Essay Example on Good Samaritan: Offering Help to Strangers in Need

A good Samaritan is an individual who willingly offers help to a stranger in need or helps out a person who is currently unable to help themselves at that moment of contact. For example, if a person happens to pass by another individual who has slipped and broken their leg or who has been involved in an accident, then the person decides to either physically give them medical assistance or call for help in a situation they cannot handle is referred to as a good Samaritan. The following essay, therefore, seeks to explain the gap between the high standard of care, low standard of care and the appropriate standard of care using Woozley's positive duty thesis on an argument on the good Samaritan laws.

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So many people usually chose to neglect a person in pain by saying that it is not their responsibility to take care of that person, however that is considered as negligence and such a person is not considered to be a good Samaritan. However, some people neglect people in pain and mind their own business even if they see that a person is critically suffering because they are afraid that meddling in that situation could land them trouble.

This fear is understandable because one may try to offer assistance and, in the process, end up making the situation worse especially if the person providing the help is not a medical professional. In as much as the individual offering the support was sincerely trying to help the person, the individual can be sue, arrested or some charges can be filed against them hence the hesitance and negligence by some individuals.

Therefore, the good Samaritan laws were put in place specifically to offer legal protection to people who provide reasonable assistance to individuals whom they believe and see to be in trouble or who they believe are experiencing pain, and they are in a current state of incapacitation. This legal protection was put in place specifically to aid in reducing the hesitance of bystanders or bypassers from offering whatever help they can to a person in need because they fear that their assistance could get them implicated in some way (Pardun 34).

Woozley's primary argument is on the merits of the good Samaritan laws and whether the law should even be put in place and its relevance because there is no proper way of determining the appropriate standard of care that should be applied or offered in a situation where a person is in need and the only person around them who could offer them assistance is a stranger. He goes ahead to argue that the good Samaritan law should not be a valid law as he does not see the importance of such a law. The good Samaritan laws vary from state to state, and in each state, there is a way in which the legal protection is applied.

For example, in some states, the laws can incriminate a person who sees that another person is in trouble and yet they still choose to neglect them. Some people argue that action should be taken against such an individual. However, according to Woozley, this should not be the case as it brings a lot of negativity to people who are trying to offer a helping hand to the next person and they can all together choose not to help a person in need.

Woozley argues the importance of not having laws that dictate what a person should and should not do in the case of an emergency and that people should just be allowed to be humane which is in their nature. Having laws increases the number of people who opt to neglect a person in need because of rules, as small as they are always come with some form of implication which many people try to avoid. Introduction of laws to such a humanitarian act of kindness drives so many people away from attempting to do good as people would often try to be 'on the safe side' by not getting their hands dirty.

One general objection to the law is that it is not needed seeing as the number of cases in which the law would be applied is very minimal. There is no gauge to measure the urgency of need, meaning that one cannot disqualify a specific individual in pain only by looking at them and coming to the conclusion that they need urgent help and other do not need it.

This would then raise a morality issue, which would even be more complicated. Therefore there is no way or no law that can regulate how much help is given to a person in need at the time of urgency, and therefore no law should be able to criminalize a person simply because they went out of their way to offer assistance to someone who urgently needed it.

His argument also goes further to say that an individual in need may not always need physical aid, but the person could need psychological or emotional assistance. For example, if a bypasser were to come across an individual who looked that they were about to commit suicide, the bypasser being of good faith would try in their best to try and talk the person out of attempting suicide.

This is not physical assistance but emotional and psychological assistance which is administered to the person in need urgently. However, if the individual still decided to go ahead and commit suicide, then the person trying to help should not be held responsible because they were trying to offer assistance then.

However, with the good Samaritan laws in place, the individual can find themselves implicated for aiding in the suicide even though all they tried to do was offer assistance to someone who needed it at that moment. This means that so many people would sit down and watch the person commit suicide without even trying to help because they are trying to be on the safe side, an act that cannot be considered as humane because human beings are natural helpers especially to people in critical and urgent conditions.

