Skip to content

Thanks to the road Samaritans

J. Kathleen Tompson writes about finding the goodness in a passing stranger.
8082390_web1_stock-opinionpic-web

By J. Kathleen Thompson

True to my contrarian nature, whilst others have been enjoying the boating season at a certain RPM, I have been learning to sail.

Or at least, through the help of a first-class instructor with SailNelson, I have learned to tell the difference between a foresail and main sail, windward from leeward side, and to bring a 25 foot sailboat into harbour without cleaving a hole in the boat docked beside us.

Given my boating inexperience, learning to sail has involved a very steep learning curve, with a raft of new language, safety procedures, maritime laws and information to absorb. One of the more interesting laws encountered in the sailing course was the “Statutory Duty to Assist.” That is, the master of a vessel has the duty to render assistance to every person who is found at sea.

The law holds sway not only in Canadian waters (under the Canadian Shipping Act), but it is enshrined in the International Convention of the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS). Failure to render assistance results in significant criminal sanctions, with fines up to $1 million dollars or imprisonment for up to 18 months.

When it comes to highways, however, only in Quebec and other areas of the world governed by civil law (continental Europe, Central and South America, Middle East, Russia, Southeast Asia.) is the ‘duty to rescue’ enforceable by law. Indeed, in Germany, a first aid and CPR course is a prerequisite for getting a driver’s license. However, where common law is in effect, such as in all other areas of Canada and most English-speaking countries of the world, bystanders have no obligation to assist someone in an emergency, and it is not a criminal offense to fail to do so. But for those that do help, the “Good Samaritan Act” protects the rescuer from damages should one’s rescue tactics be ineffective (except in cases of gross negligence).

While digesting all this new information, I had a run-in with a Good Samaritan — and he was a truck driver, not a sailor. A truck driver, who, at the Paulson Summit, responded to my fuel-injected flagging in the middle of the highway at 11 p.m., where a dead car, deer and phone lay beside me. Adding to my unbelievable luck of being able to flag down help on the side of a dark mountain highway within seconds of a collision, was the fact that the guy leaping out the cab of the massive Dan Chambers truck that has pulled up beside me was a black man calling out to me in the most lyrical of Jamaican accents.

Together we were able to push the car to a safer spot and even clear the other casualty – a large, mature doe – off the highway. Given the lack of public transport or way to call for a ride, I was invited to climb aboard. The rescue operation was seamless, as if scooping a stricken motorist off the highway and delivering them home was as routine as picking up and dropping off another load.

Jamaica, being part of the Commonwealth Caribbean, has a common law legal system, so this truck driver came from, was trained in and now lives in a country where he had no obligation to render roadside assistance. But he did. And I’m sure we all have had experiences where a ‘Road Samaritan’ stepped up to assist us in an emergency situation. It’s humbling to know that when people have the option to look the other way, they chose to help — sometimes when even putting themselves at risk (my truck driver could not pull off the road — he had to trust that traffic would slow to bypass his rig) — with the sense that this is the right thing to do.

Perhaps those who have stopped to help us have been sailors at some point in their lives, and see the universal value of maritime law. Or perhaps ‘Canadian niceness’ is not a myth after all, and is becoming embedded in our day-to-day modus operandi. Whatever it may be, a huge shout-out to those who are making our roads and waterways a lot friendlier place to be.