Is it OK to Probably Injure Traffic Blocking Protester to Possibly Save Life?
Let's be explicit so everyone is on the same page. This is unfortunately not a purely hypothetical question except for the preciseness I am hypothesizing.
You are driving your mother to the hospital along a route that you have every reason to believe is clear. But it's not, because of a protest. A protest that would not legally be allowed to totally block traffic as they are doing. Because of cars stopped behind you, the protest adds 20% to the probability your mother will die. If you slowly plow through the protest, there is an 80% chance that you will injure someone fairly seriously but no chance you will kill somebody. Are you wrong to do that? Should it be illegal? Does it matter what the protest is about?
(I think most of you will say it's OK. To those that did, what if the mother death probability went up by only 5%, the protester death probability went from zero to 70% and the policy being protested was clearly bad?)
Luciom,
I wasn't trying to raise questions about federalism or democracy with my jaywalking hypothetical.
But fine, make it local. You live in NYC. There is a referendum on the ballot. If the majority votes yes, motorists will be allowed to intentionally run over jaywalkers. Do you vote yes?
i can answer for my city and i would vote no because of how the streets are especially in the center, and how they are used historically by residents. Probably would vote the same for many other european cities.
I would vote yes for the same referendum if about highways and "arteries" in my city (or in the middle of nowhere) intended for motor vehicle use exclusively (we have streets with those denominations).
I dont know NYC very well if at all but just going with movies/tv shows, looks like a ton of streets are used in ways not to different from how they use them here in the center, it's a bit of a "european" walkable city in some sense, so i guess i would vote no? but i could be convinced of the opposite with more data/details
What I wish is that cars were a little less obsequious and yielding to pedestrians, honestly.
As someone who is frequently a pedestrian it can be super annoying when you're waiting for a car to pass to cross the street, and then they stop to let you cross. Just keep on ****ing driving please it'll be faster for all of us-- because now I feel like I have to run across the street to avoid inconveniencing them and maybe I just wanted to keep walking at my normal walking pace. This happens all of the time.
Huh? In the Golden Gate Bridge protest that David keeps referring to, that's exactly what was happening.
Also, you must not have ever been to NYC. Jaywalkers often are intentionally blocking traffic, at least for as long as it takes for them to cross the street. Drivers who "block the box" do so as well.
Oh if there is intentionality in blocking traffic then i would allow running over even in my city, NYC and everywhere, i was answering for ALL jaywalking which is more complicated to answer.
Blocking traffic intentionally should be a very serious crime and general laws should allow unlimited violence by private citizens against in flagrante criminals *in general*. It should be legal (and rewarded by the state) to stop anyone committing a flagrant crime *in general*.
change the question to wife or child (most people here probably hate their parents). still bad? what if it was 50% likely?
bonus points: would you tell your wife or kid to their face that you'd let them die with 50% probability?
im guessing the answer is that if the protestors are Trumpers, left wingers would be ok with it, and if the protestors are leftists, Trumpers would be ok with it, but not vice-versa. after all the other side of the aisle doesnt qualify as human.
If people had blocked traffic to protest against vaccine pass mandates in Italy, instead of protesting properly, i not only would have not joined them in the protests rather ask for them to be run over by motorist
No one is saying that the world is teeming with people who want to run over jaywalkers or kids throwing a ball in the alley.
Most people would be appalled by such behavior.
That's why I am more than a little confused as to why Luciom seemingly wants to wants to legalize (and perhaps incentivize) such behavior.
Because it's not true that most people would be appalled if it was fully legalized to run over criminals blocking traffic, there are tweets with a gazillion likes on italian twitter saying exactly that about the radical leftist environmentalists who keep blocking our urban highways
In South America what they'll do is take tires and light them on fire to block traffic. So you can plow through if you want but you're going through flames.
Blocking traffic intentionally should be a very serious crime and general laws should allow unlimited violence by private citizens against in flagrante criminals *in general*. It should be legal (and rewarded by the state) to stop anyone committing a flagrant crime *in general*.
Thank God this fictional world of Luciomtopia does not exist where traffic accidents, baseball games and road crews would be subject to The Purge.
Thank God this fictional world of Luciomtopia does not exist where traffic accidents, baseball games and road crews would be subject to The Purge.
For now we criminalized intentional blocking traffic in Italy and several radical activists are being prosecuted (they kept blocking traffic even after we made it a crime to do so).
And De Santis signed a law in 2021 which gives you immunity if you run over people blocking traffic intentionally , and afaik that portion of the law wasn't blocked by the federal judge which blocked other portions of that law (anyway still under judicial review so we'll see what happens there).
