Though I certainly have my
malevolent moments, I generally try to treat other people in a courteous and
helpful manner. I do this not out of a sense of guilt or duty, or because I
expect some reward; it’s simply a habit—albeit one that has served me pretty
well over the years.
Imagine if you are lying badly
injured by the roadside and all the motorists pass you by because they think
you are just a prop and that a gang of robbers is waiting in the bushes nearby.
But it is not just in
situations like this that we should be concerned about. If we start being all
too careful about getting into trouble in our interactions with strangers, we
may start having doubts even with people familiar to us.
Even in our neighbourhood and
our workplace, there is the feeling that it is better to mind your own business
rather than engage and learn if something is amiss. That it is not worth it to
go out of the way.
City dwellers indeed find all
sorts of excuses not to lend a hand to help others. They are always in a hurry
and can easily cite convenience, security and the traffic jam for not noticing
This is why people write
letters about Good Samaritans to the press because these situations crop up so
rarely, for city folk, at least.
Last year, we being surprised with the news of two-year-old child lies dying
in the street in southern China, her blood running into the gutter while 18
people pass by without stopping to help her.
Millions have watched the
video of this incident – I’m not linking to it here, it’s too distressing – and
asked, why? How can this happen? And what does it say about our society today?
There are indeed cases of con-men lying down in front of buses and
then falsely accusing the driver, and examples of the courts wrongly ordering
Good Samaritans to pay compensation after they intervened to help an injured
stranger.
But if this is really the
problem, then the good news is that it’s easily fixable by enacting a Good
Samaritan law which offers basic immunity from civil claims to bystanders who
stop to tend to the injured.
For many us, however,
that is only part of the story. This case involves a child, just two years old,
bleeding to death on the street in front of you. Why doesn’t that move the
passers-by emotionally, overcoming their rational fear of being wrongly hit up
for compensation?
It doesn’t really make sense.
And in any case, if we’re being strictly rational, then a pedestrian or a
cycle-rickshaw driver should hardly fear being accused of inflicting injuries
on a child who has clearly been run over by a large car.
It’s also been widely noted
that, compensation fears aside, the 18 passers-by didn’t even stop to phone
China’s equivalent of 999 or 911 before carrying on home, many presumably to
their own families, some perhaps even to their own two-year-old daughters
I don’t think this excuses the
fact that 18 people saw fit to leave that girl to die, but it might explain
partly why they did.
In life, we always have our
choices. We can choose to be indifferent, or we can choose to care. We can
choose to discourage, or we can choose to uplift. And because of these choices,
a predominantly dark situation can sometimes become bright.
Note:- In Malaysia, when accident happen it can cost traffic, we are nation of caring
