[bsaul]

I was so certain this was absolutely impossible in the US. This is quite common in France, where a girl was raped in the train wagon and nobody did a ything. We have a law that makes it illegal NOT to help the other person if there's a danger. Yet noone moves.

I tried an experiment once quite recently on a train trip, to try and ask some young hysterical girl to calm herself down ( she was basically insulting everybody). What happend was this : seing that someone did something made the other passengers decided to act and speak their mind as well. The problem is that some guy decided to go physical on her and hit her on the face. I had to ask for help stopping him this time.

My conclusion was that :

1/ it only takes one person to make all the other personn move as well.

2/ you have to be really carefull because depending on the level of anger of the crowd, things can get extremely violent.