Being a good samaritan in Canberra?

For those against the act of helping, due to the danger involved with “ice-addicted freaks and the such” I pose this question. If 2 minutes later that tyre was to cause the car to spin out and hit a family wagon head on doing 80km/h, resulting in multiple fatalities, would you curl up in a ball of guilt beacuse you could have prevented it from happening but were too gutless?
I once stopped at the scene of a smoldering wreck a few minutes to midnight, half hour from Broken Hill on a road I’d never traveled. Sure I thought twice about the danger of being attacked by the thieves that torched it and drove on into the night. Then I wondered if there was an innocent person/s slumped over the steering wheel gasping their last breaths and made a u-turn to check. It took a lot of guts to get out in the dark and look but I wouldn’t have a clear conscience today if I hadn’t made sure nobody was hurt [thankfully it was just a stolen joyride].
Personal safety before others’ welfare is understandable, but there are cases where certain individuals are allowed to put someone else before themselves. It’s what separates us from the animals.
In conclusion – Good on ya, I’d have done the same.

Opening the car door when you had received a blank stare was incredibly risky behaviour. You were headed for Mitchell – where there is a sex trade and a lot of hard drugs – and you weren’t in a builtup area with other people right nearby. This guy could well have been on ICE – in which case, you were actually risking your life. Sorry, but hard drugs have changed the landscape for good samaritan acts. You should perhaps have pulled over and bipped, and hand signalled to him that there was a problem – but the onus should have been on him to get out of his car and ask you what his problem was.
I consider you are actually fortunate not to have met with a misadventure. Your partner was not being overprotective, but quite rational.

I’m all for kindness in any form, however, I think you might have been asking for trouble opening his door.

I find winding down my passenger window and gesticulating normally gets the message though. If there isn’t an opportunity to do that, I would certainly calculate the need to put myself in such a vulnerable position.

If it isn’t life threatening, I think stay in your car. And as a general rule of thumb, don’t touch other people’s property. The benefactor of your kindness may well have reacted defensively.

A Good Samaritan stopped for me once at about 2am out in the country near Ballarat somewhere when my car broke down. He helped me fix it and then I asked him where he was going and he wasn’t very clear about it (english not so good) but he didn’t have anywhere to go so I invited him home. He followed me the 2 hours it took to get home to Melbourne. It turned out he’d stolen the car he was in from his wife and was on the run from her family for some reason or other I couldn’t quite grasp. All he would eat was noodles. And he ate them squatting on the bonnet of his car in my driveway. He was a freak.

Grrrr said :

Hence, unless you stopped to help someone who is typically your enemy, you are not a Good Samaritan. You are simply a good citizen – a fellow motorist.

The term is in the common vernacular for a volunteer that helps someone out unexpectedly… deal with it; sometimes terms take on a new meaning over, say, you know, 2000+ years or so… There are even laws around the world named after the parable – good Samaritan laws to protect volunteers (first aiders, WSRs etc) from prosecution from actions undertaken “in good faith” and without negligence.

Besides, being a bystander, and ignoring the hazards to others is akin to being an “enemy” to them anyhow…

Padoof – continue on in your ways – you have the blessing of almost every contributor above so far… Although, I personally use hand gesticulations (point to relevant tyre, then two flat palms coming together), or if proximity allows, simply wind windows down and call out. You probably scared the shit out of the oblivious driver by opening their door; that’s pretty much an invasion of one’s personal space; you “broke the seal, man…”

I normally would have done the same, Padoof, apart from opening the door. I do stuff like that all the time, as people have done for me. One morning on the Monaro I had a flat I was totally oblivious to. A good samaritan went to great pains to point it out to me using hand gestures. I was tired and cranky and assumed he was one of the many morons one unfortunately encounters on our roads. I’m ashamed to say I responded with a gesture of my own which was most unladylike and he gave up. Of course, as soon as he drove off I realised what he’d been on about and I feel ashamed to this day. If you are that good samaritan, please accept my sincere apologies and don’t stop being a nice guy.

