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An extract from

Humankind

by Rutger Bregman

 

The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological claim that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present; the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that one of them will help.

The most widely used example of the bystander effect is the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964. Genovese was killed across the street from where she lived, in an apartment in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens in New York City. Two weeks after the murder, The New York Times published an article claiming that 38 witnesses saw or heard the attack, but none of them called the police or came to her aid. More recent investigations have questioned the original version of events, with The New York Times calling their story 'flawed' in 2016.

For years, I assumed the bystander effect was just an inevitable part of life in a metropolis. But then something happened in the very city where I work – something that forced me to reassess my assumptions.

It’s February 9, 2016. At a quarter to four in the afternoon Sanne parks her white Alfa Romeo on Sloterkade, a canal-side street in Amsterdam. She gets out and heads to the passenger side to take her toddler out of the carseat when suddenly, she notices the car is still rolling. Sanne only barely manages to jump back behind the wheel, but it’s too late for brakes. The car tips down into the canal and begins to sink.

The bad news: dozens of bystanders saw it happen.

No doubt even more people heard Sanne’s screams. Just as in Kew Gardens, there are apartments overlooking the site of the calamity. And this, too, is a nice, upper-middle class neighborhood.

But then something unexpected happens.

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“It was like an instant reflex,” Ruben Abrahams, owner of a real estate agency on the corner, later tells a local TV reporter. “Car in the water? That can’t be good.” He runs to get a hammer from his office toolbox and then sprints right into the icy canal.

A tall, athletic guy with graying stubble, Ruben meets me one cold January day to show me where it all happened. “It was one of those bizarre coincidences,” he tells me,  “where everything came together in a split second.”

When Ruben jumps into the canal, Rienk Kentie – also a bystander – is already swimming towards the sinking automobile, and Reinier Bosch – yet another bystander – is in the water too. At the last instant, a woman had handed Reinier a brick, something that moments later will prove crucial. Wietse Mol – bystander number four – grabs an emergency hammer from his car and is the last to dive in.

“We began bashing on the windows,” Ruben recounts. 

Reinier tries to smash one of the side windows, but no luck. Meanwhile, the car tilts and dips, nose down. Reinier brings the brick crashing down hard on the back window. Finally, it cracks.

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After that, everything happens very fast. “The mother passed her child to me through the back window,” Ruben continues. For a moment, the kid gets stuck, but a few seconds later Ruben and Reinier manage to work the toddler free. Reinier swims the child to safety. With the mother still inside, the car is inches away from going under. Just in time, Ruben, Rienk, and Wietse help her get out.

Not two seconds later, the car vanishes into the inky waters of the canal.

By that time, a whole crowd of bystanders has gathered along the waterside. They help lift the mother and child and four men out of the water and wrap them in towels.

The whole rescue operation was over in less than two minutes.

In all that time, the four men – complete strangers to one another – never exchanged a word. If any of them had hesitated for even a split second longer, it would have been too late. If all four had not jumped in, the rescue may well have failed. And if that nameless bystander had not handed Reinier a brick at the last instant, he wouldn’t have been able to smash the back window and get the mother and child out.

In other words, Sanne and her toddler survived not in spite of the large number of bystanders, but because of them.

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