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  In praise of… stopping to help |
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Plenty of things can happen to people who stop to offer help.
They can easily become the victims of crimes themselves.
There are too many cases of good samaritarians being mugged, raped or murdered.
They can even be sued by the people they are trying to help.
The supreme court in California ruled earlier this year that a woman who pulled a passenger out of a crashed car for fear that it would blow up was liable to the claim that her action led to the crash victim's paralysis.
The court ruled that the state's immunity from liability only applied to people who offered medical help.
So those who act out of good faith, beware.
None of these things went through the mind of a cyclist who rescued a woman being shoved around by a group of hoodie-wearing girls on a street in north London.
Nor should it matter that the woman was the filmmaker Franny Armstrong, and the cyclist was, improbably, the mayor of London himself, Boris Johnson.
It is not as if London is Gotham City and the mayor has a secret double-life as its Batman.
Scientists say helpers get a high, a rush of endorphins.
Maybe, but the French philosopher Auguste Comte probably had a better description for the moral obligation to serve others, the placing of other people's interests higher than one's own, when he coined the word altruism.
There are many people who act out of altruistic motives and don't get the publicity the London mayor has just done.
But whoever does it sets an example the rest of us would do well to follow.
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