[m0nty]

A few weeks ago, I was pedalling to work in the rain when I saw something which briefly made me well up with rage: a car parked diagonally across the cycle lane, driver clearly on the phone - a new level of "f*ck you" from a motorist to cyclists. But then I saw the skid-marks leading across the verge from the road, and I realised this was a bit more serious. I stopped and tapped on the window. She was very distraught, nearly hysterical. It was a single-vehicle accident caused by sliding out of control on the very water-logged roundabout. The thing she kept saying over and over was "nobody stopped to help! They all just keep on driving past!"

So I phoned the police and stayed with her for the next 20 minutes, until the police showed up. I was getting soaked in the rain and making myself late, but felt I owed it to her to stay put and make sure she came through it all OK. As I remounted my bike and rode away, it occurred to me that she didn't at any point thank me, and since then has made no attempt to contact me even though we discussed where I work (just across the road from her) as part of the small-talk. So in her own way, she was doing the same thing as the other drivers who had so upset her, albeit inadvertently. I probably wouldn't have stopped either, except she was literally blocking my path.

So it's easy to marvel at how disassociated we all are. A different thing entirely to do anything meaningful about it, even on a purely personal level. There's not much to be gained from interacting with strangers, even less when there's a risk of being dragged into someone else's potentially violent confrontation. This is not a problem with phones, it's a problem with excessively large communities where we will probably never run into each other again. So why take the risk?

[JPKab]

When I was 12 years old, a larger, older boy was drowning in the Chesapeake Bay. It was the kind of beach where the water is knee deep for 100 years out from shore, but then suddenly drops off to 11 feet or so of water.

He was bouncing off the bottom to get air (he couldn't swim) but his face was turning blue, and he was making choking noises and frantically splashing. I tried to grab him, and pull him to the sandbar. He clawed onto me and began drowning me. I punched and pried and kicked underwater to get him off of me, and thanked God when I got him off and got ten feet away and got air again. I yelled for help. The people on the beach 100 yards away did nothing. Perhaps it was disbelief... I ran through the knee deep water as fast as I could to them and yelled for help as I got there. Nobody moved. I wasn't thinking, just moving, and there were those styrofoam noodles on the ground next to their blanket. I snatched one without saying a word and ran back to the water faster than I ever have before.

By the time I got to him it was ugly. He was still bouncing up from the bottom, but he was barely conscious, and his face looked like something from a horror movie. I've seen some horrific shit, but a drowning person at that stage looks like a zombie. He grabbed the noodle, and I pulled him the 15 feet or so to the sandbar. 15 feet, and it was knee deep water. He couldn't walk, and I picked him up fireman's style, and he was coughing out and puking water all down my back as I carried him to shore. This was the 90s, so there were no cell phones in the rural county I lived in. I ran into a house near the beach and had the ambulance come. He almost died later of a lung infection, but he's ok now.

I asked my dad that night why nobody helped. My dad told me that I was a "helper" like him. (he was a volunteer EMT his whole life, and a volunteer fireman. Plus I watched him help strangers all the time growing up.) "Most people aren't helpers." he said.

As I've gotten older, I figured out that is the case. And when you a helper, you have to help a lot. I don't know what it is, but basically maybe 80 to 90% of people don't do shit in these situations. They subconsciously don't even notice. And being a helper sucks, a lot, sometimes, but you still do it because you don't think you just do and your gut won't let you. You can't walk away because of some deep down feeling that you are subhuman if you do.

My worst helper experience was stopping a guy in a rural NC bar's parking lot from beating his girlfriend. I started fighting him, and his GF (who he had just been beating) smashed a bottle on my head. My vision went blurry, and she jumped on my back and I fell to the ground. They both then proceeded to beat the shit out of me on the gravel parking lot ground.

Now, I avoid going into the "hipster" neighborhoods of DC. As my wife pointed out, nobody in these neighborhoods is a helper. Helpers can't live in these neighborhoods long, because inevitably you end up getting sucked into this shit and you are always alone.

Did I oversimplify? Maybe. But that's my experience. I can't help but help people in trouble, and in urban and suburban areas, its probably a bad evolutionary strategy. In the country, not so much. People care there, and they reciprocate. This is probably due to such small social groups....... Wow, I ranted for a while.

I'm so sorry for this woman...... I wish I'd have been there.

[lectrick]

> I started fighting him, and his GF (who he had just been beating) smashed a bottle on my head.

I'd say "what in the actual fuck," but I know that those sorts of patterns are self-perpetuating and that since the woman was already in a place where she was allowing him to beat her, she'd fight to preserve status quo, as fucked up as that is. Did you first at least attempt to verbally stop him before you took it to the physical? Anyway, wow.

