Tonight I got to see ignorance in its purist form. Just when I thought I’d seen it all, something else comes up. I always joke around that I keep going back to work just to see what’s going to happen next. As usual, I wasn’t disappointed.

I was sent to a traffic collision involving two vehicles on the west side of the city. When we arrived, my partner spoke to both drivers while I helped out with the paperwork. The victim driver was a Korean male in his 70s, who spoke little English. The driver who rear ended him was a Caucasian female in her early 20s.

Through translation, the male told my partner he was making a right turn into the driveway when he was rear ended. The female driver said the vehicle in front of her was stopped and she never saw it slow down. I asked her what she was doing inside the car at the time to prevent her from seeing the vehicle slow down. She replied she was just driving down the street.

It didn’t take a first grader to know she wasn’t paying attention when the vehicle slowed down in front of her. The points of rest and damage supported the victim’s version of the story.

While I was filling out paperwork she kept telling someone that the vehicle was stopped in front of her. She said it over and over to a point where I wanted to say, “You just can’t go around crashing into people.” I just held my tongue as she whined and didn’t accept responsibility for what she had done.

That’s when the man, who I assumed was her father said, “Asian drivers.”

The woman replied, “Do I have permission to be slightly racist now?”

All I could say to myself was “wow” because I was only 7-10 feet away from them when they said this. It was as if I was invisible. Who would say that in front of a cop investigating their collision?

I couldn’t believe this ignorant knucklehead was actually mad at the old guy she had just crashed into. Never mind the 100 feet of pre-impact locked wheel skid marks her vehicle left before the crash. I just stood there and shook my head as I watched pure ignorance in action.

This was the perfect example of the common theme of the blog, which is,  “You just can’t make this stuff up.”

Be safe out there.