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Comment by Svip | Hacker News Reader

Amusing the title is the "Copenhagen Trap" (I know it's a reference to the Copenhagen Interpretation), since Denmark actually have laws about duty to help.

The Danish penal code § 253[1] punishes people with up to 2 years in prison, those who - without high risk to themselves or others - intentionally do not help someone after ability, who is clearly life threatened.

Additionally, the Danish rules of the road § 9[2] have rules for acting in the event of an accident; specifically, that they have a duty to help.

[1] https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/lta/2025/1294#P253 [2] https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/lta/2024/1312#P9

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It's the same in France with "Non assistance à personne en danger” literally ”Not helping someone in danger" and the assistance expected is proportional to your immediate ability. A doctor who would not try to help someone injured is liable for example. There are precedents.

Weird use of "the West" here.

I grew up in the West (Australia) - for locals it's almost unthinkable that you wouldn't help someone that needed a hand, eg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YORxs9E2Ex0

is unremarkable save for the fact that the rest of the world thought it unusual.

Many people are members of volunteer organisations, SES (Search and Rescue), St. John's (Ambulance and medical first responce), VFRS (Volunteer Firefighters) etc.

I think this varies quite a lot from one location to another. I grew up in an impoverished town in the US south. When I was a kid if your car broke down, a stranger would stop to at least give you a ride or possibly even try to repair it on the spot. If you so much as threatened a woman in public you could expect to have a number of men immediately step in to confront you.

Many year later in life I lived in Manhattan, where you could literally have a frail old lady being beat up in front of a crowd of grown men and everyone would either pretend they didn't see anything or at most pull out their phones to record it.

I don't know what my old town is like today, but a few years ago I was on a bus in Latin America far from any large cities and a pickpocket robbed someone, the passengers on the bus seized the guy, beat him up, striped him naked, and the bus driver slowed down and opened the door while they shoved him out onto the curb.

Same experience in my village. When you live far from public infrastructure (police, firefighters, doctors etc...) you need to rely on each other. I miss this spirit in the city

This law is specific to situations of imminent or actual physical harm. Also notice the way the law is formulated: non-assistance (negative) and not a an explicit duty to assist (positive).

It is an explicit duty to assist. Calling 112 counts by the way.

That is not the spirit of the law. You are punished for not assisting, but you are not obligated to assist: e.g obligated to call 112.

Yes, you are. That's the whole point of the law and what the precedents confirm. You have to assist to the extend of your ability too. If you witness something and don't call 112 (well 18), you are guilty. If you are a medic and don't do your best to stabilize the person, you are guilty to.

I remember the first time I heard about this, but it's been such a long time that I don't remember the details.

IIRC, someone drowned, and someone else filmed it on camera instead of helping, and ended up on trial for "non assistance".

I can't seem to dig up the actual story, but I think it was in the mid 90s.

Edit: I think it was the story of Marie-Noëlle Guillerné's drowning.

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