On 2008, a surveillance camera captured frightening footage of a hit-and-run accident involving an elderly man. Angel Arce Torres, a 78-year-old resident of Connecticut, was crossing the street when a speeding vehicle suddenly slammed into him and sent him flying. The out of control vehicle then continued to drive franticly down the street as Torres was left lying in the middle of the street with severe head injuries. What makes this story truly horrific is not the criminal or the victim, but the witnesses to the scene. A total of nine cars simply passed by the crippled man as a handful of pedestrians on the sidewalk watched and did nothing to help the elderly man. Torres was left in the middle of the street for over a minute until a police officer came upon the scene and called an ambulance. After the accident, witnesses to the hit-and-run were asked why they didn’t help; the majority of the answers: “I didn’t want to get involved”.
It’s a distressing trend among American communities. People no longer feel obligated to help each other anymore. It’s a problem that has even encouraged a hit primetime television show on ABC called “What Would You Do?” This televised social experiment catches the reactions of pedestrians witnessing blatant crimes on hidden cameras. Think of it as a “Candid Camera” that tests the moral dexterity of everyday Americans. The high points of the show include pedestrians who rush in to action by confronting the criminal and saving the victim, but the show’s lowest and more frequent points are when crowds of people go about their lives as someone in need pleads for help just meters away from them.
This desire to avoid strangers affects not just moments of life and death, but simple, everyday events like conversations. In fact, I even performed my own social experiment in the halls of Hanover. I walked around the halls and asked strangers how their weekend was. The test resulted in many awkward moments with the majority of individuals I tried to have friendly conversation with answering with mumbles and slurs. It was like I was a criminal to these people; it soon hit me that this might not be that far from the truth.
As children, we were raised with “stranger danger.” Our parents were paranoid of the possible criminals in our supposedly comfy sub-urban home, and in the process, they severed ties with neighbors who we could have been good friends with. Children are told to never talk to strangers, so maybe there is a correlation between being told to stay away from strangers as a kid and staying away from strangers as an adult. Maybe the paranoia that was implanted in us as infants is still alive and well in our psyche today, causing us to stay out of other peoples’ lives because of an unexplained fear of getting involved. If this is the case, then we need to make it our duty to disobey our parents’ orders and talk to strangers anyway.
Making social connections with new people is the only way we can learn new ideas and grow as a species, and avoiding this development just because of the fear that your next door neighbor might break into your house with a knife is foolish. It’s the responsibility of humanity to take an interest in new people so that we can give each other a helping hand in our darkest times. After all, just one helping hand would have gotten Torres to the hospital sooner during his darkest time.