Nadine Higgins: Filming crashes for internet notoriety is sick

"But he's not helping the man trapped and injured in his car. Instead, he's filming everything on his phone." Photo / 123RF

Lots of things on social media make me go "ick".

Gratuitous selfies, fishing for compliments, oversharing, shameless undisclosed plugging of products you didn't pay for - but this latest example of the downside of social media makes me feel physically sick.

So here's the gist of it. There was a crash recently in Wainuiomata, and a 71-year-old man was seriously injured when his car was hit by another and flipped on its side. A woman and her partner get to the scene, look around to see if anyone else is there, and see one other person. A man. But he's not helping the man trapped and injured in his car. Instead, he's filming everything on his phone.

Apparently this poor excuse for a human even went right up to the window for a close up.

Here's a question for that degenerate. What if that man died and all you'd done was capture the moment on your phone?

What the hell has gone wrong with people's moral code if they can stand by filming someone's suffering instead of trying to help make it better? How tragic to have your darkest hour of need recorded by a complete stranger, who wouldn't bother to help.

Unbelievably, according to police, this isn't a one-off.

They say there's been a noticeable increase in the number of people taking photos or recording video at crash scenes, and they're warning them that if you identify victims on social media that could result in their poor families finding out about the state they're in through their Facebook feed - which is bad enough - but it could also breach the person's privacy if you identify them online in such a vulnerable position.

We've all been rubberneckers at crash sites. That's why the travellers crawl past the scene, because everyone is having a good geeze. But I wouldn't drive on by if someone needed help - and filming it for internet notoriety is just next level. It's sick.

I remember a few years back as a young reporter driving through torrential rain to cover flooding near Dunedin when the car in front of me, full of kids, drifted left and then swerved so sharply right that it rolled a couple of times right in front of me. Turns out the driver had nodded off.

I remember feeling mortified that people would see me, the first person on the scene, in a marked news car and think I was there to report on it, rather than help, which is what I did. I've never been a fan of the ambulance-chasing style of journalism. Now it seems every Tom, Dick and Harry is an ambulance chaser as they chase likes on line.

It's like that episode of Black Mirror except it's like, real life. It makes me despair for humanity to think people are so devoid of humanity that their first instinct is not to help, but to stand back and press record.