Why don't people stop to help anymore?

[WrendaleCountryDogs]

I've just been driving and came to a set of cross roads on narrowish roads. A car was stopped with it's hazards on. Other cars mounting pavement to get passed. As I get closer I realise the driver, a young early 20s woman was stood outside the car visibly upset. I put my hazards on behind her and ask if I can help. Car stalled and now won't start. She doesn't have break down. She's got baby in the back. She's tried ringing 3 different family members and nobody answering.
Now I'm 35, female, and recovering from a slipped disc in my back.
I quickly manoeuvre my car more safely behind hers so other cars can pass, tell her to get back in her car and release the hand break and I'll try to push the car across the cross roads to a grassy area . This means pushing the car across traffic. Thankfully it'd a 30mph road going through a village. Fair amount of cars around though as its just been school drop off time and another road is flooded meaning cars are diverting to this road.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I struggled to push the car on my own. So so so many cars drove past, still mounting pavement to get past, people looking at us (I realise it possibly looked like we'd had a bump with me being behind her car). I'm not sexist at all but so many men looked and didn't help.
Eventually a man with a dog out walking saw us and came over to help and we got the car safely onto the grass.

It took a good 10 minutes from me pulling up to us getting her safely across the road. My back is hurting a lot again now. But I couldn't just leave somebody. Certainly not a young woman.

Why don't people help any more? I get it was school time, people have to get to work etc but there could easily have been an accident.

I know what you mean OP. Here we’ve had snow over night and my car has got stuck. I left it at the side of the road and walked my ds to school only to find several cars are stuck on the road leading up to school.

Most of the other parents just walked off but me and another parent offered to help push them so people could get going safely again.

No one else stopped to help they just walked past. Unbelievably other people walked to their cars and joined the queue for us to push them. The guy helping me told me he had long covid - he was absolutely grey in the face and shaking after we had moved the first two. Still not another person helped. I couldn’t believe it.

I clearly remember my dad often offering a push or a jump start if he saw someone in need when I was a kid. My DP and I now would help any one, but it seems most people don’t want to get involved.

This was going on in the 90’s so zero hope of anything having improved. I can still remember trying to push my car alone as a late teen girl in the bloody snow and no fucker coming to my aid! A pox on all of them.

Honestly? I'd be wary of stopping if I was on my own.

I hear you OP .I'd stop .
Thank goodness you and dog walker were around .

Yesterday a bloke had broke down right at the front of a roundabout causing a huge queue behind him. I saw 2 different vans immediately stop and get out and help him push it to the side, I thought it was so lovely. So no. Not everyone doesn't stop. You had a bad experience.

I’m not sure if people are deliberately unhelpful or maybe just too busy. When I’m driving it’s usually because I have to be somewhere so can’t really stop. I’d understand men not helping too, dp once offered to help a woman struggling to get a pram down some steps and she was quite rude to him even though I was there.

Maybe my view of human nature is unduly positive at the moment because of my experiences in the snow before Christmas. We got caught up in it and there was one hilly stretch of road that cars were getting stuck in and people had come out of their houses and were standing at a point of the hill helping to push cars up it or brushing away the snow.

I slipped over and people literally stepped over me.

My dad always stops in situations like this (in fairness he has experience as a mechanic so he would be helpful!) but my mum was very very firm with me when I started driving that you must never ever stop if there's someone at the side of the road etc and it's advice I've heeded. I know SO MANY people now who've been a victim of scams where they've stopped to help an (often) young woman or young man only for it to be a huge scam either for money like an insurance scam, or in two separate occasions now to steal the car (including one where they had their granddaughter in the back of a car and they sped off then abandoned the child two roads over on her own!).
It's a real shame but she really should have breakdown cover!

Really? I've always thought UK people bend over backwards to help. Genuinely surprised.

Most people around the world want to help. The only country that i've been shocked at the people being unhelpful was in france!

This is the answer. It's a well known scam to rob people. No one wants to be the first to help in case there are people hiding in the bushes nearby. You tend to find that once someone else has stopped to help, then others will do so too!

@123woop

It's a real shame but she really should have breakdown cover!

Yes, but they don't come quickly and others are still needed to help push a broken down car away so that it's not causing an obstruction. RAC/AA etc can easily take a couple of hours to attend, sometimes longer if they're busy. We've had various breakdown cover providers and never had them attend within an hour - usually a couple of hours, and once we were waiting 5 hours. You can't leave a car blocking the road or a junction for that long, so will always have to rely on passengers or passers by to help move it somewhere safer.

I don't know really. Everyone is too busy with themselves, too stressed? Hard to say. It's sad though.

They haven’t for a very long time (I studied this at uni 25 years ago, looking at much older studies!). There are many reasons.

I would almost never stop unless legally required. People have shown themselves to be far too dishonest and deceptive in the nearly half century I’ve been alive. The situation could be set up for a theft or worse. I try to stay away from almost everyone on the planet.

People are too busy and many have tunnel vision

This.

I’ve had two different types of experience with these sorts of things - once, my daughter spotted a man lying by the side of the road. I pulled over approached with caution - called an ambulance and put a blanket over him. Whilst waiting, three different sets of people stopped to offer help - one was a nurse, and two chaps were paramedics!
On the other hand, a van stopped at my son’s school to make a delivery a little while before pick up time. The fan got stuck on the grass - and I was the only person who offered him any kind of help. There were many parents hanging around watching - and if a few had give a bit of a push, could have got him back on the road easily - but, no. Not one.
People are so strange.

You stopped though 🙂 You're a kindly person and a bloke did help you in the end. You're annoyed that male car drivers didn't stop. On my local page there's at least a weekly story of a male driver helping someone.

I'm so sorry.

My son came off his motorbike after hitting black ice yesterday. He got up but two cars (women) stopped to ask if he needed help, and one asked if he wanted to go to the hospital. This was during rush hour and they were holding up traffic so my son said he was ok. He wasn't but didn't realise until he had walked home (he did go to hospital and had broken his collarbone and hand).
But rest assured, there are people who stop. After all, you did.

Your premise is flawed. Nobody stopped to help you, doesn't mean people don't stop to help anymore.
I stop to help. People have stopped to help me, many times. In my experience people pretty much always stop to help.

Plus you stopped, so how is it that no-one does?

I live in London and dad to day we all ignore each other, but when someone needs help most of the time people help. Could be anything from helping a parent lift a buggy on a tube station to ringing the emergency services after an accident.

my new year resolution is stop helping strangers.
I had a very bad experience once i helped a stranger and been accused for which i would not even imagine to do.

I agree with other posters -you can't extrapolate from one incident and in your example particulalry there are a lot of reasons why people might not stop.

Yes you stopped in this particular incident but do you give money to every homeless person begging? Do you volunteer for a charity/brownies etc.? Do you donate to charity? Have you ever seen someone who looks drunk and avoided them when actually they may have had a stroke? Has a friend ever mentioned they are struggling and you've sympathised but not actually taken any action? Did you offer to get shopping for all the elderly people in your community during covid? Have you made meals or done anything practical when all of your friends have had a baby or a bereavement? Do you volunteer to take work off a colleague who is overloaded if you have capacity? Etc etc

Because if you haven't done every single one of these things, somebody who did do one of them could equally be thinking "why was I the only person to help when it was obvious it was needed?"

Some people help more than others, variant on multiple circumstances but most people never help at all, and nobody always helps!

Sorry last bit should say most people do help others at some point but nobody helps all the time!