I was first on the scene of a serious head on RTA this evening in Bristol and once the casualties were being dealt with, unbelievably I then had to stop several people trying to drive through the middle of the accident. WTF??

Their lack of consideration was annoying but what really boiled my piss was a) the kids trying to video the young lad stuck in his car; b) the bloke who thought nothing of walking through the middle of the emergency services cutting him out as he “had to get to the swimming pool” and c) the utter prick who ignored my requests to turn his van around before the emergency services arrived, and drove between the two smashed cars, over debris, forcing me to get out of the way. He then stopped, got out and came back to the accident to ask loudly if the guy was bleeding out and then tell us that he’d saved a mans life once after suffering a catastrophic bleed. This was about 10 feet away from the casualty who was already distraught.

What the hell is wrong with some people?!

On the plus side, the medic who arrived soon after me was great and it goes without saying that the fire, police and ambulance were superb.

What the hell is wrong with some people?!

Heads so far up their own arses they don’t even notice that it’s all wrong. And their parents for never telling them, and their friends for also being so far up their own arses, and, doubtless, their kids who’ll never how wrong that all that stuff is. It’s a losing battle, humanity is racing to the lowest common denominator, and it appears to be the arsehole. Everyone has one and everyone things their own is much nicer than everyone else’s.

And now I’ve started the thread in the goddamn wrong forum 👿

Edit: and I can’t work out how to change it to the chat forum. Brilliant.

Edit 2: whoever made good my mistake, thank you.

Try watching some of dashcam footage from far east.The total lack of anything that resembles help for accident victims is quite awful.

And now I’ve started the thread in the goddamn wrong forum

Not part of the solution, part of the problem and all that 😆

People are **** idiots.

Good for you for helping.

I’m afraid we’ve reached Peak Humanity. And we’re now on the slide back down.

Thank you for doing what you did. I’m sure the casualties are very grateful to you.

A few countries have “duty to rescue” laws whereby it is an offence not to give assistance to someone whose life is in danger. There should be such a law in the UK imo.

I’ve been seeing a noticeable increase in this type of behavior the last few years. It’s depressing. Even every day driving on motorways I see people lack the most basic courtesy to get out of the way of an emergency service vehicle be it ambulance or fire engine. Far too absorbed in their own sense of importance. We really need to introduce a cull before it’s too late.

Try watching some of dashcam footage from far east.The total lack of anything that resembles help for accident victims is quite awful.

There’s a reason for that tho.

If it’s any consolation, sometimes the police don’t have any better success in trying to reason with these people. The only thing extra we’ve got is the option of locking these idiots up if they walk through our crime scenes having been told not to.

We’re having a nervous breakdown now we realise we’re neither rich nor powerful… USA is doing the same. I can’t imagine it’s going to be pretty.

If that happens in Asia it would be on Youtbue almost immediately then all over snapchta. People will just stand around to stare … just stare … while waiting for emergency service, then they continue staring while the emergency do their works … then more staring, pointing, mobile snap etc. Some people will help some not … some show respect while others not sure what to do …

I just don’t understand the narcissism that leads some people to think that getting to a swimming pool on time is justification for causing inconvenience to the emergency services whilst they are dealing with a bloke trapped in a car! Frustratingly, I was in civvies; I’d like to think that a 6ft2 soldier would be a bit harder for these morons to ignore.

Hats off to the emergency services though, not sure I could deal that day in day out.

When our car overturned after a blow out it sort of restored my faith a little. The compassion & caring shown to me & my two children by complete strangers was heart warming. Perhaps we were lucky.

It’s easy to think the world is on a downward spiral, the danger is that it could become a self fulfilling prophecy if enough folk adopt that view.

People aren’t born reckless, selfish or uncaring, but in many folk it’s almost become fashionable to nonchalantly go about ones business in the belief that your convenience comes above all else, & that you have a right to do what the hell you want. What’s being eroded is a moral code. Just because something isn’t against the law, like gawping & filming some poor bugger trapped in a car, it doesn’t mean that it’s morally acceptable. Sad times but there’s a lot of good folk too.

