Economic Analysis of Social Issues 1st Edition by Alan Grant

Exercise 17

[Related to Application] In 2007, 50-year-old construction worker Wesley Autrey became a hero by rescuing a man who had fallen onto the subway tracks. 15 According to The New York Times , the man, who was having a seizure, fell from the nearly deserted platform to the tracks below. With a train fast approaching, Autrey leapt to the tracks and moved the man's body between the rails. Then, Autrey laid on top of the man as the speeding train passed overhead. Use the theory developed in this chapter to explain why somebody leapt to rescue the potential victim in this case, but not in the case described in Application.
Application
On December 3, 2012, an argument on a crowded New York City subway platform took a tragic turn; Naeem Davis shoved Ki Suk Han off the platform and into the path or an oncoming train. Although onlookers waved their hands to get the train to stop none of them attempted to help Han back onto the platform. The train slowed down too late, and Han was fatally crushed.
Han's death may make you wonder; Doesn't the law require bystanders to help in cases like Han's? Don't bystanders have what lawyers call a "duty to rescue"?
Surprisingly, no. With few exceptions, you can't be prosecuted or sued for ailing to help someone in distress, no matter how ridiculous your inaction may seem. If you walk by an infant drowning in a puddle, you may be a horrible person, but you won't le liable in court. In legal terms, you don't owe the baby any "duty of care."
Why not? Because it's hard to hold someone to a legal standard when the standard isn't clear. "It's a classic slippery slope problem," law professor Jonathan Turley told the Wall Street Journal. "Once we begin to hold people to an affirmative duty act, it's difficult to draw a line where that duty would end." 12 If you're required to save Han from the subway, are you equally obliged to donate a kidney to save some­one else? The obligation to rescue is fuzzy in other ways, too: If you're in a group does everyone have a duty to rescue? Is everyone's duty the same, regardless of how capable he or she may be?
There appears to be a limit to how much morality society is willing to codify into law, especially when behaving morally puts a person in danger. The good news is that most of the time, people do try to rescue others, even without a legal duty.
In fact, Americans might even be too eager to help when others are in danger. Consider, for example, what happens when someone starts drowning. Often, some­one attempts to save the victim. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for the rescuer to drown, too Law professor David Hyman analyzed every reported incident where a victim needed rescue between 1994 and 2004 and concluded that "Americans appear to be too willing to undertake rescue if one judges by the number of inju­ries and deaths among rescuers. Indeed, proven rescuer deaths outnumber proven deaths from non-rescue by approximately 70:1." 13 Further, when Hyman compared the 3 states that do have duty-to-rescue statutes (Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Vermont) to the other 47, he found no discernible difference in the number of rescues and non-rescues.
In other words, we don't really need a legal duty to overcome the volunteer's dilemma: When it really matters, we generally help one another. And, reassuringly we do it for the best of reasons.