13 Comments to 'God bless East Tennesseans'
Subscribe to comments with RSS
:: Trackbacks/Pingbacks ::
No Trackbacks/Pingbacks
God bless East Tennesseans
Posted By katie allison granju
It’s often said that people around here are just nicer than folks in some other areas of the country, and that’s easy to believe when you read this amazing story of strangers stopping to pull a woman and her badly injured three year old daughter from their burning car last week.
That’s quite a contrast to the story that made national headlines last week (see video below) about an elderly man in Hartford, Connecticut being hit by two cars, and lying in the street while no one stopped to help.
Jun 12th, 2008
As someone who has lived both in Knoxville and Hartford, I can attest to the authenticity of the accounts of both the kindness of East Tennesseans, and the self-centered apathy of most Nutmeggers.
Yeah, but tomorrow some idiotic Connecticut resident will still be making fun of us toe-sucking, shoeless, redneck hillbillies who don’t automatically vote for the party which promises to live our lives for us.
Handgun Control give Connecticut a 54, and Tennessee only a 7.
Could it be that Tennesseeans are more self-reliant, while Connecticutans are conditioned to be helpless and leave first-response to the professionals?
Having spent the first half of my life in rural Connecticut, but also being the descendant of Tennesseans from one side of the family, perhaps I had better not comment one way or another.
Shh–
Not too loud Katie. Knoxville is one of the best kept secrets in the country.
“Could it be that Tennesseeans are more self-reliant, while Connecticutans are conditioned to be helpless and leave first-response to the professionals?”
nah.
Hartford is a very poor place. In the jungle, your out for yours. So it doesn’t surprise me that people wouldn’t help this guy out(what’s to gain?)
Knoxville, on the other hand, is pretty wealthy, and thus people were probably properly raised.
Hope that guy lived.
Come on people. It would take a brave soul indeed to touch a man in the street run over so badly that his neck was broken and he was left paralyzed from the neck down. God help you he remembers you or somebody knew you at the scene and his heirs and lawyers sue you for everything you’ve got or ever will make because he and they can conveniently blame you in the absence of the real perp.
Scumbag lawyers don’t just go after the deep pockets, they go after any pockets and you’re left defending yourself at your expense.
In Knoxville you are raised self-reliant but in Connecticut you’re taught that anything bad that happens is somebody’s fault and you’re entitled to a piece of the action.
CURTIS;
i think you overlooked the oncoming traffic that just continued on like the depraved scoundrels they most certainly are…stopping your car to prevent further oncoming traffic would not endanger anybody
Hmmm.
Actually I’d guess the issue was litigation avoidance.
The Good Samaritan law in CT is fairly weak as it covers first responders and only those members of the public trained in CPR. Plus you’ve got a situation where a guy is badly injured and the people responsible have fled.
Next person who touches the man is the one going to be sued.
It’s an incentive to turn your back.
Hey, it doesn’t require touching or moving anybody to simply stop traffic to keep him from possibly getting run over again or to at least go to him and determine if he’s obviously dead or not. The thing is noone even went to look. Can’t blame that on lawyerphobia.
As a side note, the press seem to fall all over themselves whenever someone in an SUV hits and injures/kills another, but I’d be willing to bet that the mother and daughter probably would have ended ud dead like the Saturn driver if the’d been in a small car.
Knoxville is NOT a wealthy place if you go by any of the usual statistics. Otherwise, I agree. I’ll have to say it’s nice to live in a place where people usually pitch in right away to help someone who needs it. It doesn’t have anything to do with gun rights or politics or wealth; it just shows that we know to treat others the way we’d want to be treated.
Years ago I had an experience which illustrates the point. Driving on a short stretch of shoulderless rural road in a thunderstorm, my old station wagon, loaded with my three kids and gear for a visit to the grandparents, suddenly quit running. Two men who certainly qualified as “good ole’ boys” stopped their truck behind me, analyzed the problem in the battery cable, fished a roll of electrical tape out from under their front seat, and patched it up, and with a smile and a “Glad we could help,” took off. My car started right up and we finished the trip safely. I could tell more stories that make me glad I decided to stay here.
b rud,
You make a perfectly valid point but look at the film again. Say you stopped your car in your lane to block the traffic from carelessly driving by a badly injured man. What would happen next? You saw it! The guy that ran this man down crossed the double yellow into oncoming traffic and ran him down. I see people do this every week when I or others stop to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk and some jackass decides he thinks we’re stupid to be stopping and attempts to speed through the intersection and discovers too late that we stopped because the law yields the right of way to pedestrians in the cross walk.
You could try to broadside traffic with your car or diagonal with your car and thus mask the crime from those behind you which just boosts road rage. No it isn’t kind and it isn’t humanitarian and that’s too bad. You have to accept the environment you live in and not only drive defensively but cross defensively. Assume that the maniac behind the wheel is hellbent on killing you.