
Or worse yet, I knew a jack--- who was suing the owners of a dog because he hit it with his car. As far as I could tell there wasn't much damage. He kept the dog's collar and tags as his proof. Sure there are leash laws, but it would be like running over someone's kid (the guy admitted this was probably the first time the dog had run off), then suing over it.
I had to run across I-680 in California once when a tire blew out completely. I walked 300 yards down to a place where I had about 1000 yards of visibility, then I waited for the freeway to completely clear and jogged across while making sure I didn't stumble. Cars are moving over 1-mile per minute at highway speeds and you don't have much time to run across. Poor woman probably didn't know how fast the cars would reach her.
O, dear. Houston, we have a problem.
We don't have a NASCAR track so the local yokels improvise. They even refuse to use turn signals. With major construction a constant presence that often squeezes lane widths and removes medians and shoulders, so there is no room to pull off in an emergency. The various hazardous debris cluttering the freeway completes the challenge.
Those foolish enough to try to cross the freeway are just plan too dumb to live.
Normally when the term "woman" is used, it refers to a female.
One day, two brothers tried to cross the highway (I think it is either six or eight lanes). One of the brothers was clipped by a pickup and went down. His brother turned back to try and help him and both were struck and killed by a semi.
So, in other words, I'm inconsiderate for not running out into the busy street myself to render aid to a cat who would probably bite me out of fear if it was still alive to do so just so I can look for an ID tag that may or may not exist just so I can notify someone who might sue me because their beloved kitty went dashing out in front of my car and I couldn't remarkably brake from 40-to-0 in enough time to save the cat's life?
There's really not a whole lot of benefit to stopping in a situation like that. It looks thoughtful, but is more likely to cause collisions with serious injuries or fatalities and 10s of thousands of dollars in property damage, than the save the life of someone who has already been hit by a vehicle traveling at high speed and landed in the middle of a high speed multi-lane highway (and was obviously at fault for trying to cross the road in the first place).
Is it really better to risk the lives of many innocent people travelling on the road by stopping? And what exactly was someone who stopped supposed to do (besides pose a collision hazard by being stopped on the shoulder, while drivers were being distracted by what was going on in the roadway)? Run out into lanes of fast-moving traffic (at night) to see if the victim was still alive and could benefit from some amateur first aid?
I agree.
We can point to New Orleans and see OBVIOUS power concentrated and abused. Then we sit here in Houston and some think our $#!* don't stink.
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