Time for a law to aid helping hands

Along with most of the rest of the country, and indeed the world, whose negative attention it unfortunately attracted, I was nauseated by the story of 2-year-old Yue Yue, who was ignored by 18 passers-by when she was run over twice in Foshan, Guangdong province.

At the time there was nationwide soul searching about what to do and much breast-beating about the sad state of morality in the country. Some commentators said that people in China only help their families and nobody else, others suggested that because China is a developing country everyone is only looking out for themselves. I don't agree with either of these views. Look at the outpouring of grief and compassion here for the victims of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, or at smaller recent examples, such as last month in Wenzhou, where bystanders rescued a 5-year-old girl after she was trapped under the wheels of a car.

As a lawyer, I think the best suggestion that came out of Yue Yue's death was the proposal that China introduce a good Samaritan law. In common law jurisdictions such as the United States and England, such laws protect people who help others from being successfully sued when coming to the aid of another person, except in cases of gross negligence. In civil law jurisdictions, such as much of Europe, there is a duty for passers-by to come to the aid of a victim and failure to do so can result in a prosecution.