And one of the more annoying features of El Paso's Bus System is that the drivers confuse their jobs with that of police. This is encouraged by the fare system. A patron must either pay in cash or prove that s/he has paid in advance with their card.
This system increases travel time because people drop coins into the slot, while others wait behind them in line. And those who have already paid must prove that they have done so by sliding their card with its magnetic strip.
An alternative system is used, e.g., in Bratislava, where people with monthly passes don't do anything, and those with a recently purchased single-trip ticket validate it. That speeds up getting onto trams and buses.
The fact that you have to constantly prove that you've paid in El Paso suggests that the local government fears letting someone ride for free.
(In Bratislava or Vienna or Prague there are people who check to make sure you've paid, but they are not the bus/tram/metro drivers. There is division of labor, and drivers only drive and can't get confused with police.)
Given that literally BILLIONS OF DOLLARS (belonging to US taxpayers as well as Iraqis) have simply DISAPPEARED IN IRAQ--and NO ONE KNOW WHERE THEY WENT, this suggest that (once again) in the United States of America there are two sets of laws---one for the rich, and another set for everyone else.
Heaven forbid that someone should ride a bus for free! That would be a crime.
But today, I experienced a new stupidity.
Someone passed out on a crowded bus. The driver correctly and wisely stopped immediately and called an ambulance.
Unfortunately the ambulance took a while to arrive, and, as it turns out, the driver could have reached his end-station and let all his passengers off before the ambulance came.
Presumably, the driver could not have known that, but the result was that about forty of us were, in effect, held hostage.
Ironically, since the doors were open and the temperature outside was typically warm (at 2pm), the air conditioning was basically ineffective. so, the guy who passed out wasn't getting helped by that.
Once the ambulance did arrive, they loaded the young man onto it, and... ...
no they did not speed off.
On the contrary, when they discovered that he was a minor, they called his parents. Or, they tried to call his parents.
But they proceeded to sit there for another twenty or thirty minutes.
Now, here is my question: why did they need to contact the parents? If the young man's health was in danger, shouldn't they have simply gotten him to the hospital as soon as possible?
And didn't waiting to contact the parents actually defeat the decision to seek immediate medical care?
Well, perhaps he didn't need to got to a hospital. Maybe the immediate attention was adequate. Maybe. Maybe not.
But why did they need to contact the parents?
Could it be that someone was really asking: who will pay for this ambulance trip?
PS
I think that sociologically speaking it is somewhat significant that the driver actually told me he had to stop the bus at once to avoid the danger of a lawsuit. A more charitable interpretation of his actions is that he did it because he wanted to do everything possible to help the young man who passed out. (And I imagine if he had thought about it, he would have agreed that this was the real point of stopping at once....although it could be that the managers at the bus company talk about lawsuits.....which would not be surprising considering the degree of degraded thought in this country.)
No comments:
Post a Comment