First, I’ll address the problem with the title: ‘no bystanders help’. It is true that the bystanders in the video do not appear to help during the video. We simply do not know what they did out of frame. And the traffic is clear, then turns into a tail-back quite quickly. I assume, although I may be wrong, that people in that traffic or a pedestrian bystander helps after the video is cut off. I don’t know how that guy sits on his own bike and just shrugs, but this does not mean that nobody helped.
Second, I’ll address the implication in the question, whether this is isolated incident. I think it is the wrong question, in so far as it suggests that if this is not an isolated incident then people outside of China should / are right to criticise China (or the people in China).
Even if this happens regularly (I have no idea about the actual statistics), the idea that it casts a poor light over China is anti-dialectical.
People in the West could only judge people in China if people in the West were more likely to help others than are people in China. Multiple stories, even showing that the example is not an isolated incident (again, I do not know if it is), would not necessarily support a Western critique of people in China.
It is bad if people stand by while others are injured, of course, but the implication in the comments to the example thread is that people in China are especially bad in this regard.
When we take a relational position and consider similar situations in the West, it is clear that whatever problems are faced in China, people in the West should not be judgmental. Consider the following four examples:
These are poor sources. The narrative for the UK stories is written to persuade the reader that the reason that police, for example, cannot help people who are drowning is because of overly rigid health and safety regulations. It’s rather cynical. Trying to convince people that a lack of health and safety regulations would improve health and safety.
In England and Wales, there is no duty to rescue. So if you see someone suffering from personal injury, you can stand and watch (legally speaking). Worse, if you do help, you may become liable for negligence if you hurt the person while helping them.
This, apparently, is the same across other common law jurisdictions (mainly ex-British colonies), but is not true in civil law jurisdictions (continental Europe and their ex-colonies): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue.
My point is that such incidents (failures to rescue) in Britain and the US are not isolated. I don’t know where you’re from, OP. But as for the commenters in the Reddit post, if they are in common law countries, they cannot criticise people as a whole in China.
(Anecdotally, I see more Western stories of how the police fail to rescue people than do bystanders. There’s too much to unpick to consider the issue here fully, but I wonder what the stats are for Chinese police rescuing others compared to British, Canadian, French, US, etc. I have seen groups of bystanders rush to help people and other groups who stand and stare. I myself have done both. In the right camera angle, you would see me standing still, then walking off, as a disabled woman fell out her mobility scooter on a steep hill. I did not help because on the other side of the street, her companion / partner / carer and three or four construction workers were already rushing over to help. I would have just been in the way.)
And this is all before we get to the broader problem of what counts as personal injury and what counts as rescue. Whatever the stats show for rescuing people from personal injury accidents, common law states will sit back and let people die of treatable medical conditions and homelessness (lack of food, hypothermia, etc). What’s the difference between failing to help someone having a seizure on a bike and letting diabetics have seizures through lack of healthcare?
Funnily enough, I was going to *mention NZ, because you do things differently to other common law countries.
You have the NZ Accident Compensation Scheme. While the scheme has its problems, the criticism of, say, the US, UK, Canada, etc, does not quite apply to NZ. The NZ AC Corporation will pay victims of personal injury until they are recovered (if they recover) and will try to help with physio, etc, and help people get back to work. Since that scheme was implemented, ordinary tort law does not apply to most personal injury claims. (Personal injury torts may have been abolished completely, but I’m unsure if there are some that are not covered by the scheme. At one time only physical personal injuries were covered, but psychiatric harm is also covered now.)
I wonder if this means people in NZ do not have to worry about hurting others during a rescue? (Because nobody is going to get sued for negligence, anyway.)
First, I’ll address the problem with the title: ‘no bystanders help’. It is true that the bystanders in the video do not appear to help during the video. We simply do not know what they did out of frame. And the traffic is clear, then turns into a tail-back quite quickly. I assume, although I may be wrong, that people in that traffic or a pedestrian bystander helps after the video is cut off. I don’t know how that guy sits on his own bike and just shrugs, but this does not mean that nobody helped.
