The Day the Traffic Did Not Stop in Hartford

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Lorizael
If you're not a certified first responder, doing any more than that can get you sued.

http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/19609849.html

The shocking video of a Connecticut man who was hit by a car and left in the street while people drove and walked by him has everyone wondering why no one stopped. Could it be because some fear if you help and end up hurting someone you could be held responsible?

There are Good Samaritan laws throughout the country, including Indiana and Michigan. One local attorney says these laws were designed to encourage people to help each other.

"You cannot be sued,” said South Bend Attorney Doug Small.

Small says there is no legal reason for people to not help in that stunning video of a man hit by a car and left alone while people pass by.
...

[Lorizael]

Heh. Well, that wasn't always the case. And it's probably still not the case everywhere.

Regardless, I'm still not sure why we should care about this too terribly much. Some guy died. Okay. During the course of this thread, thousands more have already died for reasons that may be more or less tragic, but we'll never hear about those deaths.

Should we care about any of them? All of them? None of them? A select number that we, as humans, can encompass and direct our emotions towards?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Good Samaritan laws aren't the point. The point is, anyone without training is far more likely to do harm than good by attempting to "help" the victim, especially when the victim is that old and has had that kind of accident (i.e., one likely to result in severe trauma), and anyone with an even an elementary familiarity with first aid knows that. Everybody who was standing around doing nothing was doing that old man a favor.

[DinoDoc]

By letting traffic continue to flow?

[Wezil]

Where is the video?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
By letting traffic continue to flow?

Fair point. I would have directed traffic, and I'm surprised no one did that. But almost all of the press I've seen on this so far has bewailed the fact that (1) a bunch of untrained amateurs didn't make matters worse by "helping" the old man, and (2) people went about their business, instead of doing the presumedly humane thing by stopping and gawking.

I'm perfectly willing to believe we're often a selfish, heartless society, but this isn't the incident that proves it.

[Wezil]

I watched it.

I agree with Rufus in that medical aid would be beyond my expertise but I can't believe nobody made any efforts to see he wasn't run over a second time. Somebody should have directed traffic. I see no excuse for that besides indifference.

[Felch]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Good Samaritan laws aren't the point. The point is, anyone without training is far more likely to do harm than good by attempting to "help" the victim, especially when the victim is that old and has had that kind of accident (i.e., one likely to result in severe trauma), and anyone with an even an elementary familiarity with first aid knows that. Everybody who was standing around doing nothing was doing that old man a favor.

That's often true, but it shouldn't be used as an excuse not to act.

Here's a simple example - lifeguarding. A lot of lifeguard training these days is about neck and back injuries, and preventing further damage. There's a great deal of emphasis on being overly cautious in responding to an emergency. The problem with this, is that a person who has no back injury and drowns is still dead. While a person who is paralyzed and pulled out of the water quickly is paralyzed but still lives. So while the rescuer should try to prevent harm to the spinal cord, preventing harm to the brain (drowning) is always a higher priority.

In this situation, leaving an old man out in the street in danger of being further harmed by more cars is not the safe choice. The first step to any situation like this is making sure that no further injuries occur, either to the rescuer or the victim. So you (and other pedestrians) should make a lot of noise, wave your arms around, and stop traffic, either to pull the victim off the road, or if they can't be moved, to make it clear that the hazard exists. It's a lot easier for a driver to see somebody who is standing and waving their arms, than an old man who has just been run over.

If the old man had fallen off of a ladder in his yard, you'd be right. In that situation there's no risk of further harm, and moving him can only cause problems. But leaving him out there, unattended, until the police arrive is not responsible behavior.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Felch
If the old man had fallen off of a ladder in his yard, you'd be right. In that situation there's no risk of further harm, and moving him can only cause problems. But leaving him out there, unattended, until the police arrive is not responsible behavior.

One of my stupid neighbors back home was taking down his christmas lights in May (!!!) and slipped and fell off of his roof and landed on his concrete driveway and wasn't moving.

I called 911 for him and stopped his panicing wife from touching him. He broke his arm in a few places and had a mild concussion, but was fine.

I can't think of anyone who wouldn't do the same thing. Mainly because I was the only one who saw what happened, so the responsibility became pretty direct. If you're in a group of a massive amount of people, the bystander effect hits almost everyone in most cases. Especially when you're in a situation where a dude just got hit by a car, and people are naturally and instinctively wary about running into the road themselves to direct traffic at that point.

Yeah, it's a shame, but no, it's not surprising.

[Felch]

You're right about the bystander effect, but we should use our understanding of our flaws to correct them, not to justify them.

If you knew that your inclination was to ignore a problem when other people were around, and you were conscious of that fact, you should be able to resist the inclination.

Maybe I've just done too much acid. I don't know.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

For what it's worth:

I've been reading about this incident for the last couple of days, but I hadn't seen the video until just now. And while it is shocking to watch from the comfort of my desk chair, I would note that, in this site's presentation of the video:

- The guy gets hit at 00:21
- People are in the street and appear to be talking to him directly by 1:02
- The car that pulls up at 1:29 appears to be a police car

So "nobody did anything" (except call 911, four times) for a grand total of 40 seconds. It feels like a looong forty second when you're watching it; that sense is almost certainly enhanced by the lack of sound. But I'm not sure 40 seconds of inactivity constitutes a stain on Hartford's civic pride, especially when people did start acting before the police arrived.

Again, I'm perfectly willing to believe the worst about people -- for example, I'm perfectly willing to believe Cheney was driving the car -- but I'm not sure this is an incident that makes the case against humanity all that well.

[rah]

Have to agree with Rufus. And I'll go one step farther. IT's probably more of a testament that people cared.

I hope if I ever get hit by a car that the police are on site in less than a minute and 10 seconds. And I hope that 4 people have called 911 in the first minute.

[chequita guevara]

To echo both Rah and Rufus, I should also point out that watching the video and being there are two different things. We see from the outside, and forty seconds feels like an interminably long time. If you were on the scene, seeing the accident, time needed to register what just happened in your mind, time to figure out what to do, whipping out the cell and calling 911 and explaining to the dispatcher what had just happened and answering his or her questions, then going over to check on the man, it would seem to the person doing all this that it took maybe ten seconds.