Woozley also brings about the argument on who is to be blamed when it comes to a situation where an individual would have helped a situation, but they choose not to do it. He uses several examples including a motorist in need at the side of the road, a group of refugees in a different country and a couple stuck with the calamity of a dormant volcano. He systematically explains the three scenarios in a situation when an individual would offer their help and, in another case, where an individual would opt not to assist.

For instance, in the case of the refugees in Cambodia, he explains an individual who decides to help the people even though he has never met them and another person who chooses not to offer any assistance. According to Woozley, the person who refuses to provide support cannot be blamed for refusing to assist as it is his choice and he should not be judged for his decision not to be helped.

From those examples, one can see that there is no limit or standard to the amount of care dispensed by an individual and this should entirely be left upon an individual to decide without imposing any laws to condemn his/her choices. If a person says that the people who ignored the motorist plights, or the refugees plight should be punished or a law should be taken up against them, then that would mean that their rights are also being violated because they are being forced to participate in an action that they do not believe in or do not support.

The standard of care can, therefore, be influenced by an individual's willingness to help out another person in trouble. If the plight more compels someone then they can offer as much help as they possibly can for example, a person can decide to provide all their savings to people living in the refugee camps and another person can choose to offer only a fraction of their conservation, while another person can opt not to provide any assistance whatsoever. All these people are entitled to their choices, and none of them should be forced to succumb to any standard of care as that should be a choice left to the individual (Mapel 56).

The good Samaritan laws in some states may force an individual to be reprimanded for their choice not to offer assistance to someone who needs help. However as per Woozley gives an example on the refugees then that would mean that a person who chooses not to help those people should be held accountable if anything detrimental were to happen to them. For example, if a child in that area dies then that death would be blamed on the person who refused to offer assistance. This is by no means fare treatment because the individual is obligated to a choice whether to help or not to help.

That case scenario applies directly to someone who passes by a motorist injured in an accident and they chose not to offer any help even though the individual sees that the person is crucially wounded according to the good Samaritan laws in some states that person should be fined or reprimanded. However, help is help regardless of the distance and situation and hence the argument of who is to blame makes a lot of sense concerning the good Samaritan laws and the standard of care dispensed.

Laws most of the times are put in place to help people refrain from inevitable mistakes or from committing certain transgressions. It is used as a gauge of the extent of good and evil and what is right and what is wrong. However, when the law is used to measure the standard of good or in this case, the standard of care shown by a bypasser to a stranger on the road or wherever they may be should not be regulated by laws.

According to Woozley the good Samaritan is a fundamental law and also an unnecessary law in the sense that people should be allowed to give aid or to offer assistance out of their own will, however, when laws are put in place people become more susceptible to providing help than if the choice was given to them openly. Woozley also gives an example of a couple who are trapped by an erupting volcano, however, the only way that they can be rescued is that if the local county gives up its fund to build a highway to save the couple (Brandt 89).

The highway that needs to construct has been causing accidents, and at least every year three people die. If the local county is to use up those resources then it means the next time, they would receive money to build a highway would be the following and three people would have died from it. Hence the local county is faced with a dilemma, and they do not know what they should do because either way, they would be saving lives.

The good Samaritan law says that one should offer assistance to a person whom they see having an immediate problem and they require immediate assistance. However, in that case, the local county is well aware that the couple is in danger and that if they fail to convey their support, then the most likely result would be the death of the couple. According to the good Samaritan law, one should not willingly allow a person to die if they are completely capable of helping an individual in trouble without getting harmed in the process.

The local county is responsible for both the construction of the highway and rescuing the couple in danger but in this case to what extent or what standard of care should they show in such a situation where both the couple need saving, and the highway needs to be built to save lives. The most reasonable choice to make would be to choose to construct the road instead and leave the couple to die. Therefore, it would mean that the local county should be held accountable for their deaths and to some extent be penalized for it.

Conclusion

Woozley uses Bernard Williams story of Jim and Pedro as a way of showing how shifting the blame when applying to good Samaritan could be unfair and unthinkable. Hus example tries to show the extent to which people would go to save a life, and upon reaching a certain point then that choice would not be held accountable to their actions. Therefore to some extent Williams story shows that there can be no standard of care that is generally because situations change and shift and if the standard were set either to be high or l...