Would pulling the switch be a felony? Would not pulling the switch be one? Would a preservation-of-life defense hold any water?
Are there any notable cases about this?
Given that we presume someone dies either way it becomes murder or manslaughter – it’s kinda hard to be involved in someone dying without those charges being discussed – but that gets very much into the weeds of jurisdiction specific laws and I’m not super familiar with them anyway. Someone else can answer maybe, or maybe I’ll look it up.
What is very interesting to think about is tort law, the general case history of negligence and liability when one person harms another but it isn’t explicitly illegal. Basically the injured person or family sues someone for doing something they shouldn’t have, and it gets into really interesting weird cases like could they have reasonably foreseen the injury etc. Here’s a summary of some major tort precedents going back many years: https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/greedy-associates/5-classic-torts-cases-made-simple-for-1ls/
My favorite is Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co. (1928) where a Rube Goldberg style chain of events caused Mrs. Palsgraf to be injured and it was ruled that the rail employee could not have reasonably foreseen all of that, so they weren’t liable.
This is a long way of saying, if you do nothing then you’re an innocent bystander to a tragedy. But if you take an action that reasonably (in this case certainly) causes injury, you’re responsible for that. You might say you’d rather have one man’s death on your conscience than a dozen, but that’s for you to meditate on in jail.
The real problem with the Trolley Problem is that it presupposes only two outcomes. In real life we don’t know what the possibilities will be and many actions are available to many people. First and foremost whoever tied the people to the tracks needs to be found and tried. Second, the trolley driver and whoever created, installed, or maintained the brakes needs to be interrogated. (Trolleys don’t generally drive very fast and they almost always have low bumpers to prevent things from falling underneath.) Finally, a number of other things had to go wrong or fail to go right in order to get into the situation: the tied people have to remain there for awhile unnoticed or unhelped by anyone until it’s too late, the trolley has to not notice things and be traveling too fast to slow down by other means, and every human between the people and trolley has to essentially freeze and fail to do extreme things like cut the power or derail the trolley or yell at someone for help. There are almost always third fourth and fifth options besides a singular person happening to stand by a singular track switch that points to certain death either way.
If it was me, I would yell for help and get myself and one other to man the switch and untie the single prisoner simultaneously. Even if we somehow fail, that action is more natural and moral and understandable to a jury than freezing up and choosing only the second worst option.
Ultimately it boils down to the jury, the judge’s instructions, and the specific wording of the law.
Posted to Best of Lemmy.
Why thanks!
Absolutely amazing, detailed answer. Thank you so much for this enlightening answer!
Thanks! I read tort law for fun :) I should add that I’m not a lawyer, but I do highly recommend everyone reading your locality’s laws on things, they’re usually online and I’m often surprised by what’s written!
I think this is my favorite comment I’ve read on The Fediverse (Federatedverse?) since I joined. Great answer, thorough and well written!
What a beautifully in-depth response, very interesting stuff!
Holy shit bro, keep replying - you’re gonna keep this platform alive single-handedly
Good answer
IANAL, and it depends on the countries law. My understanding is in the US 99.999% of the time, as a passerby, you cannot have liability for inaction. Remember the last episode of Seinfeld and the lawyer saying you don’t have to help anybody.
However actions you take are always potentially legally liable. And taking an action to cause someone to die always puts you on the hook potentially for manslaughter. Defense of others might be a mitigation, but that is usually like shooting an active shooter. In this case I think that’s not what’s happening.
Sadly, I think the safe thing for you to do legally is to keep walking and forget you ever saw the lever.
Shit, in the US the police aren’t even required to intervene.
It’s actually kind of funny you mention that. Police dont have a duty to act but medical professionals do so my state just started requiring all police to have an EMR (aka first responter training). That means that they’re now “medical professionals” and have a legal duty to render aid whenever they are dispatched to a scene. I’m not sure how duty to act overlaps with qualified immunity but now there is at the very least a case to be made whenever they fail to render aid.
There were a lot of really salty cops in my last EMR class so I got to hear all about it.
Nope. Not if you have any heart at all at least. The us has good samaritan laws in all 50 states, with minor variation. Sure, it’s technically possible you might be opening yourself to legal consequences if you help out, but the law as written protects you from being sued for it unless you do something incredibly fucking dumb. (moving a man with a broken spine out of a car is bad, unless the car is on fire).
