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

bbc.co.uk

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

#181

Post by gozur88 »

mikeash wrote: post #38
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…

Would you still do that if you had friends or family who had been bankrupted or jailed because they helped a crash victim? It's easy to say that you would help when it's a hypothetical situation. It's much harder to actually do it when the consequences are staring you in the face. Maybe you still would, but you can't really know how you'd react until you've actually been in that situation. Indians are not fundamental…

The "safety campaigner" has the right idea - change the incentives. People respond to incentives, and if the incentives are heavily against helping strangers the average Amit isn't going to help.

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

#182

Post by mschuster91 »

pjlegato wrote: post #177
mschuster91 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Third world country" is not shorthand for "poor, backwards land." It means a country that was not aligned with either the United States (first world) or the Soviet Union (second world) during the Cold War.

I know, but for what it's worth it means the same thing.

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

#184

Post by Loughla »

abraham_s wrote: post #136

1) This is highly dependent on the place. In rural areas or smaller towns, there is high probability that someone will take you to the hospital. 2) There is no equivalent of 911 in India. You can call the police but they usually don't have ambulances. Most cases you will have to take the injured in a private vehicle to the hospital. 3) Harassment by police is a real thing in many places. They will suspect you of bein…

Real naive question time, sorry ahead of time - are the police as corrupt as they're portrayed to be in western media? Bribes requested constantly, that sort of thing?

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

#185

Post by redmaverick »

varchar wrote: post #133

My family has lived in South India for many decades. India's infrastructure and emergency response in not very good although it has improved over the years. One thing I have observed is - it is the bystanders, the common man who rushe to the aid of victims in case of disasters - accidents, train derailment, floods, earthquakes. I could give you dozens of examples gathered from newspapers and from first hand experienc…

Even my family lived in India for many decades. The most common refrain culturally is "Don't get involved. It will end up becoming a police case!"

The police are under pressure to resolve the case and the first person to be taken into custody is the good samaritan.

This is the issue with reports like this - they pick one or two such statistically rare case

No! This is not a rare thing. This is common knowledge. I think the real issue is people trying to put it under the rug because they don't want their country to lose "honor" on a globally popular news site.

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

#186

Post by overcast »

sonink wrote: post #131
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…

Driving in India is only insane to westerners. I have been driving in India for a decade and I dont find it hard at all. Driving in the US though is one of the most stressfull things for me. Part of the stress in US is because of the different side driving, but also a lot because I have to keep in mind a TON of rules - lane markers, speed limits, lane changing etc.- and everyone moves in super high speed so any mista…

I just spent a month in India, and the driving is COMPLETELY INSANE. Saying it's only insane to Westerners, is the same as saying it's only not insane to South East Asians. If you're not tied up in absolutely hellish gridlock for an hour and a half to go ten miles. You're flying down "highways", playing constant chicken with every single oncoming vehicle. There is no argument that complete anarchy on the road ways is less stressful than actual civilized structure. It's not even worth going out at night further than you can walk, because by the time you got there, the night would be over. Red light? Bah, I'll go through it. Car there? I'll run into it. People walking? Ahhh they'll move. Wasting hours of your life to drive across town everyday? Pfft, who needs a life. Want a car with a seat belt? GOOD LUCK.

Nothing about any of that says stress free. Even if the traffic was perfect, the streets lined with absolute filth is enough to stress anyone out.

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

#187

Post by NTDF9 »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #140

When I visited India a couple of years ago, we also observed this indifference towards victims of accidents. Someone noticed that we were puzzled by this a told us that this is due to Indian culture. First, if someone is seriously hurt or killed that's this person's (perhaps deserved) fate. Second, helping others may not be as much a moral imperative as it is in Christian cultures. I don't know whether this is correc…

There are so many different types of Indian people in India, it's hard to generalize.

- There will be some people who believe that this was deserved - There will be some who believe they should help right away - There will be some who want to help but have no financial or social resources to do so - There will be some who'll act as bystanders to avoid Police investigation - There will be some who'll do the bare minimum help (maybe find the victim's id and call someone) but then run away...anonymous help

There are many different Indians (often within the same city, same neighborhood)

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

#188

Post by mikeash »

ars wrote: post #176
mikeash wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what a true free-market health care system looks like. I always wonder about this when I see people arguing against socialized medicine. Should accident victims be left to die like this? Any answer besides "yes" implies some sort of government intervention. In the US, since 1986, ERs must treat everyone. This basically gave us a really bizarre socialized medicine system with horribly inefficient funding and p…

It used to be that charitable societies setup funds within hospitals to pay for such people. If they were able to bill insurance, or the person, later, then the fund would be replenished. So it is possible to say "yes" and not have government involved.

So when we take a look at societies that actually do it this way, such as India today or the USA before 1986, why do we find hospitals dumping patients who can't pay?

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

#189

Post by shripadk »

ars wrote: post #176
mikeash wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what a true free-market health care system looks like. I always wonder about this when I see people arguing against socialized medicine. Should accident victims be left to die like this? Any answer besides "yes" implies some sort of government intervention. In the US, since 1986, ERs must treat everyone. This basically gave us a really bizarre socialized medicine system with horribly inefficient funding and p…

It used to be that charitable societies setup funds within hospitals to pay for such people. If they were able to bill insurance, or the person, later, then the fund would be replenished. So it is possible to say "yes" and not have government involved.

That exists in India in the form of societies like Lions Club, Rotary Club etc. However, the number of hospitals that are supported by these charitable societies are understandably smaller in comparison to the number of private hospitals.

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

#190

Post by wyager »

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…

>it is dangerously becoming almost culturally normal to prioritize your life over someone else's

Uh, yes? I prioritize my own life over the life of any other individual. I hope others do too, or else I worry about their sense of self-worth.

That doesn't mean I don't care about anyone else, just that I do care about myself slightly more than I care about any random person.

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