A while back I got stuck in a three-lane hold-up on the M4 just shy of the M5 interchange at Almondsbury. While sitting there waiting, I’d seen a few cars going down the hard shoulder, then after a while, there was a whole procession of Highway Patrol, Police and ambulance vehicles went screaming past, followed, to my astonishment, by a whole bunch of tosspots in their cars! Heaven alone knows where they thought they were going to get to when they got to the incident that was holding up all three lanes of traffic… 🙄
No idea what actually happened, I could see emergency vehicles right across all three carriageways, but when the traffic got moving after about an hour, all that was there were two black and yellow Highways cars, and a rather nice Audi Avant, as far as I could see undamaged with hazards going, all on the hard shoulder, but with the Audi’s roof several feet away propped up against the Armco!
I can only assume it had gone under the back of a large truck, but there was nothing at all on the news; I can only hope any injuries were minor ones.

Sad times but there’s a lot of good folk too.

@Takisawa2: completely agree. I was there first by virtue of being the car immediately behind. But almost immediately I had a nurse offering assistance, then a doctor, then a theatre practitioner, then the assistant from Tescos came out to offer any food/water if required plus cones to block the road, then someone else volunteered to go down the lines of traffic to turn them around… plenty of gawpers, but at the same time plenty of people stepping up to the plate.

There’s a reason for that tho.

Poor countries where people see death on the road a lot….common theme in fast paced poor cities that dwarf London.

Having said that, I had every man and his dog trying to help me after being stung by a jelly fish in rural Phillipines.

Poverty and a sense of community also breeds a level of empathy that you never encounter in the west.

Back in the 2015 Christmas floods I had my fire engine parked right across a road, blocking it completely, with the full set of blues on display while we tried to drain a flooded estate and pump out the sub station so we could get power back on to the houses. A bloke and his wife simply bumped up on to the grass verge in their car and squeezed past. I stopped him to ask what he was doing and had he not noticed the road was blocked. He said he wanted to get home. I then asked why he thought I’d blocked the road and explained what we were doing. His response was to say ‘well yeah, but I want to get home’.

Stopped to assist a cyclist who had crashed without a helmet and suffered a head injury a few months ago. In the 20 minutes it took for the ambulance to arrive maybe a dozen people stopped to assist including at least two doctors and nurses. Thankfully it turned out to be more shock and fainting than anything serious

The was a thing in the news recently of someone in Newbury getting in an ambulance to move it out of his way while the crew wodked on a patient in the back!!

A lot of people just shut off to anything that doesn’t involve them.

Conversely I saw a lot of people mucking in on an accident on a grim country road the other night.

It sounds a cliché but there’s not much in the way of community these days. We have lots of great neighbors but none of us do anything together.

Welcome to humanity, you dont get to the top of food chain by being nice.

Welcome to humanity, you dont get to the top of food chain by being nice.

We are nowhere near the top of the food chain as selfish individuals though. Only by cooperation can humanity achieve what it’s done.

Yep, some that too when its required.

However in this situation several people obviously (and probably correctly) thought that collaboration served them no purpose so they didnt offer any.

Humans operate to a fairly basic set of instructions all designed for self preservation even when the action appears to be selfless.

There are more good people than arseholes in the world. Problem is the arseholes somehow mange to make themselves for visible.

Lost count number of times I’ve had a phone camera in my face whilst dealing with a job.

Social media had turned many into instant on scene reporters. With relatives being informed of accidents on a “live” feed. Horrible way to find out.

Welcome to humanity, you dont get to the top of food chain by being nice.

vs

We are nowhere near the top of the food chain as selfish individuals though. Only by cooperation can humanity achieve what it’s done.

