This story is from my sister that I grilled because it gnawed at me and continues to do so. She was on the bus and an elderly lady fell face first on the ground after she got off. The bus driver closed the door and kept going. However, before the bus got too far, my sister watched a businessman step over the poor woman and continue on his merry way. That poor soul was someone's mother, grandmother, etc. I still can't believe how callous people can be. Check in with elderly family members on a regular basis to see how they are. :yes:

Spoons:
What are your thoughts on the situation? On the actions of the driver? The actions of the businessman? Do you check in with elderly family members often? If not, will you start to?

Crap, that reminds me. The other day, one of my best friend's sisters got off the bus and fell face first as she was walking down her hill. Dang it, I meant to call my friend and ask how her sister was. And all the while, the guys on my bus were laughing about it. Those jerkfaces.

It seems no one is a good Samaritin theses days.

EDIT:I don't really check in with my elderly family members that often, but I should. I think it is extremly rude of the business man to do that. The bus driver was rude, too, but he had a schedule to keep. Dang it. Everyone has a schedule to keep. And schedules cause stress. I'm always told that doing service makes you feel good. Well, maybe if people will take two seconds out of their day to help others, maybe theyll feel better.

Wow... >.< Reminds me of a tale I overheard someone in front of me on the bus talking about. I don't eavesdrop really, but it's hard not to listen when they're talking in clear voices on a somewhat quiet bus. A friend of theirs was raped midday in a parking lot screaming for help and such, a busy street for pedestrians even and no one even deigned to even call 911 about it.

--- Another tale

When that happened to my mom (bus thing) though, she hit and cracked her head against the bus. You can imagine that the bus driver was there asking if she was alright and whatever. Even called for an ambulance because she needed stitches, so at least that was fairly good.

I'm always in contact with my Grandmother, but not my Great Grandmother.. so really not really. xD

... If I could find a curse bad enough to bring upon their rude heads, I'd probably be making a marine somewhere get chills down his back. But I can't. I can't find the words to express how utterly appalled I am. What the fuck? He stepped on her. Stepped. He didn't even bother go around her. He STEPPED on her. I cannot begin to tell you how pissed off I am. How the hell can someone do that and just walk away with a straight face? No one with any kinda humanity left in them can do that. No one.

I don't check in on any family members, to tell you the truth. Me and my mother and father were the only ones to move to America. They used to visit more often, but we don't have the money to have them visit anymore. Even if they do come, or if they do speak to me over the phone, I can't say much to them. They speak fluent Korean. I speak fluent English. Together, we're a language barrier. The worst thing is, my grandpa died recently. I feel really selfish because I didn't want him to die so I wouldn't have to feel this apathy. I never knew him. I never had to chance. He loved me, but I couldn't. I didn't even cry or try to act sad when I heard about it.

Anna, the business man stepped over her. Still unexcuseable but he didn't physically step on her.

Omigawsh D: I don't understand how you can watch an old lady fall and just keep going along. I wonder if people do that to their own grand-relatives...anyways. I know I don't call muh grandparents all the time, but I constantly think of them. Especially my grandfather, whom I suspect is coming down with a bit of Alzheimer's. But elderly people are something to cherish ya know? One day we'll be old too...then what happens to us?

I think it is horrible that people treated that lady as if she did not existed. I sure hope she didn't really hurt herself with that fal.

I don't have any elderly family, I only once had my grandma, and we visited her at least twice a week. I always liked it there. ^^ If I had any elderly family I would surely visit them tho.

I do take care of old people myself, that suffer from dementia, I work at this nursing house for old demented people, so yeah I am a nurse.
Some of the people I take care of get a lot of visits from family, and some rarely do. that is very sad.
And the way that some familes treats like their grandma, like I have experienced some really bad things that leave me standing flabbergasted at the heartlessness.

