A duty to rescue law requires individuals to provide assistance to others who
are in risk of injury or death. There are many advocates who criticize the absence
of duty to rescue laws across many of the world’s developing and developed
countries, citing this deficiency as fostering neglect between citizens, as well as
decreasing the general sense of security in society. However, underneath its
seemingly egalitarian exterior, duty to rescue is an impractical theory which would
be a distraction to an already overburdened justice system.
The idealism of arguments supporting duty to rescue overlook the endless
amount of ambiguities which arise under such laws. A pedestrian refusing to help
the victim of a car collision or a private aviator unwilling to lend their aircraft for
rescue operations in the area may appear as obviously punishable; but through a
more thorough investigation, it may well be revealed that the pedestrian was
hesitant to approach the car due to a growing fire in the engine and legal
definitions about the proximity of the aircraft to the site of the accident would have
to be established in order to substantiate any claims accusing the aviator of neglect.
These are only two amongst a plethora of different cases which would each require
their own specificities to be painstakingly resolved by lawmakers at federal and
municipal levels. Furthermore, the majority of cases based on duty to rescue would
constitute victims or their families seeking retribution against individuals who were
only marginally related to an incident, often as witnesses. These cases are largely
inconsequential when compared to the variety of direct criminal offences handled
by the legal system, such as assault, theft, or bribery. Although all cases cannot be
generalized, they are also more than often fuelled by the need of the victim to
express their anger or indignation and rarely achieves anything beyond minor
monetary reparations which result in no form of rehabilitation for the offender. Additionally, it is likely that the vast majority of people accused of wrongdoing
under such laws will be law abiding citizens without prior criminal records. The
need to prosecute these people is questionable, as there is an abundance of felons
or criminals with malicious intentions whose rehabilitation is a priority. Duty to
rescue laws would also have an exponentially higher chance of punishing innocent
individuals, both as a result of the wide basis from which a lawsuit may be filed
and the need for courts to streamline the process of handing out verdicts to the
sheer number of cases it creates. Thus, overloading the justice system with such
peripheral cases requiring extensive deliberation and posing interpretation issues is
a foolhardy move.
There is another law which plays a critical role in ensuring the effectiveness
of the duty to rescue law: the Good Samaritan law, infamously subject to endless
debate. The Good Samaritan law protects individuals facing charges if they offer
assistance to another in risk of injury or death and accidentally exacerbate the
situation. The assurance offered by the Good Samaritan law decreases the
hesitancy of individuals in providing assistance out of fear of entailing legal action
against them, which is absurdly common given that only good will is involved.
This creates a more plausible environment in which a duty to rescue law can be
implemented, as individuals have less rationale against extending a helping hand.
However, very few countries have Good Samaritan laws entrenched in their legal
codes, and the lack of emphasis causes them to often be neglected by those who
interpret laws. Furthermore, in countries with the law, the public has very little
knowledge of to what extent their actions may be covered by the law. The Good
Samaritan law is not only a necessary prerequisite for implementing a duty to
rescue law, but the immunity it offers to civilian responders must be engraved in
the collective identity of a society, a process which takes time. Thus, it is
impractical to expect a duty to rescue law to achieve success in contemporary
societies, where there only exists a poor network of legislation to safeguard the
citizens who actually attempt to obey the law. By itself, duty to rescue is destined
to become a law which is poorly enforced and is denigrated by citizens.
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