Editor:
The editorial in the June 20th edition of the Optimist was so wrong I am tempted to think it was written simply to create controversy.
You called it callous and self-involved that a writer objected to a three and a half hour traffic block so police could investigate a fatal accident. You dismissed as a mere inconvenience the fact that thousands couldn’t get where they needed to go.
Note that the unfortunate victim was not saved by the shutdown. What was at stake was evidence about who to blame for the accident, the semi, the first vehicle, or even the victim himself.
Weighed against that is that when thousands of people have their plans disrupted, inevitably some will have their lives changed forever, missing a job interview, a medical appointment, or a plane, or going into labour in mid tunnel.
This community has a history of waiting without complaint for paramedics to patch someone up, or a suicide to be talked down. Longtime residents will remember one such situation where grandmothers were forced to pee on the side of the road because traffic could not move.
It appears to me that a shutdown for legal or symbolic reasons, rather than to deal with an immediate emergency, brings the administration of compassion and fellow-feeling into disrepute.
Gail Neff Bell
