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

#111

Post by djsumdog » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 4:26 PM UTC

jargnar wrote: post #93

A very real, slightly non-obvious problem is the size of the Indian population itself. There are so many people here that, competition is a stronger emotion than community. To an extent that sometimes it is considered normal to put someone else at risk for your benefit, while self-empathizing along the lines of "Hey, if I don't do it, someone else will stamp on that person to move ahead in life." Competition is every…

Fun fact, the train ticketing systems in India and China using Apache Geode for their backend.

Anyway, back to the point, I agree with you. Indian's population situation is really insane. Last time I was in India was in 1998 and the traffic situation was totally insane. All the red lights had "relax" written on them in English in an attempt to calm drivers down.

You'd think the 2nd most populated country in the world would be able to chose from that pool of talent; find the right people to help solve these major problems plaguing the nation.

But it doesn't work that way. People struggle to get out. My dad had dreams of returning. He visited after retiring and said the water is still unsafe to drink, the air unsafe to breath and a flat in Delhi was over $300k USD. Decades after he left, the situation has only gotten worse.

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

#112

Post by Udo » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

ccvannorman wrote: post #98

jargnar wrote: post #93

A very real, slightly non-obvious problem is the size of the Indian population itself. There are so many people here that, competition is a stronger emotion than community. To an extent that sometimes it is considered normal to put someone else at risk for your benefit, while self-empathizing along the lines of "Hey, if I don't do it, someone else will stamp on that person to move ahead in life." Competition is every…

Has India reached / is it reaching Peak Child? I know predictions globally are for ~9Bn people, I wonder how much of that will be in India.

India is projected to be one of the twelve countries who together will account for 50% of the world's population growth until 2050, at which point it's assumed India will host 1.7 billion humans. Asia will in total have gone from 4.3 to 5.2 billions, which is by far not as dramatic as the projected growth of Africa from 1.1 billion now to 2.5 billion in 2050.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

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

#113

Post by noir_lord » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 4:30 PM UTC

hrnnnnnn wrote: post #25

bnegreve wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's called the Bystander Effect, and the most disturbing thing about it is that its strength is in proportion to the number of people present. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

Years ago was cycling to work in winter and on the side of the road a young woman was sat in her panties and T-shirt vest crying, this was a main road, she was shivering violently, I stopped, rang for an ambulance and the police and gave her my outershell and fleece while the ambulance got there.

She'd been sat at the side of the road for at least half an hour in rush hour and one other person had phoned in but not stopped. I didn't know about the bystander effect at the time but ever since then if I see someone I distress/hurt I act straightaway on the assumption no one else has and it won't hurt if they have.

I was slightly ashamed of the people in my home town that day tbh.

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

#114

Post by vidarh » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 4:31 PM UTC

ccvannorman wrote: post #98

jargnar wrote: post #93

A very real, slightly non-obvious problem is the size of the Indian population itself. There are so many people here that, competition is a stronger emotion than community. To an extent that sometimes it is considered normal to put someone else at risk for your benefit, while self-empathizing along the lines of "Hey, if I don't do it, someone else will stamp on that person to move ahead in life." Competition is every…

Has India reached / is it reaching Peak Child? I know predictions globally are for ~9Bn people, I wonder how much of that will be in India.

No, they haven't. As of 2013, the UN projected India's population to surpass China by 2028, and peak at ca. 1.6 billion in 2050, and fall back to about 1.5 billion by 2100.

For comparison China is expected to start declining around 2030, and fall to around 1.1 billion by 2100.

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

#115

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 4:32 PM UTC

tunap wrote: post #37

hrnnnnnn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called the Bystander Effect, and the most disturbing thing about it is that its strength is in proportion to the number of people present. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

Yep. Take charge until an authority arrives. Engage the victim, if conscious, ask questions and gather any info you can to give to 1st responder to arrive on scene. Give direct commands to specific peoples. Do NOT make matters worse by moving the injured unless immediate danger is present. Most importantly, educate yourself/certify beforehand. I used my CPR cert once 25 years ago, yet I still renew it every year. Oh…

> Oh yeah, when the pro does arrive, don't take it personally if he/she is brusque or 'rude'. They are sometimes brutally efficient.