In china, the opposite is true; everything you do other than inaction can very easily open you up to legal consequences. This is why you can see someone who drove an elderly couple to the er get sued by that couple, or a baby get run over by a truck with a good dozen people walking past without helping (same website).
There is the vague chance in the usa that helping might get you in trouble, but it is most certainly not the best choice to walk past them if something obviously bad that you can help with is going on.
Yes, but I mean the trolly problem specifically. You are specifically changing a trains path to run over a person. I just doubt you would avoid some problem with intentionally killing someone even to try and save others.
I agree it’d be heartless to prosecute or sue a switch-thrower who was acting in good faith, but the family of someone killed often don’t have a ton of sympathy.
http://www.cprinstructor.com/DC-GS.htm
Using DC as an example, I don’t think that tampering with railroad equipment counts as “in good faith, rendering emergency medical care or assistance at the scene of an accident or other emergency” and it only covers against civil damages: basically it reduces private claims of negligence or liability when you did your best to stabilize an injured person. It gets into shaky ground when the person is not yet injured, and they become injured because of your actions. It also doesn’t prevent the government from trying you for manslaughter.
It’s definitely a messed up situation though, ideally we’d have further laws reducing the bystander effect and encouraging people to do whatever’s possible to help. Often we see that people already do, though, and fortunately(?) the situations are often far less clear cut and diabolical than the Trolley Problem.
False. In the US, while you are typically under no legal obligation to help, if you do decide to help you are legaly protected by good samaratan laws. Those laws basically boil down to as long as you are making your best effort to help someone and you are acting within the bounds of your training then you can’t be held responsible for any damage you may cause. The key point is that you’re acting within the bounds of your training. If you see someone choking and stab a pen into their neck like you saw on TV one time then you’re still 100% liable for that. However in situations such as moving someone with a spinal injury out of the road you are still covered; yes you made the wrong choice and likely paralized the person, but you were trying to help someone in danger and doing it in the only way you knew how.
That’s not to say that someone can’t try to sue you. That does happen, but in those situations they are just trying to scare you into settling out of court because odds are the case would be thrown out before it actually got to court anyways.
Most EU countries would not condemn you for doing either. That said, you are definitely on the hook for helping others if there is no risk to yourself or a third party in most civil law countries.
It’s a serious crime in most of Europe for example to drive past a car accident scene without verifying that help is on site.
This wiki page summarizes it well.
I just checked and it’s more of a crime in the Eastern EU, as most Western countries have fines or a few months of prison at most for this, while most Eastern Member States put you in prison for 2-3 years for it.
Okay, as someone who wants to live in Europe at some point in the future, I feel like I should get this straight.
If I drive by a car accident and there is clearly help on the scene, such as an ambulance, do I need to take any action?
If I drive by a car accident and there are a bunch of people already stopped, do I need to just ask one of them if help has been called?
If I drive by a car accident and no one is there, do I just need to call for help?
I know some first aid so I might stop regardless if there isn’t an ambulance there.
I am not a lawyer of any kind. The wiki does say:
"Many civil law systems, which are common in Continental Europe, Latin America and much of Africa, impose a far more extensive duty to rescue.[3] The duty is usually limited to doing what is “reasonable”. In particular, a helper does not have to substantially endanger themselves.[23]
This can mean that anyone who finds someone in need of medical help must take all reasonable steps to seek medical care and render best-effort first aid. Commonly, the situation arises on an event of a traffic accident: other drivers and passers-by must take an action to help the injured without regard to possible personal reasons not to help (e.g. having no time, being in a hurry) or ascertain that help has been requested from officials."
To apply this to your question, my interpretation is that if you come across a car accident and nobody is there, and you have some first aid training, you should first call emergency services, and then render as much aid as you reasonably can without endangering yourself. If the car is teetering on a cliff about to fall over, I sure as heck wouldn’t jump in. If the driver was ejected from the car and they are bleeding to death right in front of you then you should probably do your best to stop the bleeding if you can I guess. If the driver looks like they sustained heavy injuries and the car isn’t about to explode or fall of a cliff, then I would just hang out until an ambulance gets there because I wouldn’t want to break their neck moving them. Idk though, not a lawyer or a doctor so who knows.
I imagine it would very by jurisdiction as well as the specific facts of the case. Like if you’re a conductor for example and your job duties include keeping the tracks safe, failing to do so could be negligence, assuming the facts show that you reasonably could have prevented it
