If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why • Hacker News Board

Re: If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why

#11

Post by tunap » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 1:49 PM UTC

Tragic. I, personally, could not sit idly by and watch, or record, anyone suffering without attempting to assist. Consequences be damned, I would hope for the same assistance if I were injured & needing aid.

This is something I have spent a lot of time contemplating lately as I watch people texting while operating multi-ton vehicles at any speed, let alone at 80mph(130kmh)down the highway. I have witnessed a notable increase in single vehicle rollovers under optimum driving conditions on the US highway system in the last +/- two years. Thankfully, I have yet to arrive before the 1st responders but if I ever do, I will forgo the "they brought it upon themselves" judgement and assist my fellow man/woman, if need be. Yet, I still wonder, how many could have been avoided if distracted driving laws already on the books were enforced?

Re: If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why

#12

Post by aaron695 » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 1:51 PM UTC

po wrote: post #7

jasode wrote: post #5

China also has similar culture of punishing good samaritans: http://www.businessinsider.com/two-year-old-hit-by-car-in-ch...

It's worse than that, the incentives are such that it's better to kill than maim: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2... (although this is apparently in question: http://www.snopes.com/chinese-drivers-kill-pedestrians/ ) This is one of those subjects where people like to put moral consequences on the bystanders when it's the rules and larger structures of the society that matter. Driving in I…

[deleted]

http://www.snopes.com/chinese-drivers-kill-pedestrians/

In a country of 1 billion+ people you'll always get these stories.

Since as we know, we get in them in the west as well, the media will drum up, child left to die by road.

When we all know the drivers just didn't seem them or didn't know what happened. But that's a crappy story.

People help people in obvious severe immediate need and take risks doing it. It's human nature.

They get bystanders effect and sometimes they won't know they are in severe immediate need (A sleeping homeless person vs someone unconscious) but they don't ignore them because they will be sued.

Blaming people because of bystanders effect is poor form.

Re: If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why

#13

Post by kiba » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 1:51 PM UTC

tunap wrote: post #11

Tragic. I, personally, could not sit idly by and watch, or record, anyone suffering without attempting to assist. Consequences be damned, I would hope for the same assistance if I were injured & needing aid. This is something I have spent a lot of time contemplating lately as I watch people texting while operating multi-ton vehicles at any speed, let alone at 80mph(130kmh)down the highway. I have witnessed a notable…

How do you know it's notable in the first place? Do you have statistics for that?

Re: If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why

#14

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 1:52 PM UTC

po wrote: post #7

jasode wrote: post #5

China also has similar culture of punishing good samaritans: http://www.businessinsider.com/two-year-old-hit-by-car-in-ch...

It's worse than that, the incentives are such that it's better to kill than maim: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2... (although this is apparently in question: http://www.snopes.com/chinese-drivers-kill-pedestrians/ ) This is one of those subjects where people like to put moral consequences on the bystanders when it's the rules and larger structures of the society that matter. Driving in I…

My brother and sister-in-law were being driven to the airport to come home (to Cupertino) by his Father-in-law, at 2 in the morning. He drove at high speed, ignoring traffic lights and signs. They were alarmed; he was unconcerned. "Nobody is about this time in the night; we're perfectly safe!" So there's some kind of mass insanity going on in India for sure.

Re: If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why

#15

Post by Jtsummers » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 1:58 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #13

tunap wrote: post #11

Tragic. I, personally, could not sit idly by and watch, or record, anyone suffering without attempting to assist. Consequences be damned, I would hope for the same assistance if I were injured & needing aid. This is something I have spent a lot of time contemplating lately as I watch people texting while operating multi-ton vehicles at any speed, let alone at 80mph(130kmh)down the highway. I have witnessed a notable…

How do you know it's notable in the first place? Do you have statistics for that?

> I have witnessed a notable increase in single vehicle rollovers under optimum driving conditions on the US highway system [emphasis added]

The comment was one of personal experience, what they've witnessed.

Re: If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why

#16

Post by wmt » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 2:00 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #9

Gys wrote: post #2

tl;dr: "The foremost reason was intimidation by police," he says. "Oftentimes if you assist someone the police will assume you're helping that person out of guilt." Apart from the fear of being falsely implicated, people also worried about becoming trapped as a witness in a court case - legal proceedings can be notoriously protracted in India. And if they helped the victim get to hospital, they feared coming under pr…

You're missing the section at the end about hospitals refusing treatment when someone's brought in by a stranger that won't be paying.

