Skip to content
Life Guide Situations Guides

    Type a keyword to search
    English

    When a stranger is in trouble on the road: walk away or stop

    This is the long version of §13.2 (when an older person falls or someone collapses, don't rush to lift them). The book sorts the people you might help into four tiers, ranked by how likely it is that the benefit will come back to you. Strangers are the lowest tier. There is little chance they will repay you, and you don't know who they are. So this article does not urge you to do anything. It lists in full what each of the three paths will cost you, and you choose.

    This article gives no probabilities. Every layer of cost below is real, and each can be traced to a provision. But there are no public statistics on "out of a hundred people who help, how many actually end up in trouble." The book's rule is that if a number is uncertain, better not to write it. So don't read "seven layers are listed here" as "all seven will fall on you."

    Three paths

    Walk awayStop but don't touchStop and help all the way
    LegalityLegal. In China, an ordinary person has no duty to rescue a stranger, and the Criminal Law has no offense of "saw it and didn't help." This is China; countries such as Germany differ, see belowLegalLegal
    Time0A few minutes. Calling 120 leaves your phone numberAt least half a day, and you may have to follow to the hospital
    Chance of being tracked down afterwardLowestYou are the one who left a numberHighest
    What the other person gains0The ambulance arrives soonerThe most

    Costs that may appear once you stop, from light to heavy

    1. Callbacks and questioning. When you call 120 or 110, your number is recorded. They may call you back to confirm the location. Afterward you may also be asked to come in for questioning once. In a criminal case, if the person reporting does not want their name made public, the investigating authority must keep it confidential (Criminal Procedure Law, Article 111). There is no such confidentiality rule for calling 120.

    2. Being sought out by the injured person's family. If the vehicle that caused the harm can't be found on surveillance footage, you are the person the family can find most easily. You left your number, and you were at the scene. They may call to press you, or come to your door.

    3. Being sued in court. Whoever claims you hit them must produce the evidence. If they can't, they bear the consequences of that themselves (Interpretation of the Civil Procedure Law, Article 90). But this provision governs only how the case is finally decided, not whether you get pulled into it. A case under the ordinary procedure must be concluded at first instance within 6 months, and may be extended by another 6 months in special circumstances. Under the simplified procedure it is 3 months (Civil Procedure Law, Articles 152 and 164). Even if you win cleanly, the other side can be made to pay only three items: the case acceptance fee, the application fee, and the travel and lost-work costs of witnesses and appraisers who appear in court (Measures on the Payment of Litigation Costs, Articles 6 and 29). The cost of your own lawyer is not among those three, and you pay it yourself.

    4. Trouble brought to your workplace. If someone makes a scene at your workplace, you can call the police. Disturbing the order of an enterprise or institution so that work cannot go on normally is punished by a warning or a fine of 500 yuan or less. In more serious cases it is detention of 5 to 10 days plus a fine of 1000 yuan or less. If a group comes to make trouble together, the ringleader gets 10 to 15 days of detention (Public Security Administration Punishments Law, Article 26, item 1). Repeated harassment, pestering or stalking that keeps you from living normally is punished under Article 50, item 5. With the approval of the head of the public security authority, the person may also be ordered not to contact you for a set period. If your company fires you over this, that is generally an unlawful termination of the labor contract, with compensation at 2N (§19.6). But whether you call the police or go to labor arbitration, you have to make trip after trip yourself. And the stretch when you have lost the job first is not made up for by getting 2N later.

    5. Being filmed and posted online. You may not be able to stop others from filming. Without a person's consent, no one may make, use or publicize that person's portrait (Civil Code, Article 1019). But there is an exception: "making, using or publicizing the portrait of the portrait right holder where unavoidable in carrying out news reporting" is reasonable use and not an infringement (Article 1020, item 2). A journalist filming for a news report falls under this exception. What you can do is decline interviews, stay out of the shot, and not speak in front of the camera. Whether you agree is up to you, and no one can agree for you.

    6. The video gets passed around and you get abused. Once a video spreads, the comment section is out of your hands. The things you can do yourself are set out in the Provisions on the Governance of Online Violence Information (《网络暴力信息治理规定》), in force from August 1, 2024. Platforms are to give you these protective settings: block strangers or a specific person, and limit who can see your information. You can also bar others from reposting or commenting, accept private messages only from friends, or accept private messages from no one (Article 23). Platforms are to provide a one-tap evidence-capture function that preserves the abusive content (Article 25). Platforms are to set up a dedicated, quick complaint-and-report entrance in a prominent place (Article 26). When a platform finds suspected violations of law or crimes, it is to report them to the public security authorities promptly and provide leads (Article 15). For how to keep evidence yourself and how to call the police, see §8.37 (if you are a target of online abuse, turn on protections and preserve evidence first).

    7. When you can't bear it. The first six layers can all be met with specific provisions; the seventh cannot. How much being under constant attack affects your emotions has no reliable data in China that could be cited. The book gives no number here, only a way out: the psychological support hotline 12356, see §1.25.

    Three situations in which "walking away" is no longer free

    • You are abroad. When we said above that "walking away is legal," that referred to Chinese law. Some countries make it a crime not to help someone in danger. Article 323c of the German Criminal Code provides that if you do not help in an accident, a public danger or an emergency when help is needed and can be expected of you in the circumstances, in particular when it poses no considerable danger to yourself and does not violate other important duties, you face imprisonment of up to 1 year or a fine. Other countries' rules vary; follow the law of the country you are in.
    • You operate or manage the premises, or organize a mass event. Premises means places such as hotels, shopping malls, banks, stations, airports, sports venues and entertainment venues. You owe people on the premises a duty to keep them safe. If you fail in that duty, you bear tort liability (you must pay compensation). Where the harm was caused by someone else and you failed in that duty, you pay within the part for which you are responsible, which is called supplementary liability (Civil Code, Article 1198). So when a staff member on duty or a venue operator walks away, the responsibility they carry differs from that of a passerby who walks away.
    • The matter already involves you. You hit the person, the car is yours, or the danger was caused by your own earlier conduct. Then the question is no longer whether to help someone else, but how to handle a traffic accident and what to do about hit-and-run, see §8.1.

    If you decide to stop, the least trouble way

    1. Do not move or lift the person. There is no second answer on this. The reason is medical: forcing someone up can make a brain bleed worse, and can make a spinal injury worse. Legally there is nothing to worry about: harm caused in the course of rescue is already exempted by Article 184 of the Civil Code.
    2. Call out to them from a little distance and see whether they are breathing normally. If they don't respond and are not breathing normally, press hard on the chest, see §13.1. If they are breathing normally, stay where you are and call 120, giving the location clearly.
    3. Pull in a passerby to stay with you, and turn on your phone's video at the same time. Having a witness and a recording works better than arguing afterward.
    4. Don't lift them into a car alone, and don't pay out of your own pocket to take them to the hospital. That step costs the most and is the hardest to wrap up afterward.
    5. If you were injured while helping, or spent your own money, and want to recover it, see §13.39 (what to do if you were hurt or out of pocket from helping).

    Sources

    Translated from the Chinese original. Chinese original