Second, I’ll address the implication in the question, whether this is isolated incident. I think it is the wrong question, in so far as it suggests that if this is not an isolated incident then people outside of China should / are right to criticise China (or the people in China).
Even if this happens regularly (I have no idea about the actual statistics), the idea that it casts a poor light over China is anti-dialectical.
People in the West could only judge people in China if people in the West were more likely to help others than are people in China. Multiple stories, even showing that the example is not an isolated incident (again, I do not know if it is), would not necessarily support a Western critique of people in China.
It is bad if people stand by while others are injured, of course, but the implication in the comments to the example thread is that people in China are especially bad in this regard.
When we take a relational position and consider similar situations in the West, it is clear that whatever problems are faced in China, people in the West should not be judgmental. Consider the following four examples:
These are poor sources. The narrative for the UK stories is written to persuade the reader that the reason that police, for example, cannot help people who are drowning is because of overly rigid health and safety regulations. It’s rather cynical. Trying to convince people that a lack of health and safety regulations would improve health and safety.
In England and Wales, there is no duty to rescue. So if you see someone suffering from personal injury, you can stand and watch (legally speaking). Worse, if you do help, you may become liable for negligence if you hurt the person while helping them.
This, apparently, is the same across other common law jurisdictions (mainly ex-British colonies), but is not true in civil law jurisdictions (continental Europe and their ex-colonies): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue.
My point is that such incidents (failures to rescue) in Britain and the US are not isolated. I don’t know where you’re from, OP. But as for the commenters in the Reddit post, if they are in common law countries, they cannot criticise people as a whole in China.
(Anecdotally, I see more Western stories of how the police fail to rescue people than do bystanders. There’s too much to unpick to consider the issue here fully, but I wonder what the stats are for Chinese police rescuing others compared to British, Canadian, French, US, etc. I have seen groups of bystanders rush to help people and other groups who stand and stare. I myself have done both. In the right camera angle, you would see me standing still, then walking off, as a disabled woman fell out her mobility scooter on a steep hill. I did not help because on the other side of the street, her companion / partner / carer and three or four construction workers were already rushing over to help. I would have just been in the way.)
And this is all before we get to the broader problem of what counts as personal injury and what counts as rescue. Whatever the stats show for rescuing people from personal injury accidents, common law states will sit back and let people die of treatable medical conditions and homelessness (lack of food, hypothermia, etc). What’s the difference between failing to help someone having a seizure on a bike and letting diabetics have seizures through lack of healthcare?
Then there’s the abandonment of places like Afghanistan, knowing or suspecting that people not rescued will be mistreated: https://www.rfi.fr/en/international/20210822-france-us-have-a-moral-duty-to-help-those-in-danger-to-leave-afghanistan-jean-yves-le-drian-joe-biden-usa-kabul-taliban
You might have a better time in r/Sino than r/China.
Thanks for the answer. I’m from NZ and usually I see bystanders help other people when they’re in trouble.
I do follow r/Sino, not r/China but sometimes it pops up on my feed.
Funnily enough, I was going to *mention NZ, because you do things differently to other common law countries.
You have the NZ Accident Compensation Scheme. While the scheme has its problems, the criticism of, say, the US, UK, Canada, etc, does not quite apply to NZ. The NZ AC Corporation will pay victims of personal injury until they are recovered (if they recover) and will try to help with physio, etc, and help people get back to work. Since that scheme was implemented, ordinary tort law does not apply to most personal injury claims. (Personal injury torts may have been abolished completely, but I’m unsure if there are some that are not covered by the scheme. At one time only physical personal injuries were covered, but psychiatric harm is also covered now.)
I wonder if this means people in NZ do not have to worry about hurting others during a rescue? (Because nobody is going to get sued for negligence, anyway.)