The bystander problem

I have noticed a strange behavior among passengers of the public bus that I take to school twice a day. The rule for passengers is that they must pull the cord to signal that they want to get off right after the bus passes the last stop before their stop. I get a little anxious about missing my stop and so tend to follow this rule strictly most of the time. For a while I noticed that even though a lot of people get off at my stop, I am usually the one that pulls the cord. I figured it was because I pulled the cord right after the previous stop and so others never had the chance to. I was curious to see how long people would wait before they decided to pull the cord. So, I started waiting for others to pull the cord, always hoping that there was someone on the bus who was getting off at my stop. But each time, the bus would get really close to my stop without anyone pulling the cord and then I would panick and pull the cord. And yet, each time there would be atleast 10 other people getting off at the same stop as me. That's when it stuck me: "Maybe this is an instance of the bystander problem."

I first read about the famous case of the stabbing of Kitty Genovese in Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point". Genovese was stabbed three times by an assilant over half an hour in New York City, while 38 of her neighbors watched but did nothing to help her. Several researchers performed experiments to understand why the people who had watched the stabbings had not called the police or tried to save her. They found that, given a situation, people are more likely to react when they are alone than when they are in a group. In a group, the responsibility of action is diffused and people assume that either somone else will act or that the problem is not serious enough to require action.

I wonder if people on the bus do not act till the last minute possible to pull the cord for their stop because they assume that somone else will.