The true nature of people: stupid, impatient and completely uncaring

This is a rant post. Can you tell?!

I had plans to attend a writing seminar in Austin this evening, and since Jeff is out of town, his parents volunteered to keep the kids for me. I dropped the kiddos off at their house, visited for a little while, and then started making my way toward Austin. I only made it about 20 miles before I came upon an infinitely long line of traffic at a dead stop, and there I stayed for more than an hour. There was a train on the track parallel to the highway that would go forward and then back, over and over again, obviously trying to redirect its path. I saw a fleet of emergency vehicles, what looked like a couple of hearses, and the AirEvac helicopter come in for a landing. Obviously, there was a major problem. Thus, the stopped traffic. And, the emergency vehicles. But many of the other drivers seemed to to be completely oblivious to the trauma happening just a half a mile in front of us. They began making unsafe u-turns into the oncoming traffic lanes, off-roading through the bar ditch, climbing out of their vehicles, beating on the sides of their cars and yelling rude and even obscene things into the air. People were literally dying right in front of them, and they acted as if this had all just been an elaborate scheme with the sole objective of delaying and irritating them, or maybe even, for the ultra-curious ones, of entertaining them. And, most of them seemed not even to give a thought to the fact that it could have been them in that car accident or to acknowledge that none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. It made me so angry, and so sad. Is this really how people are deep down inside? And not even so deep down? Are they really more concerned with getting home to watch some stupid reality t.v show than they are about human life? Obviously, accidents like this happen every day. But, this is the first incidence like this I have been thrown into in quite some time, and I'll tell you, it didn't do much for my thoughts toward humanity, in general. What a sad, sad lot.

Here's the news story about the accident, if you want more information.