China: Hit-and-run video sparks outcry
China’s roads are among the world’s most dangerous, with traffic laws and safety widely flouted, as almost 70,000 people died in road accidents in 2009, or around 190 fatalities a day, according to police statistics.
A video of a horrendous hit-and-run accident in China involving a two-year-old child has sparked outcry in the nation and questions over the price of modernity.
The video shows a van running over a toddler, Yueyue, in a busy market and driving on as bystanders walk and drive past the bloody child without helping, Reuters reports. The child is left in the street for so long — seven minutes — that there is time for a truck to come and run over the girl again, it states.
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The Guardian reports that several people glanced at the toddler's body and then continued walking. Some wheeled their goods from the nearby market around the child.
The incident, which was caught on tape by a surveillance video and aired by a television station, happened Oct. 13 in Foshan city, in the southern province of Guandong.
After the second vehicle runs over the child, a woman pulls her to the side of the street, and her mother then rushes to her. BBC reports that the woman who finally helped the child was a trash collector.
China's Xinhua news agency reports that the girl survived the incident and is now in a coma, however the Shanghai Daily reported that she died.
The video, which has been viewed 1.5 million times on the Youku video sharing site, has sparked "horrified soul searching" in China, the Guardian reports. People have expressed anger at those who walked by and around the girl for seven minutes before she was helped.
The widespread reluctance to help strangers has already lead to an anguished public debate in the country. Many say they are too scared, blaming extortion attempts by people who have accused Good Samaritans of causing their injuries – and judges who have backed such claims. But some talked of a new moral low after seeing passersby – including a woman holding a small girl by the hand – walk around a two-year-old lying in a pool of blood.
A social media user in China called the incident, "the shame of the Chinese people," Reuters reports.
The incident has already sparked at least one YouTube user to create a video re-enacting the incident. GlobalPost does not know if the material used in this video is from the original.
WARNING: This video shows upsetting material.