This pretty much sums it up for me. Massive generalsation I know – but most people tend to err into either one of those categories. It seems since the advent of anonymity (and a voyeuristic culture) via the internet/social media that there is a sort of a massive growing disconnect amd desensitisation to fellow humans. A race for the bottom. Everything is a ‘meme’, or a reality TV show, or an opportunity for 2 secs fame. Or to just be a complete tosser because so what? Everything is experienced through a screen/cam. A world viewed through a car windscreen or Youtube. Often both (dashcam). It’s surreal enoughto make me wonder whether there is a sci-fi novel that foretold of this sort of thing happening.

@anagallis: seriously?! That’s unbelievable!
@chestertockwell: ditto. I don’t know how you argue/reason with stupidity

“I need to get to the swimming pool”
“You can’t mate, the roads blocked”
“But I want to get to the swimming pool”
“You can’t, the road…” Etc etc etc

On the flip side, it’s encouraging that most people have experienced either inaction (not knocking it, some people are overwhelmed and freeze) or positive action to assist.

Sad times but there’s a lot of good folk too.

A majority are but they’re drowned out by the idiots.

wilburt – Member
Welcome to humanity, you dont get anywhere by being nice.

FIFY

New generations have access the internet/tablets from a very young age. This is becoming the predominant tool (and lens) through which to make sense of the world. Soon accustomed, they shall then view life through a lens in their mind. An ‘unreality filter’. A fundamental disconnect.

I somewhat feel it myself when not looking. Like many of us here, I have ‘only’ been an internet addict for 15 years or so. For the Millennials this addiction is normalised.

Us Gen Xers may well be the last generation to have been raised by and among fellow humans who weren’t using the internet and neither were we among internet addicts. We as teens had our own distractions (TV, arcade games) but we’d seen the Max Headroom film so could laugh at the thought of shrinking attention spans, sociopathic isolation, ‘blip-verts’ and endless shallow guff being piped into our minds. Such a world was a ‘sci-fi scenario’ in the 80s, but it was nonetheless felt to be not too far away. Now it seems everything is a blip-vert or photo-op. Even the food on our plates.

We owe it to our kids to show them to look outdoors and to look inside of their hearts. To learn active awareness and empathy. Because soon enough (if not already) neither will exist to them except as a ‘meme’ or some kind of sarcastic otherness on a screen.

Watch the film Night Crawler. Superb and chilling. Made me think a lot about this stuff.

I was riding to work once when I was hit from behind my a motorbike sliding down the road after he lost it when braking.

I hit the road hard, but before I’d even managed to sit up I heard a car beeping. I sat up and the beeping car was the one right behind me. The driver lowered the window and shouted at me to get out of the way as me and my bike were blocking the road. Unfortunately at that point my bike got tangled in her windscreen…

This was in 1991. There have always been idiots, but now they have camera phones.

As Malvern Rider writes above, it’s due to TV reality shows having made it OK to intrude on people’s shock and stress. The cellphone culture means bystanders hope to catch that cash-earning shot and the worst of it is that most cellphone idiots use their cameras in portrait! Quality doesn’t matter, all you’ve got to do is capture the action.

Then as MR writes lower down, younger people now grew up with the internet and think the world needs to be viewed through a screen. Even my own son aged 17 will sit all evening viewing stupid videos on his phone, occasionally laughing loudly at the antics of idiots, which is quite irritating. Years ago he’d have been out with his pals larking around and having fun.

I dont think we are any different now than we where in generations past or will be in future. I also dont think there good and bad folk, as above we operate to simple instructions.

That is a terrible photoshop.

Jesus…that Princess Breanna picture made my jaw hit the floor. Utterly shameful.

Whilst I have the horrors of driving on Edge Lane in Liverpool the effort people made to clear a way for the last ambulance with his siren on cheered me up. Lots of idiots out there with little concern sadly. I always wish the person in the back well.

Jesus…that Princess Breanna picture made my jaw hit the floor. Utterly shameful.

It’s not real.

No. This was her original one.