Zihan Cai
Reports of harassment on public transport regularly make local headlines. Women recount experiences of men making persistent and unwanted sexual advances while fellow passengers look on without intervening. But those who step in can also face danger. In some reported incidents, passengers defending victims of racial abuse have themselves faced physical retaliation by the aggressor.
These incidents highlight a dilemma for bystanders, as not intervening leaves victims without support, while intervening can put their own safety at risk.
In October 2025, Transport for London (TfL) launched the Act Like a Friend campaign to encourage passengers to offer support to those who have been victims of hate crimes, sexual offences and harassment. Its campaign video demonstrates how simple actions can help alleviate tense situations, such as taking the initiative to speak to a passenger who is being harassed.
Encouraging passengers to help matters. But what can public authorities do to support passengers in intervening safely?
Beyond the call to act
How passengers respond to these expectations depends on their own circumstances and risk calculations. To understand how passengers navigate these expectations, I spoke with London-based international students in a series of focus groups conducted as part of my research at the University of Birmingham’s Public Management programme. International students offer a valuable perspective on how language confidence, unfamiliarity with local practices and concerns about personal safety shape responses to public safety campaigns. Their experiences can help public authorities identify barriers that may otherwise be overlooked when designing campaigns for diverse urban populations.
My research found that international students broadly supported campaigns such as Act Like a Friend, but their experiences highlighted the gap between willingness to intervene and the confidence, knowledge and sense of safety needed to do so.
For some participants, limited confidence in speaking English or unfamiliarity with the context made intervention more difficult. Gender added another layer of risk, with women particularly wary of confronting male perpetrators. ‘If they can, so can you,’ said the TfL campaign. But what seems like a simple call for support may carry greater risks for other passengers, placing unequal burdens on those that public authorities ask to help.
The unequal risks of intervening also raised questions about the responsibilities of public authorities. Many participants noticed that no transport staff or other public authorities appeared in the campaign video. Some interpreted this absence as an expectation for passengers to handle potentially dangerous situations themselves. Their concerns reflect what scholars call responsibilisation, where individuals are increasingly expected to manage risks that also fall within the responsibilities of public institutions. Some participants said they would feel more confident intervening if the video showed how staff could protect passengers and what support would be available after an incident. Knowing what help they could rely on mattered to their decisions about whether to step in.
This does not mean international students were unwilling to help. The participants in my focus groups generally believed passengers should support those experiencing harassment, but they are worried that confronting an aggressor could make matters worse. A number of respondents consider it their responsibility to witness the situation unfolding so they could alert staff or report the incident. Others preferred to check on the person affected once the perpetrator had left. These responses suggest that willingness to help does not always translate into direct intervention.
These less visible forms of support did not feature in TfL’s campaign video. This omission matters for both policy effectiveness and inclusion. Presenting intervention primarily as a visible act of confronting perpetrators risks overlooking forms of support that passengers may consider safer and more realistic, particularly those who feel vulnerable because of their language skills, immigration status, or unfamiliarity with local social norms. For TfL and other public authorities, this means developing campaigns that show a wider range of practical responses that are commensurate to passengers’ abilities and social circumstances.
Making Shared Responsibility Possible
These findings offer practical lessons for TfL and other public authorities. Public bodies could involve people from different ethnic backgrounds, with varying levels of confidence in English and perceptions of risk, in testing campaigns before they launch. This would help establish whether the advice is realistic for different audiences, particularly in multicultural cities. Campaign videos could demonstrate different forms of intervention, explain when passengers should avoid direct confrontation, and show how to access existing reporting channels, such as the British Transport Police’s 61016 text service, and assistance from transport staff. They could also make institutional support more visible by showing how staff respond to reports and what follow-up assistance passengers can expect. Evaluations could then assess whether passengers understand these options and feel confident using them.
The wider challenge for public authorities is to make shared responsibility possible for the people they ask to take part. The hesitation expressed by participants in my study reveals how differences in confidence, experience and personal safety can shape who feels able to respond. When these differences are overlooked, even well-intentioned calls for public participation risk excluding those who want to do their part but are constrained by various factors. Genuine participation requires public institutions to take these inequalities seriously, provide practical support and remain accountable for the safety of those they encourage to intervene. Otherwise, shared responsibility risks remaining an invitation that not everyone can accept.
About the Author
Zihan Cai is an MSc Public Management student at the University of Birmingham, with research interests in public participation, social inequalities and institutional responsibility. This article is based on her dissertation “Negotiating Responsibility: How Non-Citizens Respond to State-Led Safety Campaigns: The Case of International Students and TfL’s Act Like a Friend Campaign”, supervised by Professor Nicole Curato. This article benefited from editorial suggestions by Dr Jingwen Jiang and Prof Nicole Curato.