I would love to tell it all, but I am afraid I also have a silence code I have to hold too. Besides I don't want to talk bad about family because in a way they are my clients as well, and I just cannot risk the fact that perhaps some of them might have an account here and may find them selves in what I would tell and discover that it I am the nurse of their granny. XD

oh my... that poor old lady. I hate it when i see someone fall and people just walk right past them not even giveing a damn if there hurt or not. I am always checking on the old people i know... cause im nice and always worry something might happen if im not around or if someone i know is around them.

something similar happened to me..
well not to me. to the old man who tried to get on the bus

i seemed to be the only one willing enough to help the man up and to at least try to get on the bus..
but he seemed way out of it. then some other people came to help and helped him sit down on the bus stop's bench...
funny how city folk are.
even when thinking about helping the old man, i said to myself "if no one else helps him, i will." took me a good minute to realize no one would do anything.
i felt horrible for every second i didnt do anything to help the old man up. he was just lying on the floor, moving slowly...

after i got on the bus, i saw one of the people who helped him sitting next to him -- he was about to fall off again when another bus got between my bus and the old man.
i sat down, wondering what had just happened.. the old man wasn't exactly the best smelling human on earth, and i found myself surprised when i caught my thoughts lingering towards washing my hands first thing as soon as i arrived at my friend's...

Wow. o_o Poor woman, did no one so much as look at her? Maybe I can understand the bus driver, I don't know if bus drivers watch everyone get out so maybe he didn't notice when the woman fell down. The businessman is inexcusable though, I can't believe anyone would be so damn rude to an elderly person.

I don't really go to my grandparents a lot, because my grandfather (mom's dad) doesn't really seem to care, he doesn't want to celebrate anything with his children and grandchildren anymore except Christmas. My grandmother (dad's mom) lives next to us and I stop by every now and then, but I've got a load of work for uni so I don't always have time to go there and chat for a few hours. It's a pity because she knows great stories about my grandfather (who died of cancer a few years before I was born), but I do stop by everytime I have something really fun/important to say. :3

Gosh, that's awful. D: That poor lady! Really, the busdriver and the bussiness man could have had some decency and you know. Called 911 before they went on their merry way. Really, now.

Another story about a similar situation...

My sixth grade teacher was at a baseball game once, and she walked into the bathroom to find an old woman lying on the floor, calling for help... and no one was doing anything. Now, this was the women's restroom in a public place- it was crowded. My teacher was the only one who actually did something, she found out where the lady's husband was sitting, called the medics, and ran to the other side of the stadium to find this lady's husband and tell him what was going on.

My grandparents all live within 30 minutes of me, so it's kind of hard to not checking in on them pretty frequently. That's okay though, I like visiting with them, especially my Oma, because she likes to borrow my books, and likes to read the same things I do. :D There's been one time she's not liked the book I lent her in about... Six to eight years. So we're pretty tight because of that. And we like to see movies together- Eragon and Harry Potter and such. Whenever a movie is based off a book we've both read, we go together. :)

I think that has a lot to do with where you live. I would be very surprised if that happened in the Midwest.

Well, here in the south, there's lots of guys that would have stopped and helped. It's just one of the reasons I never want to move away from georgia.

That's really bad but I can actually see that happening round here. Nobody will help anybody round here. Actually when I was in town a few weeks ago an oldish lady fell up the giant curb at the bus stop and nobody helped her so when me and my boyfriend got to her we helped her. She had one of those little trolly things they have and it was too heavy for her to get up the curb so my boyfriend lifted it up for her. At first though she looked like she thought he was nicking it.

I check in with my Grandma, the only old relative I have, pretty much everyday so does my brother he goes shoppin for her as well. She's in hospital right now though I wanted to go see her today but I couldn't get there from uni before visiting hours finished. :(

That is horrible that someone would be to cruel. It wouldn't have taken but a second to help or out or see if she was OK.

I remember seeing a video online from a traffic camera. It showed this older man getting seriously hit by a car. He was laying on the side of the road and no one even came over to see if he was ok. The ones that did stop just stood on the sidewalk and stared at him. Eventually an ambulance showed up, but I just couldn't believe it. The car that hit him just kept on going too.

That is incredibly messed up. o_o Someone should have said something to the driver.

