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Cooper Choi

Punishing Bystanders: Questioning Duty to Rescue

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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