Trend is positive for my side
yet another angle, and maybe some lawyer types can weigh in, auto insurance doesn't cover voluntary acts. So if you cripple/kill a protestor and mess up your car or others to boot, you will be on the hook for all medical and property claims. Now if it was '...I don't know what happened your honor, I must have panicked and hit the gas instead of the brake!...' might get you off.
yet another angle, and maybe some lawyer types can weigh in, auto insurance doesn't cover voluntary acts. So if you cripple/kill a protestor and mess up your car or others to boot, you will be on the hook for all medical and property claims. Now if it was '...I don't know what happened your honor, I must have panicked and hit the gas instead of the brake!...' might get you off.
well ofc a law allowing to run over them would give you immunity for civil liability as well
wow, some of you get really psychopathic at the drop of a hat
That's correct. In the first instance, I think we should look to other methods to access the hospital rather than private ambulance drivers running people over.
But in the apocalyptic scenario where the only durable solution was for ambulance drivers to run over Proud Boys, I guess you have to do what you have to do.
You didn't answer my second question. Does the golden gate incident, assuming it actually did stop an ambulance with a patient who will now die, reach that level?
You didn't answer my second question. Does the golden gate incident, assuming it actually did stop an ambulance with a patient who will now die, reach that level?
I don't know what I would do if I were the ambulance driver, but as a matter of policy, I think that there is social value in not directly incentivizing the ambulance drivers of the world to implement rough justice in the moment.
From a policy perspective, if a protester has reasonable grounds to believe that he is blocking the path of emergency vehicles like an ambulance, and he has reasonable ground to believe that, by doing so, he is endangering someone's life, then I would be open to the idea that the protester could and should be prosecuted for a negligent or reckless homicide.
In the most extreme example, if an ambulance were in direct view of the protesters, with lights on and with the driver yelling over the loudspeaker that he has a heart attack victim in the back, I think it would be reprehensible for the protesters to not allow passage for the ambulance. That feels like a serious crime to me, regardless of how just or unjust the protesters believe their cause to be.
You didn't answer my second question. Does the golden gate incident, assuming it actually did stop an ambulance with a patient who will now die, reach that level?
Except this didn’t happen and hasn’t happened in the annoyingly multiple bridge protests
But hey, don’t let facts get in the way of your truly outstanding intellectual thought process
I don't know what I would do if I were the ambulance driver, but as a matter of policy, I think that there is social value in not directly incentivizing the ambulance drivers of the world to implement rough justice in the moment.
From a policy perspective, if a protester has reasonable grounds to believe that he is blocking the path of emergency vehicles like an ambulance, and he has reasonable ground to believe that, by doing so, he is endangering someone's life, then I would be open to the ide
agree 100%
nobody, including the guberment, should be able to execute citizens
For now we criminalized intentional blocking traffic in Italy and several radical activists are being prosecuted (they kept blocking traffic even after we made it a crime to do so).
And De Santis signed a law in 2021 which gives you immunity if you run over people blocking traffic intentionally , and afaik that portion of the law wasn't blocked by the federal judge which blocked other portions of that law (anyway still under judicial review so we'll see what happens there).
Trend is positive for m
The law signed in 2021 was in effect less than a month before the injunction was issued, that as far as I see, was never lifted. So, it’s a positive trend for your side? TIGER BLOOD!
I don't know what I would do if I were the ambulance driver, but as a matter of policy, I think that there is social value in not directly incentivizing the ambulance drivers of the world to implement rough justice in the moment.
But you did say that you would drive into the Proud Boys crowd. The bridge group is sufficiently different to possibly change your mind?
Actually, there is no chance that you would refrain from slowly driving through the bridge crowd as well, (while making every effort to avoid serious harm which was what my OP suggested, rather than the much more extreme suggestions by others.) It wouldn't have anything to do with "implementing rough justice" and everything to do with saving a life. Highly doubt you would use the alternative strategy of turning to your patient and saying "Iam not going to drive through this crowd, but I promise I will make every effort to make sure they are charged with negligent homicide".
‘Hey nobody has died because an ambulance didn’t make it in time in the protests at the golden gate and bay bridge in sklansky’s ridiculous hypothetical’
‘Oh ya? Then explain this story about the UK in 2022. Chessmate libtard’
protestors block a bridge and that causes the death of two people because a delay of ambulances, in UK .
we discuss protestors on another bridge and the idea that they could cause the death of people by delaying ambulances.
"but that never happened on that specific bridge!"
jfc
But you did say that you would drive into the Proud Boys crowd. The bridge group is sufficiently different to possibly change your mind?
Actually, there is no chance that you would refrain from slowly driving through the bridge crowd as well, (while making every effort to avoid serious harm which was what my OP suggested, rather than the much more extreme suggestions by others.) It wouldn't have anything to do with "implementing rough justice" and everything to do with saving a life. Highly doubt
I said that the ambulance driver should drive through the Proud Boys crowd if we were in some sort of dystopian environment where there was no other durable solution to the problem.
If I were an ambulance driver, I of course would attempt to get through the crowd without injuring someone no matter what sort of world we were in. Maybe I would go further. I'm not sure. It would depend on the exact situation.
As for ambulance drivers generally, I'm sure you realize that they do not try and get people to the hospital as quickly as possible, regardless of the potential collateral damage to others.