I wonder how does that even work? If someone drops in an injured person and leaves, will the hospital just let the injured person die on the floor? If bystanders doing nothing raises headlines in India, I'd imagine hospitals doing that would be an even bigger scandal.

Re: If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why

#17

Post by adrianN » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

aaron695 wrote: post #12

po wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than that, the incentives are such that it's better to kill than maim: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2... (although this is apparently in question: http://www.snopes.com/chinese-drivers-kill-pedestrians/ ) This is one of those subjects where people like to put moral consequences on the bystanders when it's the rules and larger structures of the society that matter. Driving in I…

[deleted] http://www.snopes.com/chinese-drivers-kill-pedestrians/ In a country of 1 billion+ people you'll always get these stories. Since as we know, we get in them in the west as well, the media will drum up, child left to die by road. When we all know the drivers just didn't seem them or didn't know what happened. But that's a crappy story. People help people in obvious severe immediate need and take risks doing i…

Your comment would be much nicer without that first sentence.

Re: If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why

#18

Post by parennoob » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 2:07 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #14

po wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than that, the incentives are such that it's better to kill than maim: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2... (although this is apparently in question: http://www.snopes.com/chinese-drivers-kill-pedestrians/ ) This is one of those subjects where people like to put moral consequences on the bystanders when it's the rules and larger structures of the society that matter. Driving in I…

My brother and sister-in-law were being driven to the airport to come home (to Cupertino) by his Father-in-law, at 2 in the morning. He drove at high speed, ignoring traffic lights and signs. They were alarmed; he was unconcerned. "Nobody is about this time in the night; we're perfectly safe!" So there's some kind of mass insanity going on in India for sure.

This is the kind of low-effort, off-the-cuff pronouncement that I hate seeing on here. Because an Indian (presumably) you knew was driving in an unsafe manner, you can directly make pronouncements about "mass insanity" about a country of a billion people?

Mind you, I'm not saying Indians are safe drivers. Indian driving, I freely admit, is spectacularly unsafe and makes me worried. There are a host of factors that cause this unsafe driving, including:

- Roads built for way smaller cars

- The sudden liberalization of the economy in the 90s leading to way more vehicles than the roads were designed for

- A lot of people owning a vehicle, and having social expectations from them about automatically knowing how to drive (I'm not kidding, and we're talking stick shift here)

- Traffic policemen numbers from the middle of the last century

- Mushrooming urbanization and the resultant low level of trust among urban populations

...but "some kind of mass insanity is going on in India because my brother's Indian father-in-law ran a bunch of red lights at 2am" is ridiculous.

Re: If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why

#19

Post by bnegreve » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 2:10 PM UTC

tunap wrote: post #11

Tragic. I, personally, could not sit idly by and watch, or record, anyone suffering without attempting to assist. Consequences be damned, I would hope for the same assistance if I were injured & needing aid. This is something I have spent a lot of time contemplating lately as I watch people texting while operating multi-ton vehicles at any speed, let alone at 80mph(130kmh)down the highway. I have witnessed a notable…

> I, personally, could not sit idly by and watch, or record, anyone suffering without attempting to assist.

We should be careful with this kind of statements. I remember that in Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman describes an experiment which shows that most people don't actually take action when the responsibility is shared among other people. Of course most people think they would.

Re: If no-one helps you after a car crash in India, this is why

#20

Post by tunap » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 2:12 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #13

tunap wrote: post #11

Tragic. I, personally, could not sit idly by and watch, or record, anyone suffering without attempting to assist. Consequences be damned, I would hope for the same assistance if I were injured & needing aid. This is something I have spent a lot of time contemplating lately as I watch people texting while operating multi-ton vehicles at any speed, let alone at 80mph(130kmh)down the highway. I have witnessed a notable…

How do you know it's notable in the first place? Do you have statistics for that?

I have never looked into any statistics other than personal observation. Sure, correltion != causation. However, I have over 6000 highway driving miles logged so far this year and have witnessed at least a dozen single vehicle rollover incidents, excluding incidents in rain & snow conditions, while in the recent past I could travel 10k miles and never see one. My ASSUMPTION derives from the fact that it is not uncommon to see drivers interacting with their devices (and weaving, and varying velocities) on the highways.