This. Also, for some medical personnel being brusque and (apparently) unattached is the only way for them to not crack under seeing death every day.

It's a fucking hard job and I highly respect everyone in the field.

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

#116

Post by zyxley » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

FussyZeus wrote: post #75

weeksie wrote: post #49

A little tangental. Indians are insanely good drivers given their actual traffic conditions. I just spent two months there and as (fucking annoying) as it was to walk through the crowds with motorcycles whipping by, inches away from me all the time, I wasn't very concerned with them hitting me. Anecdotally, everybody appeared to be watching everyone else on the road—otherwise it would have been sheer insanity because…

I've always been curious where the downright crazy driving style/culture came from in India. It's like nowhere I've ever seen, they drive on whatever side of the road they want, there are no traffic lights, I mean I get that it's a developing country but none of this stuff is that expensive to procure, is it?

Coordinated control of traffic lights isn't cheap. Some quick googling says $250K to $500K per signal[1] when done from scratch.

[1]: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Operations/Traffic/signals.htm

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

#117

Post by ocean3 » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 4:36 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…

Driving in India is kind of insane. You need some skill to navigate the roads without hitting anyone. Need to watch all around. But in cities traffic moves very slowly so you can manage it.

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

#118

Post by zyxley » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 4:36 PM UTC

sly010 wrote: post #33

I can't find it now, but there is a video of a dozen pedestrians lifting a double decker in London. It's all started by a single person, but others quickly joined. I wonder where is "helping others" on the Maslow piramid? Edit: Found: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32993891

That's a good example of both crowd generosity and crowd stupidity: everybody joined in on trying to lift the bus instead of just making the bus driver reverse off the guy who was trapped.

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

#119

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

simula67 wrote: post #45

> legal proceedings can be notoriously protracted in India This is the root of so much evil in India. It is probably the largest issue facing this country. Every citizen should have a fundamental right to a speedy resolution to their grievances.

To be fair, it's not just India that faces this problem. Italy, and to a lesser extent France, are kept back in economic development due to extremely long (civil) legal proceedings - in fact, Berlusconi and his crooks abused this multiple times to STFO of jail time.

In Germany, it's mostly the criminal justice system that suffers from massive case overload - it takes sometimes over a year to get the first trial in a simple pub brawl case or a small store theft - and that disconnect between infraction and punishment has been shown multiple times to result in more infractions (because thieves will think "ah, won't happen anything anyway").

I get why people want to claim India is a 3rd world country (and, for what it's worth, parts of India ARE, given e.g. sanitary conditions!), but one should not compare based on the efficiency of the legal system. Some might say that the USA could be considered a 3rd world country under this comparison, given that you can land in jail for civil debt, end up life-long in prison for small thefts (3 Strike Rule), end up on the chair for dealing drugs, ...

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

#120

Post by crimsonalucard » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 4:40 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #94

jlg23 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really relevant, the problem in China is that one has[1] to pay for a disabled person for all that person's life while a death incurs a one time payment. [1] IIRC the recently changed the relevant laws or are currently debating to change them.

The problem is also that you risk getting blamed merely for helping, This is why it is relevent.

IMO the above case is more of a symptom of the problem rather than what causes the problem itself. Someone who helps is implicated as guilty because being indifferent and lacking morals is expected behavior, while 'helping' is considered highly abnormal and therefore the action is suspect.

From personal experience I do not believe this is the real reason for why a family is left dying on the road. When I travel to certain countries in Asia I notice that there is a severe lack of morals and ethics. Heck in China, drivers back up over accident victims that they just hit to make sure the victim is dead so as to avoid a lifetime of hospital fees. I mean, this is murder done in the name to avoid paying a fee.

What you see here in India is part of this same lack of ethics and morals that pervade certain cultures. People are honestly capable of great evil.

What makes one culture more ethical than another country? I believe that the anthropological correlation lies in wealth and population. If a country is of high population and poor, then you will see more of this type of behavior.

High population cities that are wealthy like tokyo or singapore are not like this at all while in the rural areas of nepal I've seen a sherpa carry an injured european stranger on his back down a mountain to base camp.

Of course this is all anecdotal. There really needs to be a scientific study on ethics and culture. It would be a very touchy subject though as the results of the study will implicate some cultures as more 'evil' than others.