Keep Driving

"I wanted him to actually feel that there was a person there. That is why I held his hand, to let him know that it wasn't just an illusion or a delusion that somebody was speaking to him, telling him that help was on the way."

The human animal means well, but all too often it demonstrates it has no more sense than a curious primate. We should have more sense, since we're endowed with a bigger, more complex brain capable of figuring things out and embarking on spontaneous urges to demonstrate our intelligence. But we just keep coming up short.

Witness any accident scene taking place anywhere in the world, and there you will see curious gawkers. People who have nothing better to do than clog up the scene of an accident with their inconvenient presence.

A small proportion of people will rush to the scene of an accident with an impulse to help, to make themselves useful, to attempt to rescue people out of unfortunate circumstances that constitute a threat to their well-being. These people are so relatively rare, that they are singled out for commendation and at special ceremonies are given commemorative medals.

They represent our better selves. Those who feel great and instant compassion for others. Who, when faced with the prospect of bringing assistance to others, act on it, instantly and with purpose.

Which is just what part-time trucker Rich Sherwood did. He also happens to be in the health profession, as a therapist, so that might have helped him in his instant decision to park his truck at the scene of a dreadful accident and embark on a personal mission of assistance to the afflicted.

This was an accident that took place on Highway 401, rurally, near the small hamlet of Hampstead. A passenger van was conveying agricultural workers originally from Peru, in Canada as temporary farm workers, to a chicken farm. The driver, unlicensed to drive such a van, evidently failed to stop at a stop sign.

The result was that a truck that had the right of way hit the van full on, with catastrophic results.

Ontario Provincial Police and emergency crews investigate a multiple fatal motor vehicle accident near Hampstead;Ontario;Monday;February 6;2012. Police say 11 people died in the crash.

Photo Credit: , Global News

Eleven people died in that collision, including both drivers, with three people surviving, in serious condition. Nine others of the migrant workers were killed. And this was the horrible scene that confronted Rick Sherwood as he tried to give aid and comfort to the dying. During a pause in his activities, as emergency vehicles began arriving, he realized there were others present, as well.

Those others had parked their vehicles as he had done, at the side of the road, and they were busy taking photographs with their cellphones, making videos, taking in the full measure of the carnage that lay before them. None of them made an effort to be of help. None moved toward any of the dying to give comfort. They were absorbed in taking souvenir photographs and videos.

Some of which may end up on YouTube, and be immensely popular.

Mr. Sherwood is both bemused and outraged that no one among all those bystanders made any effort to move forward, to ask if he needed any help.

"In a situation like this, that is all you can do: help. Other people [arrived at the scene] and they were taking pictures and shooting video.

"And I don't get it. I truly do not get why. If you can't help, if that is not part of your make-up, then get in your vehicle and keep driving. Standing around and making a scene doesn't do anybody any good.

"And you are not in shock, because you wouldn't be standing there and getting your camera out if you were in shock. That's not shock. That's: I want to take a picture and I want to get a video and I want to put it on YouTube...

"This was real people - and this was real people trying to save real peoples' lives."