I've never seen anything like that happen and I'm glad. There are a lot of people around here who would just leave you laying there, but there has always been at least one nice person around from what I've seen. I try to help when I can, but it's usually just by opening doors and checking in on people when something seems a little too suspicious.

My grandparents have already passed on.

That is terrible. Did the bus driver see her?
That man really should have stopped to pick her up though. That was cruel, stuck up, and just rude. I mean sometimes its kinda intimidating helping someone you dont know but if he just ignored her because he was in a hurry thats wrong. It takes what two seconds to help someone up? Plus stepping over her? Walk around at least, jeez.
People are so inconsiderate but I cant do much about it other than complain.

My stomach has turned. Nothing surprises me anymore though. But I will say this, if that was my grandmother or mother, and I was present and saw that shit, I would have probably ended up in jail for assault and battery over that guy. And this reminds me of 2 articles I just read a couple of months ago where an older male WalMart employee was literally trampled to death by shoppers on Black Friday ~ yes, just recently in November 2008.

And another incident where a woman took her sister shopping at WalMart, was knocked over by shoppers when the store doors were opened and began to have seizures. The sister screamed for help and for people to stop but they just kept running over these ladies and rushing to the aisles like nothing happened. Yes, the lady died. Merry f*n Xmas to those families, huh? I have to find those articles and post them here. I will try to remember where I saw them but I know for sure one of the incidents took place in Florida.

Sick twisted brainwashed consumers ~ sorry to rant but I despise American corporatism with the utmost hatred. And people are so driven by it ~ its disgusting to me. Anyway, I truly hope that the woman you spoke of is OK and doing well now.

EDIT: This is the link to the story about the WalMart worker but I cannot find the one that my friend sent me about the woman in Florida. If I find it, I will post that one too. So sad really. http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...art_after.html

Thats just stupid... Poor woman, I hate it when that happends.
I can get so angry if nobody helps >_< What the heck, just stepping
over her as if she is not there? >_>

Here in the Netherlands that also happends alot.
Only a handfull of bus drivers wait till people sit and then start driving.
And when the bus is full, you stand up for people that can't stand in a driving bus.
But the busdrivers here can be very rude, in some matters, I can understand them,
there has been alot of attacks on busdrivers here lately.
But still, they could also act as humans, I think it makes them job a bit more fun.
Where I used to live, we had a large busstation, and when the bus drive out
of its stop, it is standing in front of a trafic light.
Years ago, busdrivers would let you in very fast if you almost missed your bus.
But now, when you knock on the windows, they look you in the eye, and then
look away as if you do not exsist. >_> Pffff.... Lame.

Kind of a same situation to the first post:
I saw this woman accidently dropping her walking cane, and trying in many ways
to pick it up but she could not bend over so easy. Just, Nobody helped her =/
Then I ask myself, is everybody just blind or something?
Should I get off my seat then, somewere all the way in the back of the bus,
to help a poor woman who is sitting in front of the bus? >_>

The time I have witnessed something like this didn't end with the elderly person remaining on the floor but with me falling over myself to help them.

An old men in the 70s or 80s had fallen on a street close to where I live, his head was bleeding and he was totally out of it. His bike lay beside him and I quickly made sure he wasn't going to faint. I made him sit at the side of the road while another passerby called an ambulance and a car that wanted to drive down the narrow lane stopped, the driver got out and carefully put the bike at the side of the road then kept waiting there until the ambulance came in case some idiot driver didn't see us at the side of the road.

That's at least how it is in my town. A town over I was standing at a bus stop when a little chinese girl was balancing a pack of heavy bottles of water on her bike. They fell down and the girl with them. Some jerkwards around me laughed and guess what.

Shy little Ehnvy who usually never opens her mouth unless it really counts went into a hissy and spitty fury that had me almost HIT - yes hit - those guys before I stomped off to help the little girl who was no more than 7. She looked at me with big eyes, grinned and thanked me.

Afterwards I was really anxious because those guys were twice the size of me >.>

what I'm trying to say is though, that every town is different, however people aren't no matter in what town they are when something like that happens ;)

Wow, that's unbelievably lame that everyone completely ignored the old woman when she fell. I do check up on elderly family members often, and no, i haven't seen anything like that happen even though i ride the bus often and a lot of old people are on the bus a lot.

