Comment by Tharkun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tharkun | Hacker News Reader

This is all anecdata, but the article and the study are totally contrary to my experience.

Over the years I've witnessed a variety of incidents where bystanders did nothing -- however once someone makes the first move, it seems to become easier for others to lend a hand.

When I was a teen, I dated someone who was a red cross volunteer, which prompted me to take a couple of first aid classes. This has easily been the most useful subject I've ever studied.

I've been witness to a suicide attempt, a cardiac arrest in a bar, an elderly lady who fell down the stairs at the opera, several cases of guys beating on their wives in public, two drunken attempted robberies, a variety of (literal) gay bashing, random subway violence, and oodles of shit I can't recall. The latest was two weeks ago: a hit and run with a teen victim with a very nasty headwound.

In every one of those cases, no one did anything. The old lady at the opera was the worst, I hadn't seen it happen, but I noticed a crowd of people on the staircase on my way out. Maybe 20 people standing around her in a circle. I asked if anyone had called for an ambulance yet, and no one even gave a coherent response...

I've also been the victim of a random assault, in a very busy park in broad daylight, and no one helped out. No one even dialed the emergency number, no one even approached me to ask whether I was ok afterwards. There were probably around a hundred witnesses.

I don't know whether this is a regional problem; most of these incidents occurred in Belgium. Belgians aren't the most outgoing or the most eager to take risks in general, but still.

Don't count on others to make the first move. Learn first aid and help out whenever someone is in trouble. Even if it does mean you'll be late for that important meeting or you could get blood on your shirt.

Violence is a bit trickier; what's worked well in my experience is to walk up to the aggressor, but to pick someone else from the crowd and plainly tell them "give me a hand". That gets the ball rolling.

Edit/addendum: every time something like this happens, I get an adrenaline rush and am scared out of my mind. I'm sure this happens to the other witnesses as well. I get it, it's hard to push through that, but do it anyway.

When I was growing up in a medium sized town in Africa. The community was particularly active when it came to apprehending criminals be it a thief or someone who had just assaulted a woman. The young men of the town would chase down the criminal. They always got caught because everyone would participate. The alleged criminal would then be frog marched to the nearest policeman. Look perhaps one or two members of the public would throw in a punch or a kick at the thief but mostly they just held him. The last thing you wanted was to be charged for assaulting a criminal. Anyway other vigilante communities were not as gentle as in my town and alleged thieves got seriously hurt and couple even died from mob justice. So there was a big drive to stamp out the public apprehending criminals. This introduced some uncertainty and sometimes people don't act. In short we are making the right laws and making people aware of them. But sometimes the effect is that we are left uncertain hence we don't act.

I think confusion is a big part of it. You often don't see the start of an incident, you're lost in your own business before your attention is drawn to something that might be nearly over before you even look at it. Who are these people? Is someone just messing around or is this real? Do they know each other? It takes us a long time generally to figure out how to respond to the truly unexpected.

I think the most amazing/hilarious example I've seen of one person starting something by making the first move is this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA8z7f7a2Pk

:)

  the article and the study
  are totally contrary to
  my experience

The article's definition of bystander intervention includes 'drunks held back from fighting by their buddies', assisting after the fight is over, and things like that.

And they only looked at conflict between people in city centres - so suicide attempts, cardiac arrests, falls, and hit-and-runs would all be excluded.

The article's findings sound plausible to me, given the inclusion and exclusion criteria.

It's laudable to stop violence, but

"lainly tell them "give me a hand". That gets the ball rolling."

is pretty tough. People have lots of reasons to not get involved in physical altercations and plenty of them are valid, so you're putting a pretty big burden on them.

Sure. But standing around, mouth agape, while a barkeep is getting harrassed by a drunk angrily swiging a bottle at their face is placing a pretty big burden on everyone else. "See something, say something" is the least anyone can do.

Of course, don't put yourself at risk unless you have to. But if there's a chance you can do some good, you should at least try.

As a victim of assault, getting physically injured sucks, but seeing a bunch of people around you refusing to help, that's pretty damaging to your view on humanity. Insult to injury, I guess you could say.

"But if there's a chance you can do some good, you should at least try."

Totally, I'm just saying that it's an important consideration before ordering a stranger to jump in.

Even people whose job it is to help will sit and watch stuff happen - I stopped an RNLI boat from floating away on an incoming tide, a lifeguard sat in their van and watched. One other person did come over to see if I needed help.

I think in that situation the two boat riders who had temporarily abandoned the boat - and who arrived back 5mins later - were viewed by this lifeguard as 'responsible' and they didn't want to step on their toes. But that boat, which they were using for an active search at the time, would have floated off.

What was most crazy to me was that they didn't thank me, they just sat in their van still.

> several cases of guys beating on their wives in public, two drunken attempted robberies, a variety of (literal) gay bashing, random subway violence, and oodles of shit I can't recall. The latest was two weeks ago: a hit and run with a teen victim with a very nasty headwound.

Wow, I had no idea Belgium was so violent!

And you still have no idea. These are anecdotes collected over a long period from which you can infer nothing.

Indeed. I certainly did not mean to imply that Belgium is particularly violent. These anecdotes span about two decades. Having spent most of that time living in dense population centres, usually in the poorer parts of town, has certainly added some bias to my sample.

Unfortunately, there is violence everywhere in the world.

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