Final Project: Research ProposalIn Weeks 1 through 9, you have created all the sections to be included in the research proposal. This week, you will collate all these sections and create the final dra

Running Head: BARRIERS THAT CAN BE LIFE OR DEATH SENTENCE 1

David M. Blanding

PSY3010 Social Psychology Week 3

April 26, 2020

Barriers That Can Be A Life or Death Sentence

Melissa and Jared were a young couple that had just graduated from college and was in their 2nd year of marriage. Melissa was 26 and Jared was 28 years old. Melissa was a physician’s assistant and Jared was an engineer. On May 28th 2017, they began traveling down highway 64 heading to West Virginia to visit their parents for their 50th wedding anniversary. They had been driving for 6 hours already and Jared stated that he was getting a little sleepy. Melissa suggested that she drive them the rest of the way since she had slept for most of the trip. Jared pulled the car over at the next exit. Melissa got in the driver’s seat and they continued their trip to their parents’ house. It was approaching 7pm eastern time and it started to rain heavily. Melissa turned on the windshield wipers and also leaned over and reached her hand to turn up the volume on the radio. Immediately, once Melissa removed her hand from the stereo and straightened up in her seat, she felt a big boom and her head went forcefully into the steering wheel. Jared had dozed off and woke up in shock. As soon as Melissa realized something had hit their car, she felt another bam in the back of them pushing her head into the airbag which had deployed from the first hit. Jared wasn’t wearing his seat belt. He took it off so that he could relax while Melissa was driving. When they got hit in the back, Jared flew through the windshield and his body was laying straightway on top of the car. Melissa was knocked unconscious and their car was now in the middle of the woods. They had been in a very serious car accident. A 12 passenger van hydroplaned and landed into Melissa’s lane and hit their vehicle, on the passenger side, while at the same time causing another vehicle to hit them from behind.

All of a sudden their car was surrounded by people speaking what sounded like a bunch of gibberish and wearing long garments with only their eyes revealed. Melissa being in so much pain, could not respond to the words of the people and to make matters worse, she couldn’t understand a word that they were saying. She was afraid for her life. She was saying to herself, please don’t hurt me. The people started to pull on Melissa to take her seatbelt off but she couldn’t move. The car had started smoking and the people were afraid that the car was going to catch on fire. Out of fear, the people started yelling even louder in their foreign language.

A car passing by had called 911 and when the police arrived they had an interpreter with them. The language that the other people was speaking was Arabic. The police began to check on Jared to ensure he didn’t have any life threatening injuries and then they looked at Melissa to make sure she was okay. The police notified the paramedics and they quickly came on the scene. Once the paramedics arrived they extracted Melissa from the vehicle and immediately placed Jared onto the stretcher. A few minutes later, the car blew up in flames. The people at the scene was explaining to the police that they were a group of students from Saudi Arabia that were on an internship assignment at John Hopkins. It was a total of 11 of them and none of them spoke English. What the students were trying to convey to Melissa and Jared, was that they wanted to drag them away from the car. But with the language barrier, and the unusual clothing, it just made things scarier for Melissa and more frustrating for the students were trying to help.

Melissa and Jared received the medical care that they needed but unfortunately were unable to make it to their parent’s home in time to celebrate their anniversary. They were grateful to be alive and apologized to the students for giving them a hard time when they were only trying to help. Melissa had prejudged them based on their language, their accent and the clothing that they were in (Arabesque, 2016) .

I think his could have ended up a little different if the students would have slowed down when they were yelling instead of getting louder. This just made the situation worse and scared Melissa and Jared even more after this very tragic accident. Maybe they could have lowered their voices and then their body languages could have revealed that they were actually trying to help and not attack them. This would have caused Melissa to welcome their assistance even though she couldn’t understand what they were saying she would only assume that they were trying to help her because of their gentleness and their tone. The cultural differences in Melissa and the students caused a delay in her and Jared getting out of the vehicle quicker. Melissa immediately built up a wall when she saw them and was even more frightened when they started trying to communicate with her.

References

Traditional urban men’s dress of Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabesque (2016)

Retrieved From: http://saudiarabesque.com/traditional-urban-men-s-dress-of-saudi-arabia/