'Stand-bys'

This post will be about an incident I witnessed at City Hall mrt station just last week. My friend and I had just alighting from the end carriage of the mrt at city hall, and were walking towards the escalator when suddenly my friend lunged forward and ran for a bit then stopped. I was looking in my bag at this point and was unaware of why he did this, as I caught up with him he let out a deep breath and said 'it's alright that uncle is ok', I was still confused and asked what he meant by this and he pointed to one of the doors of the train further ahead of us; I saw an old man in a wheelchair slowly making his way further inside the train. My friend informed me that man in his wheelchair was attempting to alight the train and his chair had gotten stuck in the crack. My friend continued to angrily point out that no one had helped this poor man while he was stuck and that not only were people were still pushing past him to get onto the train, but that the people around the entrance inside the train were merely standing there watching and it was only when the door lights began to flash a man stepped forward and helped pull him inside. This made me really question how these passerbys could merely sit by while this man was clearly in danger, perhaps not fatal but still in a potentially harmful situation. I for one found this shocking in a sense, that people would take so long to react and help some one in danger. This incident made me think of the Kitty Genovese incident in New York in 1964 where the media reported up to an estimated 38 people had witnessed Kitty being attacked and had done nothing to aid her; of course the situation I witnessed was on a lesser scale but still drew similair charecteristics between the two cases. In situations such as this, were people afraid of drawing attention to themselves if they stepped forward and helped? Were they imagining the embarressment or guilt they would have faced if they were unable to pull this man out? If there was no one or lesser people around, would some one, any one have reacted immediately and helped this man to safety? Were they viewing the other people around them to asses if their peers reactions according to whether intervention was really needed? Were they just standing there with the thought 'aah some one else will do it' or in harsher tones were some of these people so jaded and wrapped up in their own worlds that they did not see this man's situation as a cause for action? Do other reasons exist for this seemingly un-caring behaviour? I'm of course unsure of whether this reasons I have thought about are infact these strangers excuses for their behaviour, but from my view point I think they felt that their own impressions and worries over-wrote the potential danger this man was in; which in turn relates to the expectations and ever present eye of society, did these people react the way they did because of the strangers around them as well as society's ever-present 'pressures'? Or were their reactions based merely on personality and the way their minds worked?

-picture taken from http://nancys.110mb.com/