Don't Die, Be Safe

This topic is going to be impossible without me sounding preachy, so I'll get it over with and just say I don't really care if that's how I sound.

I was coming home from lunch with friends the other day when we saw a middle aged woman passed out on the pavement outside Tesco. She wasn't asleep, and she wasn't homeless as far as we could tell because she was wearing smart-ish clothes. She was just a woman, on the floor, in the street. Unconscious. My guess is that around a hundred people walked past her. This woman could have been anyone, she could be diabetic and have passed out, she could have had a heart attack - she could have been dead.

After we shook her and shouted at her to wake up, she did not respond, so we called an ambulance, but as we moved her onto her back as the telephone operator instructed, she woke up. Turns out she was drunk. She mumbled something and seemed grateful for the water we got her, and wandered off somewhere.

The fact that she was drunk is not the point. The point is that a person can be unconscious, or potentially dead, in the middle of a busy street in the middle of the day and be ignored. I think that's horrific.

A few days after, a similar thing happened within a few meters of the first incident. I was walking to work and I saw a man lying in the middle of the road. Again, a normal looking young guy, possibly a student. He was lying in the middle of the a residential road which is just off a busy road. Two people in front of me walked past him. This is how it panned out:

Me: You alright, mate?
(The man waves at me, but keeps his eyes closed)
Me: Do you know you're in the road? You need to get out of the road.
Man: I'm sorry...
Me: You don't need to be sorry, just get out of the road.
(He shuffles along the floor to the pavement, and passes out again)

I called the police to come get him when I got to work. Again, my point being that god knows how long that man was lying in the road, but he could so easily have been run over. It's not worth thinking about. Imagine you saw him lying on the floor, then later that day you heard a drunk man who was lying in the road had been run over and killed. You'd feel guilty, and you'd be right to feel guilty because you ignored when someone was in need.

I'm not saying I'm Florence fucking Nightingale. I don't give a shit what these people chose to do with their lives, but for someone to potentially die over something so stupid as another human being ignoring them is just horrible. I didn't care that he sobered up or didn't feel like shit, I just didn't want him to die for a stupid reason. I wanted him to be safe.

To ignore suffering in all those places Angelina Jolie visits is one thing, but to ignore someone suffering right in front of you is a conscious decision and action, and it makes me ashamed to be part of a society in which we value eachother so poorly.