[crashoverdrive]

Thank you, this helps.

[k-mcgrady]

>> "As I remounted my bike and rode away, it occurred to me that she didn't at any point thank me..." >> "There's not much to be gained from interacting with strangers..."

Good on you for stopping to help but why do you feel like you should have to gain something by helping someone else? The woman you helped was still probably quite shocked and dealing with police to thank you and it's highly likely that in such a situation information like where you worked completely went over her head.

I think this is one of the reasons people have stopped helping others - they expect something in return. If I helped someone the only thing I'd expect in return would be that if the person I helped is ever in a situation where they can provide help to someone else, they'll remember the time they were helped by a stranger and take action.

Side point

>> "There's not much to be gained from interacting with strangers, even less when there's a risk of being dragged into someone else's potentially violent confrontation."

The second part of this statement interests me. Is fear of something (that is highly unlikely to occur) a reason people don't get involved? It made me think of Michael Moore's conclusion in Bowling for Columbine that America's love of guns is based on fear that they will be attacked, mugged, home invaded etc. This may also be a reason people don't get involved in situation they can't control even though it's highly unlikely they are in any danger.

[m0nty]

> If I helped someone the only thing I'd expect in return would be that if the person I helped is ever in a situation where they can provide help to someone else, they'll remember the time they were helped by a stranger and take action.

You say that as if it's a minor thing ("the only thing I'd expect") but you might be expecting someone to risk their life, get accused of rape by an unstable person, put themselves in danger of injury or lawsuit. It's not a trivial matter. I personally wasn't expecting anything from this person I helped, I was just pointing out that she ended up being no different from the other drivers around her - just less fortunate.

As Anderkent says, on a basic level, we're all expecting "something in return". We help other people, maybe they'll help us one day. But this instinct is tuned to small communities (in which we evolved) where "paying it forward" like this is very likely to occur in a short space of time. You help me carry my kill home, you can have some of the meat. You help me get my harvest in, I'll help you raise that barn. But in large communities (several million strong, in some cases) these opportunities will be limited so we are more reluctant to get involved. We might not be consciously weighing profit and loss, but on a subconscious or instinctive level, we are.

[wozniacki]

  You say that as if it's a minor thing ("the only thing 
  I'd expect") but you might be expecting someone to risk
  their life, get accused of rape by an unstable person,
  put themselves in danger of injury or lawsuit. It's 
  not a trivial matter.

Strongly seconded.

This happens more often than one would think.

I do not want to alarm anyone but it is not entirely out of the bounds of reason to expect law enforcement to NOT acknowledge your good Samaritanism or worse, punish you for it.

"Good Samaritan Backfire or How I Ended Up in Solitary After Calling 911 for Help"

Discussed previously here on HN :

How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233730

Direct link to blog :

https://medium.com/human-parts/9f53ef6a1c10

[hollerith]

That guy did not leave after the police arrived and told him to leave (according to his own account, at the URL you give).

[metastew]

But does that even justify the police brutality though? He didn't want to leave without his friend (who was supporting the girl while she was getting up when the police pulled him off).

No, the police is definitely in the wrong here.

[netcan]

That sounds not very far removed from: "She burned the dinner after I told her I was hungry.

[hollerith]

>You help me carry my kill home, you can have some of the meat. You help me get my harvest in, I'll help you raise that barn.

What you describe is reciprocity, trading favors or "paying it back". "Paying it forward" is something different and rarer.

[madaxe_again]

There quite definitely is something to be gained by helping strangers.

1) Your humanity and self-respect. It feels damnably good to know you've done something to help someone who needed it.

2) Serendipity. Maybe, just maybe, that person that you reach out to will somehow bless your life. Maybe they'll bite you. It's all experience, and a yarn to tell at the least.

I don't think that it's that people expect something in return, it's that society has increasingly pushed in the direction of passive consumption, of observation, of spectacle, and the actions of others on a flickering screen providing the ersatz satisfaction of actual action.

I witness this variety of thing all too frequently - someone's in trouble, and a crowd stands, and watches, much as they would the same events on television.

I can at least live in good conscience that I always step in to help, consequences be damned - and yes, I've had my share of negative consequences - lawsuit from a girl who was being beaten senseless by her "man", for intervening and causing her to scrape her knee (never mind the blood gushing from her face by the time I showed up) - lawsuit from a guy who had an epileptic fit, and I phoned for an ambulance, resulting in him being arrested on an outstanding warrant - and arrest and a broken nose for breaking up a bar-fight. Plenty else too, but those were the major ones.

Such is life, but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't.