The point was that, sadly, most people choose not to get involved for fear of repercussions.

I believe what you’re referring to is “the bystander effect”- people will assume someone else will deal with it, essentially.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

What’s with the media labelling everyone who helps someone a “Good Samaritan”? The term comes from a biblical parable of the same name: The reason for the word “good” before “samaritan” is that the Samaritans were enemies of the Jews, so the stopping to help was unexpected.

Hence, unless you stopped to help someone who is typically your enemy, you are not a Good Samaritan. You are simply a good citizen – a fellow motorist.

Why didn’t you just wind down your passenger side window down, and try and get the driver’s attention? (Hoping they’d wind down their window and you could them talk to them) Isn’t that what most people would do?

If I stopped at traffic lights and the guy in the car next to me got out of his car and walked over – I’d make sure my doors were locked before he got to my car.
If he then tapped on my window, I’d probably look at him blankly too. Then I might slightly open my window to hear what he has to say.

If he attempted to open my door, I wouldn’t take to well to that at all.

Kudos for alerting the driver of the state of their tyre, but I would never approach it the way you did.

Do you also knock on strangers’ homes’ doors and then just open the door before they get a chance to answer the door?

Opening his door isn’t the best move. I would have automatically been defensive/aggressive if some strange bloke tried to open my door at a set of lights. You wouldn’t know what their intention was.

As for letting them know – thumbs up. I was riding next to a BMW over Commonwealth Ave bridge a couple of weeks ago and noticed he had a bit of a flat. Just beeped and pointed at the tyre. He nodded. Had obviously felt it!

Probably done the same thing about once a year for the past ten. Split equally between flat tyres and zero brake lights. Never had a problem.

I would appreciate someone telling me my vehicle had a similar problem.

Padoff
I just want to know what you did to him this person, and why wasn’t he changing his own tyre, obviously he didn’t have a spare.

Kudos, Padoof! Wouldn’t it be great if this was just a “normal” thing, rather than such an unusual event that we’ve all got to chip in with our opinions?

Jethro said :

I know that if some random came up to my car and the door

That should have said ‘opened the door’

Good deeds are good.

But I’m not sure about opening his door. It could have put you at risk. I know that if some random came up to my car and the door at a set of lights I would be thinking I was about to get car-jacked or something.

A more sensible option would have been to point to his tyre and mouth the word ‘flat’ instead of opening his car door.

Good on ya, I am always letting our diver know if I see something wrong with their car, just last week an older gentleman was driving a ute and trailer he had stuff tied down on both but a rope from the ute had come undone and was hanging down at his trailer wheel as it was a single lane I sat a fair way back and watched til he turned then followed as he pull up I let him know … response thanku that could have ended badly. Some people are happy to be informed and some are waist of space on our roads

Oh I forgot to mention that they did the experiment both when the female was dressed smartly and when she was dressed more provocatively. There was significantly less support for her when in more revealing clothes. Might be worth noting re the posts on the Slutwalk comes to Canberra thread.

I’m sure it was interesting, but I fail to see what spiking drinks at a pub and a woman alerting a man about a problem with his car tyre on the road have in common? I mean, I can see some very vague connection there maybe, but it’s a pretty long jump.

Your partner is wise. You could have been by a law-breaking lane splitting motorcyclist.

Maybe you should tell your husband he’s being an overprotective cave man! (Always kinda sexy of course – but nevertheless a good opportunity for mockery)

Bit weird that the guy in the car didn’t even open his window. Maybe he was scared of you?!

I think it was the right thing to do and there should be more of it!

Being berated for random acts of kindness ? I think you need to reevaluate your relationship. Are these the core values you wish to impart on any children ?

Strikes me as a clear case for Kant’s categorical imperative or even the less subtle golden rule.

If I had a flat tyre I’d hope someone who noticed it would let me know.

Just because other people are being bastards is no reason to contribute to the general level of bastardry out there.

My 2c.