One man's story of helping a stranger in need is receiving a lot of attention this week. It seems that a BART passenger, noticing a man passed out on the floor of the train, went over to check on him. Apparently none of the other passengers assisted, and the good Samaritan allegedly even had some difficulty getting a person by the intercom to call the train operator.
The man, whom the Chronicle only identifies as "John," took to Facebook to vent his frustration.
"This was my morning: an unconscious man lies on the floor of a packed BART train while dozens of commuters ignore him," the Chronicle reports the man as writing on his Facebook page. "This in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the world. WTF has happened to us?"
John continued that even after he began trying to assist the unconscious man, none of the other passengers offered a hand.
“And as soon as I went over to see if he was OK (he wasn't), I suddenly became invisible to the crowd," he wrote. "I had to get uncomfortably loud before someone by the intercom called the conductor.”
With the train stopped, John says BART employees came to the man's assistance.
“The BART people were very kind. He was barely conscious and incoherent. He managed to get up with help. But couldn't walk off the train by himself. The BART folks said they were taking him to get medical attention.”
And so why didn't anyone other than John help? Are we all so callous as to leave a desperate man to a potentially ill fate as we swipe right on our phones?
As of press time, the top comment on the Facebook post of the story condemns us as "a society of cowards" "who are afraid to get involved."
Which: maybe. It could also be that people have become so desensitized to all the outrageous stuff that happens on BART everyday that the good commuting citizens of San Francisco have simply learned to tune everything — including each other — out.
