What Would You Do in a Hit and Run?

June 6, 2008 — -- Yesterday's release of surveillance video depicting a 78-year-old hit-and-run victim lying in the street but ignored by onlookers and motorists has sparked a public debate over the humanity and the responsibility of the city's residents.

Hartford, Conn., Mayor Eddie A. Perez announced his disgust Thursday after watching the footage, showing several cars swerving to avoid Angle Arce Torres, who was lying paralyzed and bleeding from the head.

But while Perez calls such negligence "horrific," those onlooker may in fact not know how to act in such a medical emergency, or why their instincts tell them to stay put.

City officials told the Hartford Courant that four people called 911 to report last Friday's incident — but that may not always be enough in an emergency situation.

Tragically, some experts say the public's inaction is a classic social occurrence.

"It's kind of a textbook case of bystander phenomenon," says John Darley, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University.

Bystander phenomenon, sometimes referred to as bystander apathy or the Genovese effect, is a psychological phenomenon in which people are less likely to respond to an emergency when there are others around.

A famous case in New York in 1968 involved 29-year-old Kitty Genovese being brutally murdered in front of her apartment building while 38 people who witnessed the event did nothing to help.

Although Darley says it is tempting to classify those who stood by and did nothing to help Torres as "rotten, kind of alienated people," the situation is complicated by several factors.

"If you are alone with a victim, then you help or nobody helps," Darley says. "If you are at all conflicted about helping, you can say somebody knows more."

In this way, responsibility is unconsciously spread between several people, each of whom may believe that others know better than they do, and so fail to offer any help themselves.

In Torres's case, Darley says there may have been other factors, such as the claim that the neighborhood in which the accident occurred is not particularly safe, that kept locals from moving quickly to aid him.