Trevor Laffan: Rubberneckers were always a pain, now they have phones...

During my time in An Garda Síochána, I came across all representations of humanity. Some good, some bad, and plenty in between.

The behaviour of some characters regularly left me dumbfounded, scratching my head trying to make sense of the mindset. I’ll give you an example.

Most of you will be familiar with the term ‘rubbernecking’. It means slowing down while driving to look at something taking place nearby like a traffic accident.

Some people possess a morbid curiosity and can’t help themselves when there is a chance they might see some blood and guts.

Apart from being a pain in the butt for those trying to manage traffic flow at the scene of an incident, they also run the risk of creating further carnage by not concentrating on their own driving. They often hinder the work of the emergency services too.

I came across an extreme example of it one time during my policing days, when dealing with a traffic accident in Cork. A guy driving out of the city ploughed into a wall and ended up with a serious injury. He was unconscious with his head resting on top of the steering wheel.

The emergency services reckoned it was too risky to try to remove the wheel, so they decided to cut it off at the column and take both steering wheel and driver to hospital.

One of the firemen got his cutting equipment and asked me to hold the driver’s head while he got to work. We were operating in cramped conditions as you can imagine and, as I was leaning into the car, I felt some movement beside me. There was a guy squeezing in next to me trying to get a closer look at the action.

Apparently, he had parked up near the accident and walked back to the crashed car.

Not content with his view of the scene, he almost shoved me out of the way to get a better look. I could hardly believe my eyes, but he didn’t last long.

One of the other firemen removed him unceremoniously and told him to go away in language that left him in no doubt that his presence was not appreciated.

None of us gave the driver much chance of surviving, but happily he did, no thanks to the rubbernecker though.

People are curious, we know that. Experts tell us that, in many situations, rubbernecking is simply because of innate human curiosity. When an accident or unusual event occurs, people are compelled to have a look.

But, in recent years, rubbernecking has taken a new twist with the advent of the camera phone. Now, not only do drivers slow down to have a gawk, but they also feel the need to record it so they can share their grizzly images online. And it gets worse.

More recently, we have seen an example of how capturing the image has apparently become more important to some bystanders than actually trying to help.

The drowning of a young man in the River Lee has shown how rubbernecking has reached a new low.

It was reported that Gardaí had to push people back from the scene and increase the cordon around first responders as dozens of onlookers gathered to watch and film, some livestreaming.

“This man was clearly in difficulty in the water, but we saw no signs of lifebuoys in the water when we arrived at the scene minutes after the alarm was raised,” said second officer with Cork City Fire Brigade Victor Shine.

As the tragedy was unfolding, a large crowd gathered on Pope’s Quay, Lavitt’s Quay, and on the Shandon pedestrian bridge near the Coal Quay, with some recording, others live-streaming, and more watching and photographing from surrounding buildings.

People behave differently in a crisis. Some run away, some rush to help, others stand by and watch. The latter is known as the bystander effect.

Research has shown that, even in an emergency, a bystander is less likely to extend help when he or she is in the real or imagined presence of others than when he or she is alone.

Moreover, the number of others is important, such that more bystanders leads to less assistance.

The bystander effect became a subject of interest following the brutal murder of American woman Kitty Genovese in 1964.

Returning home late from work, Genovese was viciously attacked and sexually assaulted by a man with a knife while walking home to her apartment complex from a nearby parking lot.

As reported in the New York Times two weeks later, for more than half an hour, 38 respectable, law-abiding people heard or saw the man attack her three separate times.

The voices and lights from the bystanders in nearby apartments interrupted the killer and frightened him off twice, but each time he returned and stabbed her again.

None of the 38 witnesses called the police during the attack, and only one bystander ed authorities after Kitty Genovese died.

In 2016, following the death of the attacker, the New York Times published an article stating that the number of witnesses and what they saw or heard had been exaggerated, that there had been just two attacks, and two bystanders had called the police, but that doesn’t really alter the fact that most people just stood by.

Maybe if they had had camera phones back then, those witnesses would have recorded that tragic event too. They certainly would today.

I have no idea how we go about altering the mindset of those who would rather record a tragedy for a few likes on social media than render assistance. I’m not sure we can fix that.