At a quarter after five this afternoon (Sunday, October 23), I was driving on Route 222 south of Reading, heading for Lancaster. The stretch of road I was on is under construction, two lanes instead of four, with a tall concrete barrier on the west side separating us from where a new cement roadway was being poured. Traffic was heavy, but moving at a good clip, considering that we had all been funneled into the narrow roadway.
There was a gap in traffic heading north, the opposite direction. The next car coming was a black SUV, a Jeep. Suddenly, it swerved into our lane.
What followed was one of those instances we’ve all experienced, where we seem to be taking in more information than could be possible, given the short time passing. It didn’t make sense, what the Jeep was doing: the road in front of it was clear. I even wondered if there was something I couldn’t see, something directing it into what only seemed to me like my lane of traffic. And I asked myself if I were seeing correctly at all, questioning my sanity, thinking maybe I should have pulled off the road earlier for some rest. But I eased down on the brake.
All thought was immediately blown away. The Jeep seemed to leap into the air in a halo of flying pieces. On the phone, on a conference call, I shouted, “There’s an accident happening; I have to go.” I disconnected, dialing 911 as I came to a stop, just one car between me and the wreck.
As I got out of my car, others were running towards the wreckage, which was now smoking furiously. The woman in the car in front of me begged me to back up, worrying there might be an explosion. I did, still talking to the dispatcher, who was trying to help me figure out exactly where we were.
I told her about the smoke. Did I see flames? No. Someone said there were two people trapped in one of the cars. I relayed that information. Can you confirm that? I walked forward to the wreck itself, getting more accurate information on our location from others who had come running from their cars.
The smoke was clearing, and simply steam. Three cars had been involved, a sedan (it could have been a station wagon, but it was impossible to tell), the Jeep, and a Dodge 4×4. Oddly enough, all three were black. The station wagon had been hit head-on by the Jeep, which had climbed up over it while the pick-up rear-ended it. The Jeep had come to rest sideways, completely off the ground, stuck between the pick-up and the cement barrier, two wheels high in the air. People were assisting a woman from the wreckage of the station wagon–there was really nothing left of it–and the other vehicles were empty. I had seen the driver get out of the pick-up, so knew he was OK, but I could see nothing of the occupants of the Jeep. I relayed my information to the dispatcher and asked a young man in fatigues if he knew anything about the people who had been in the Jeep. “All out,” he said. “Everyone is out.”
The dispatcher asked if I could find people with towels, blankets, and tissues for the injured until help arrived. I found what I could and passed it out, locating the man from the Jeep on the other side of the barrier, slumping down against it.
Soon, a line of emergency vehicles appeared. Fire trucks, EMS, police. Orderly and confident, calm and careful. A police officer took aside first the driver from the car in front of my and then me, getting what details he could. By six, the injured had been taken to hospitals (the police said they were lucky, none looked too serious) and we were told to continue on past the wreckage.
Oh yes, my title: what does this have to do with not being a libertarian?
What I saw today was a community at work, one with rules and regulations based on the knowledge that we are not individually self-sufficient and that things happen that are beyond our own control. None of us has either the intelligence or the ability to act completely independently. We need others, and we have to cooperate in order to keep our individual needs from overwhelming others.
At one point, a woman came running up the highway stalled around the wreck. She saw the wreckage and screamed, “My mother!” Then she saw her, wrapped in a blanket lying propped up against a post at the side of the road and ran to her, sobbing.
If it had not been for regulations, she would have had no mother to run to. Her mother’s life had been saved by an airbag.
Were airbags an optional item, a “choice,” like libertarians want, that mother might have chosen not to pay for one. OK, let her die if she wants to take that risk–but what about her daughter? What about the other people affected, including the driver of the Jeep (who said, apparently, that he had fallen asleep)? One’s individual choices have an impact well beyond our own lives.
We live in a society filled with people willing to help out when disasters and tragedies strike–witness the outpourings after Katrina. Must we, in our arrogance, make the tasks these people take on harder out of our own pig-headedness? It was a volunteer fire department that responded this afternoon, people who had been relaxing, playing with their children, reading, watching football. Because they are willing to give up their own freedom to help us, shouldn’t we be willing to sacrifice a bit of liberty to make their jobs easier?
Yes, we should. And that’s why I’m not a libertarian.