Red Cross Blogs

Bystanders rescue man from under burning car

By Mark Cox
September 19, 2011 at 11:19 am

Here’s a real-life video nasty showing the aftermath of a road accident, where an unconscious biker has ended up beneath a burning car. Watch this scary clip, then come back to the blog.

Impressive, eh? Burning vehicles, unstable fuel tanks, imminent danger, and yet all those people – working together – react quickly to save the biker from certain death. (Except for the man in the suit, who instead plays with his glasses and at one point actually leans on the car that needs to be moved. Way to go, man in suit.)

But look more closely at what actually happens, and a fascinating picture emerges. First, you’ll see the woman lying in the road assumes a leading role, and it’s her direction – pointing to the casualty under the car – that triggers such an immediate response. A group instantly gathers and, at great personal risk, lifts the burning car to rescue the man.

And then what happens? They all, every one of them, immediately retreat and leave the casualty lying prone on the road. Granted, there is a burning car nearby and the policeman does gesture for them to move away. But think of how determined they all were to get him from under the car just seconds earlier, and how willingly they all now fall away.

The reason why this happened is easy to explain – it’s called the bystander effect. In a nutshell, pulling someone from under a car is dangerous and needs bravery, but otherwise it’s a pretty straightforward ask. Anyone can do it. However, most people are deeply uncomfortable with first aid and, especially when there’s a group present, people generally decide that it’s someone else’s job to step in and help.

(On a similar note, I wrote a heart-breaking account last year about a Good Samaritan who was stabbed after saving a robbery victim, then lay ignored on a busy street for more than an hour before he died.)

So having done the truly dangerous stuff to save the man, our heroes quickly step back and leave him. And the brutal fact is: if the guy’s airway had been blocked, lying in a prone position like that would have killed him in minutes regardless of whether he was under a car or not.

In such a situation, all someone needed to do was roll the guy on to his side and lift his chin: technically known as the recovery position. That would ensure that, even if the casualty was unconscious, he’d still be able to breathe. (Ideally, they would have moved him further away from the burning car as well, but I appreciate that’s very easy for me to suggest from the comfort of my office.)

So hats off to the heroes – they did an incredible job and showed proper, old-style courage. But stories such as these underline how critical it is for people to have even just the bare basics of first aid knowledge. And that’s why the Red Cross has introduced a new, simplified approach to learning life-saving skills – Everyday First Aid – that enables people to quickly pick up the essential facts. Because sadly, without such knowledge, all the bravery in the world might potentially end up counting for nothing.

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Tags: Everyday first aid, First aid, first aid tips, first aid training

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 19th, 2011 at 11:19 am and is filed under First aid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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