Actually, one of the most important things to do in such a scenario is supposed to be to turn off the ignition, which will eliminate the secondary spark. As I understand it, that’s one of the most common causes of a subsequent fire in crash situations — it also disables the fuel pump which is another secondary cause (probably ruptured lines). If you’re in a situation where you’re certain to have a wreck (suppose you’re going downhill out of control somehow) one of your best bets is to turn off the ignition ahead of time.

Since this tends to disable power steering and power brakes, you have to judge for yourself what scenarios this is applicable in, but it’s probably a good idea to be aware of it.

Theoretically, cars nowadays have a switch to do this which triggers at the moment of impact to cut it all off, but, just as an expensive electronic device will blow to protect a fast-acting fuze, I’d never trust nature not to play dirty tricks on you. This switch improperly firing off and cutting out the ignition is also a common reason a car fails to start which doesn’t involve the battery being dead.

None of the above is claimed to be based on expertise, but it is all stuff I’ve read from sources I consider to be somewhat reliable, and I’m not mechanically inept (i.e., I do have some ability to tell an expert from a charlatan, mechanically). Take it all with a grain of salt, though.

> If you slip on the ice on someone’s property, it’s not their fault.
Foolish, foolish Irishman. Clearly, they should have put down salt, the negligent bastard!
;oP

Highway/roadway scenes are the most dangerous in which to work anyway, because other drivers do not slow down nor do they give you any room. That’s why we use our apparatus to block scenes and have the backs painted with neon chevrons.

Fend for yourself folks, I gave at the office.

So if you help direct traffic around the accident, help call 9/11, maneuver your own car to act as a shield, etc., you have done your part, while still not putting yourself at risk.

Though it’s hard to be sure about the details just from the reports, it does sound as if in the case in question the defendant did act very foolishly, and might have caused great harm. You need to be very careful about moving people who might have spinal injuries, and it’s not at all clear that there was any reason to do so in this case. Whether the actions in question were actions that a “reasonable person” might undertake is a difficult question, but it is for precisely that reason that we have courts. The common law tradition doesn’t work perfectly, of course- and in some cases our implementation of it causes truly perverse incentives- but legislatures don’t work perfectly either.

This is what California’s type of law has and will lead to. Nobody helping Nobody.

The state’s Supreme Court has just made a huge change in the laws intent.

This would have made a good case study to discuss while I was at U Chicago.

California’s judiciary, like most courts today, tends to ask first what’s good for lawyers not what’s good for citizens generally. As lawyering has become an entepreneurial calling, what’s good for lawyers is what expands their market. And what expands their market is uncertainty, which brings freedom of argument, and deep pocket defendants (or insurance companies in their stead). There’s no point distinguishing between trial lawyers who create the uncertainty and business lawyers who are paid to plan around it, or between plaintiff’s lawyers and their co-dependants in the defense bar. All have become drags on the real economy.

Lawyers are one of the principal economic engines of the new elite (second largest contributors to the Democratic party, I believe). So anyone who wants real change (as distinct from change we’re just supposed to believe in) has to take on the legal profession and its enablers in the judiciary. Without doing so, the “rule of law” will continue its transformation into the “rule of lawyers.”

That’s highly commendable. /not joking at all But I hope you’d make an exception for those who would punish Good Samaritans. /only half joking

2. However, it would not be a bad idea if more people became aware that no, cars do not invariably catch fire and explode after a collision, and no, it is not a good idea to grab a person with a possible spinal injury by the head and drag them out of the car to safety, because the car isn’t a death trap, contrary to what you’ve seen in the movies. This belief, plus not realizing what can happen if you move someone with a spinal injury, seems to lead to a distressing amount of paralysis caused by people trying to help.

Some PSAs might be useful here – probably more than the average PSA.

The first thing she was told when she started working in CA was her malpractice insurance didn’t cover her at an accident scene, and she would be help at a higher standard than a “normal” rescuer. The Catch-22 as noted above, she knows what she is doing, but because she does know it to her determent.