[ryanjshaw]

As somebody who's been in a situation similar to this (fortunately they never got as far as pulling the knife because I stopped traffic), I still find it hard to blame people who don't help - you need to know where to draw the line in help, and it's a very blurry line. Your personal experiences are sadly biased; more than one helpful person has ended up dead because they were out of their depth [1][2][3]. As you say, such is life.

[1] http://blog.er24.co.za/2010/11/young-man-killed-in-good-sama...

[2] http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/good-samaritan-brutal...

[3] http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/sowetan/archive/2007/10/25/warn...

[circlefavshape]

upvoted for being a proper human being

[Anderkent]

>I think this is one of the reasons people have stopped helping others - they expect something in return.

People always expected something in return, the thing that changes is that you no longer get it. In a small community, you're likely to meet the person you helped again, and thus leaving them stranded will definitely bite you. Not so in the current huge cities.

You say 'if I helped someone the only thing I'd expect in return would be that if the person I helped is ever in a situation where they can provide help to someone else, they'll remember the time they were helped by a stranger and take action', but is this sufficient motivation for you to actually go out and help people?

[k-mcgrady]

>> "is this sufficient motivation for you to actually go out and help people?"

Yes. But more than that it's the fact that I find it morally very wrong to ignore someone who needs your help. I can think of several situations where I've went out of my way to help someone. I don't want to sound like a great human being going round helping the needy (I'm not) but if I can help, I do.

[kileywm]

>> "The woman you helped was still probably quite shocked and dealing with police to thank you and it's highly likely that in such a situation information like where you worked completely went over her head."

Having never truly experienced trauma (closest I came was a low-speed car collision on college campus) I find it fascinating how the victim suspends empathy during trauma. For me, empathy is nearly constant, so it is difficult for me to grasp a state where it wouldn't be so, as ironic as that is for someone with empathy!

As for why people don't help strangers more often than not... I believe this behavior is supported by our modern society. We've institutionalized helping people. Through taxes, we provide emergency response teams like Fire and Police departments. We provide medical, food, and housing assistance to many in need - at least the ones willing to ask for it. And yes - some assistance is volunteer, such as soup kitchens and volunteer fire departments, but I do believe the trend to be real... Taxpayers pay others to help people for them. Helpers in this society get monetary compensation.

[sonnym]

The beginning of your story reminded me of the wonderful commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005 [1]. It is very easy to well up with rage, but it is significantly more difficult to understand the context of another's actions. Sometimes I have to stop and tell myself "This is water" and try to put myself in the shoes of the stranger who has enraged me. I do applaud your stopping to help, and I find it unfortunate the experience was not more rewarding.

1. http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf

[m0nty]

Actually, it was very rewarding, which surprised me immensely. I'm not too surprised she didn't thank me - as k-mcgrady says, she was busy with the police by that time. But equally, we shouldn't be that surprised that people are preoccupied with their own problems and so don't stop to help us.

[Fuxy]

You're pretty much on your own in a large city never expect anybody to help you.

The only people that will help you is family and friends.

Risking your life, safety or just wasting time for the sake of helping a stranger happens as often as people donating large amounts to charity.

So if you want to fight your robber you better have a large knife or gun on your person because people won't help you.

[darkFunction]

I experienced this in London after being mugged. I had to walk a long way to a police station because every person I asked for assistance refused to either lend me their phone or to phone the police themselves.

[bluerobotcat]

To be fair, that does sound like it could be a scam. Also, presumably all the police would have told you is that you should go to the nearest police station.

Once, after withdrawing money from an ATM, two guys came up to me with a 5 euro note. They told me I had dropped it and wanted me to take out my wallet. Supposedly so I could verify that I 'indeed' lost money.

Another time someone came up with some sob story and asked me if he could use my phone, or failing that, if I could make a call for him. I forget the details except that I did have to fight him off later.

These events happened in two different countries, and I have more stories like this.

[hornetblack]

There was also a scammer that would come up distressed and would call a premium number that they made money off.

[switch007]

I'm saddened by that. In London, I would not offer anyone my phone, as I've travelled too much in Europe and seen too many thieves. I would certainly offer to call the police for you, and I'm shocked that you could not find anyone who would do that.

It's no help to you now, but for others, I am certain - well, I would strongly hope - that a hotel would offer their assistance to someone obviously distraught.

[RogerL]

You were lucky. I forget the paper I saw it in, so I cannot link to it, but it was a story of a very similar situation. Except the person that stopped to help ended up getting mugged and beaten. The police quoted in the article advised everyone to just call in situations like this and leave it to the authorities, to not involve themselves.

I'm not saying I agree (or disagree) with that advice, but there are good reasons for not getting involved.

[crashoverdrive]

Because you're human! What do you think got your ancestors this far! Do those values no longer apply because we beat certain environmental elements?

Are we to suggest that community support is as vestigial as the tailbone?