People are really, really fucked up.
No one cares anymore.

The suicide rate off the Golden Gate Bridge is about one person every two weeks. This is documented jumpings, mind you -- meaning these people kill themselves in broad daylight amongst hundreds of tourists. This isn't an issue like poverty or world hunger or genocide that takes millions of dollars, various resources, thousands of volunteers, and hours upon hours to improve. This is an issue that can be stopped with a smile or a few kind words, but no one can take those precious few seconds out of their stupid lives to save another. There was an eye-opening article in the New Yorker a couple years ago called Jumpers, by Tad Friend.
Here is a quote from the article:

The bridge comes into the lives of all Bay Area residents sooner or later, and it often stays. Dr. Jerome Motto, who has been part of two failed suicidebarrier coalitions, is now retired and living in San Mateo. When I visited him there, we spent three hours talking about the bridge. Motto had a patient who committed suicide from the Golden Gate in 1963, but the jump that affected him most occurred in the seventies. "I went to this guy's apartment afterward with the assistant medical examiner," he told me. "The guy was in his thirties, lived alone, pretty bare apartment. He'd written a note and left it on his bureau. It said, 'I'm going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.' "

Motto sat back in his chair. "That was it," he said. "It's so needless, the number of people who are lost."

As people who work on the bridge know, smiles and gentle words don't always prevent suicides. A barrier would. But to build one would be to acknowledge that we do not understand each other; to acknowledge that much of life is lived on the chord, on the far side of the railing. Joseph Strauss believed that the Golden Gate would demonstrate man's control over nature, and so it did. No engineer, however, has discovered a way to control the wildness within.

The article inspired a documentary called The Bridge. The film crew captured all but one jump off the bridge in the span of one year and interviewed family and friends of people who have committed suicide off the bridge, and they even have interviews with people who have jumped and survived. One man was sobbing on the bridge for a long time before he jumped, and the only person that approached him was a German tourist wanting him to take a picture for her. Right when he jumped, he regretted it and tried to land feet first in the water in hopes of surviving. He succeeded; the impact didn't kill him, and a harbor seal actually saved him from drowning until the Coast Guard arrived. A SEAL saved him when no human would. :/
Here's the trailer for the documentary:

I check in with elderly family members often. In fact, I love visiting my grandparent and great-grandparents. I thought the bus driver was extremely rude, but the businessman probably didn't see her or even know she was there. I do agree, that it was a horrible thing to do and that someone should have helped her up and asked her if she was okay, but I don't care what anyone tells me *rebellious look on face, hands on hips and drawn up to full height (5'6"-5'8")*, I will still believe that there are more good people than bad! I'm determined to be optimistic! *adds a defiant flick of the hair for good measure*

I agree with Guivre, it has a lot to do with where you live.

My province is called "Friendly Manitoba" for a reason
(although they changed it =__=
... stupid Spirited Energy Manitoba ...
for hell's sake! Spirit and Energy are synonyms!)
Well, in my city, my sister's walked a little old lady across the street,
it's very normal to start conversations and joke with people waiting for the bus,
I was wandering around downtown once (lost) and a business lady came up to me and asked
"Are you okay? You lost? Would you like me to show you where to go?"
Another time, my friend accidentally fell while walking across the street and the person beside her asked if she was okay.
People are really nice in my city,
but only if you look approachable. ^^;;

As the rule goes:
In order to have friends, you have to present yourself as friendly.

About that story:
That's horrible! That poor lady!
I know in my city, someone would have helped her up and asked if she was alright!
I know that the bus driver wouldn't have just driven off.

It makes me very appreciative for my city. .__.

3This reminds me of when I found a person laying unconscious by the road. Cars went by , nobody stopped...Nobody paid any attention at all . It turned out they passed out from drinking too much alcohol and I found someone who claimed to be their friend who was going to check.
I cannot beleive how callious people can be...I mean isn't this sort of stuff more important then arriving on time somewhere?.