My "good" deed for the day

This morning (Wednesday) I witnessed a traffic accident on Merrimac Street. By "witnessed" I mean I heard a loud crash and looked. I'll explain that later.

A young woman rear-ended a rather large pickup truck with a rather small Honda while heading east. Actually, he was stopped in traffic.

I noticed that the radiator on the Honda was leaking so I followed both vehicles into the parking lot of the Fitness Factory so I could tell the driver. They moved there because people started blowing their horns. Nice.

She had hit her head on the windshield and had cracked the windshield ... with her head.

She kept saying she was alright. The driver of the pickup, a man, kept pulling his cell phone out of his jacket pocket but was not calling anyone.

So I finally asked, "Do you want me to call the police?" because a head injury is nothing to mess around with.

But I wonder ... I mean, the man thanked me for my help as he left the scene (after the girl had been carted off in an ambulance), but ... again, I just wonder if she would have gone on her way, left to diagnose her own condition?

I'm not trying to glorify myself - I think it was more female/maternal instinct than any particular trait of my own - and besides that, the man said she had told him that she was not paying attention -

Well neither was I. She was in the car ahead of me, in the same lane of traffic, but I was distracted by the big old trolley parked where the pedicab place was last year. I was wondering where the pedicabs live now.

So the lessons I learned were: (1) a victim is not the best judge of whether he or she is "alright" and (2) it's so easy to get distracted while you're driving.

I was lucky I was relatively far behind her or I would have been involved in the crash.

I hope she's okay.