(Okay, first news post with Maggie.)
THE STORY:
WalesOnline
New Haven Register
THE INTERPREATION:
Are you fucking serious? How in the world do you not notice a DEAD PERSON in the front seat?! Granted, I'm more sensitive to noticing dead people since I'm constantly aware of any potential zombie threat... but seriously?
Now, taking into consideration the fact that parking enforcement personnel have no souls and therefore would never consider waking up a sleeping driver to ask them to move their vehicle before ticketing them, I might be willing to accept that the University's parking attendants didn't do anything the first time they ticketed her SUV. But to ignore a "sleeping" driver two more times when there were already tickets on the windshield? How low can you get?
Or maybe they never even saw the dead person in the driver's seat... which, if true, is even more terrifying.
Even if the driver's side window is tinted so that you can't glance in and see the driver slumped in the front seat, I did my research and found that according to New Mexico code 66-3-846.1, section B1, when tinting is used on the windshield, it "...shall be used only along the top of the windshield, not extending downward beyond the ASI line or more than five inches from the top of the windshield, whichever is closer to the top of the windshield..." So clearly, we know that the parking attendants were capable of seeing into the vehicle and noticing the dead chick in the front seat. They just chose not to. And yes, at that point, it's a choice. When you're walking around the world "just doing your job" (or whatever excuse you want to use), and don't look through the windshield you're placing a parking ticket on to notice a dead woman in the front seat, you're choosing not to see her. It might not be a malicious choice, but at some point in the parking attendants' lives, they did make the choice to stop looking.
So what's next for the University of New Mexico? Campus security patrols ticketing a housing unit for excessive noise at a party and "not noticing" the rohypnol lab set up on the coffee table in the front room?
When it comes down to it, the real story here is either:
1. It's all about the money. On the off-chance that it actually was just a really stupid freshman leaving his car in a red zone for a week, University personnel would rather continue to cite a vehicle for repeated parking violations and milk their cashcow for all its worth than contact local officials about a seemingly abandoned vehicle. Because Lord knows the ticket money means more than the school's reputation for safety.
Or
2. We really are that dumb. We see what we're supposed to see. We're so focused on the tasks immediately in front of us we only see the piece of paper and don't look through the glass to what lies beyond. Call it distracted if that word sounds nicer to you, but I think it's just plain dumb that in a world where a day's value is measured solely by our output and we're so obsessed with just getting through our jam-packed to do lists, no one has time to stop and smell the dead people.
Either way it's just further proof that when the apocalypse happens, we'll be better off. When the dead people* in the front seats get their vengeance, hopefully all the institutions will crumble and we'll all be forced to take our blinders off or become what my favorite zombie shirt calls 'Post Consumer Human'.
*Yes, people. Not person, PEOPLE. While researching this post, I came across numerous other stories (like this one and this one) of dead people being ticketed while still in their cars.
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