Instead of "Sleeping Student Sues Teacher for Waking Him Up" (which is not why he sued her), the headline should say, "Student Sues Teacher for Inflicting Permanent Hearing Loss."
I do wonder why people were travelling with $6,000 in cash; is that common? Regardless, no matter what they were or were not actually doing, this is a sickening abuse of police power. I'd get the FBI and ACLU on this immediately.
Pagers weren't always able to receive numbers; the earliest one wouldn't do anything but go "beep" (or vibrate) when someone called them, so if your beeper went off you had to start calling everyone who had that number. When the new generation of them was able to receive numbers too, my (large) family devised an elaborate code system by which, using seven digits, you could let the beepee know who was calling, where you were, how important it was, and whether/how soon you needed them to call back. Some fun!
The article doesn't say whether the truck had the right of way or not; it sounds like they weren't at a crosswalk, in which case jaywalking is right. It's a shame he got injured so horribly, but you'd think if he cared enough to help the old ladies across the street, he'd care enough to do so in a safe manner. The American legal term for this is "comparative negligence" or "contributory negligence," by the way.
http://www.flickr.com/search/?ss=2&ct=3&w=all&q=kanazawa+garden&m=text