Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelmcdonald | Hacker News Reader

While it might be the case that it won't go anywhere, as a defendant / accused you still have to deal with possible reputation damage, legal costs, and time loss.

View on HN

And the other person might have to deal with being dead - totally different magnitude of problem!

I understand why people hesitate, but if someone is dying in front of you, I think you have to do something if you can, consequences be damned.

I kind of feel the same way as OP, even though, as you say, there is little to no evidence of bystanders suffering legal consequences for intervening to help. Despite that fact, it's been hard wired in my brain (and the brains of other well-socialized men) over years that you must never, ever physically touch a stranger, particularly a woman or child. Full stop. Even if they need help, even if they're attacking you, even if they're not paying attention and might walk into you. Never touch. I learned it as a kid, I learned it in grade school through college, and then it's been drilled over and over in every sexual harassment orientation/training at work. It's just a permanent part of my conditioning by now I don't think I could push through even in an emergency. Especially nowadays, where whenever anything happens, 5 cellphone cameras instantly come out, looking for the next viral video. It's too easy to become the next Reddit star in a video maliciously edited to make you look like a creep.

That makes a lot of sense to me - I'm not saying anyone is wrong to have that instinct.

The existence of this instinct makes educating people important. I think that a lot of this issue could be solved by just reminding people during CPR training that CPR is the rare exception to the otherwise good heuristics of "never touch someone without asking them" and "don't rip off strangers' clothes." Using female CPR dolls could also help. And lastly, people need to know that there is no instance of a lay person being successfully sued for performing CPR, there is no instance of someone being "cancelled" for performing CPR, and that in fact the law explicitly protects those who help.

Dead people can't sue you.

Indeed. Frighteningly, when I was trained on how to carry a weapon legally, we were taught to shoot to kill. Both because you never know what a live person with a weapon might still be able to do, and, yes, because a dead person cannot sue you.

This was in a state certified carry permit training course in Tennessee.

I'm not defending it, just saying it happened.

That's pretty standard. The usual argument is that if you are in a situation where you need to pull the trigger, you're not in a situation to risk the other person getting back up. Once you start shooting, you don't stop until the threat is gone. In addition, you aim for center of mass as your accuracy takes a nosedive in a life-or-death situation. You're not likely to hit your target trying to aim for anything else. Even if you are super-duper accurate even under duress, there's really no place to hit a person that isn't potentially life threatening. If you want non-lethal self-defence, a gun isn't what you should reach for.

Exactly. I've had all sorts of training and never been told to aim for anything except center of mass. Also told in CCP training that any trained shooter is trained to keep firing until their clip is empty.

Neither can alive people apparently because I have not been able to find a case where someone actually sued the person who performed CPR on them.

Edit: It won't let me reply to the link below but that has absolutely nothing to do with gender. That's about injuries sustained while performing CPR and, to quote the article, "You're more likely to get sued if you don't intervene" and "no non-medical person has been successfully sued for providing bystander CPR."

Of the three cases in which defendants were charged with battery assault because they did administer CPR, only one was convicted. And that was because "the patient already had a signed 'Do Not Resuscitate' order and received CPR anyway in their nursing home,"

But most states fully protect bystanders who sincerely try to help, Murphy stressed. Some states even have "Duty to Act" laws that establish fines specifically for bystanders who are medically trained to provide CPR but choose not to help when an emergency unfolds. (Minnesota, Rhode Island and Vermont are three such examples.)

https://www.webmd.com/first-aid/news/20191112/you-wont-get-s...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com