Friday, February 22, 2008

Open discussion

Open discussion:

If you are driving during wee hours and there's a traffic light before you, you are suppose to stop your car because it's red. However, when you look left and right, you realize there's no car on the opposite road, thus, you violate the law and cross the road. You did that because you know you will not meet any accident since there's no other cars around that time. In addition, you are too lazy to stop your car and wait for the traffic light to turn green.

However, this turns out to be your worst nightmare because there's a policeman waiting for you on the opposite road and anticipate to take down your license number and gave you a big "ang pow".

p/s There's NO emergency involve in this case. Purely violation of the law.

Question: Is it ethical or not for the policeman to let you go without giving you a saman or should he charge you for violating the road law?

This is one of the question posted to us during our CMI class. There's no right and wrong answer, according to my lecturer, it's your own judgment and opinion. Please put in your justification if you are supporting one of the statement above. Feel free to comment on this, IF there's any reader reading my blog. >.<"

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

hmm... interesting question, the policeman has the rights to either summon the offender or let him/her go. it's all fall the policeman discretion by rights he should give u the summon coz ur clearly violated the law by crossing the road even though the traffic light clearly red regardless u r in emergency or not.

even though we begged by saying we won't do it again blah2 but human beings are cunning. maybe it's not the 1st time the offender beat the traffic light. thus to remind that no one is above the law and law aren't meant to be broken, he should be summoned by the policemen and learn to respect the law.

p/s however it jz onli my opinion, in the past i oso hv broken the law but hell who hasn't? but learnt my lessons through the hard way couple wit some hefty summons n "duit kopi" all bcoz im a speed demon.

Anonymous said...

wah... u still want to discuss this topic a....

First time in this module he has agreed with us, althouh at the end he still added up a big "BUT..." there...

Eventough he said no right and wrong, you still can see that he wasn't too happy with our answers... Let it be... as I care...=P

Anticipating tue class... *.*

Anonymous said...

I think in my opinion Crossing the road even though the traffic light clearly is red should be given a summon.

It should be burnt in our mind's that people should respect road violation and make it a habit to always remember. It is dangerous for us to just ignore the possible fact which is , what if there is a car going on a speed of say full throttle coming towards u and u might not see him/her from a distant or from a corner.

Or maybe now see clear and we get so use to it we tend to do it again in future when there is actually vehicles around.

And some more which I would like to share but I think some of my brain fluid over heated creating a loss of nanobytes in processing of what I am about to say.

:P

Shan Shang said...

Thanks for all the time to write a comment ^^ Appreciate it much =)

Pulz: Hahaha... Agreed with your statement that a policeman should give you a summon rather than letting you go. Every action we take will bring forth consequences, therefore, if we are at wrong, we should be punish.

Emmm... As for your p/s part, haha, really no comment on that. Drive safe. It's always good to be late rather than not there at all. That's what I always remind myself when I'm driving though I'm driving darn slow after an accident.

Da: Cis, of cause la, I want to get supporters hahhaahah... =P Yeah, anticipating for Tuesday class as well ^^ Never knew ETHICS classes are so INTERESTING!! Hahaha..

Sileast20: (-.-)" Wah... Throttle so big in size also you can miss that? =P Yeah, but I got your point, though a bit extreme in your example. Hahaha...

Hahah.. Actually, I on the other hand support that if there's emergency, you can violate the law. ONLY for life saving purpose. For instance, an ambulance. Emmm... I don't think the police will give them a summon =P But the difference is, they have a siren, therefore you know they are coming through ^^

Anyway, thanks for all the comments! Anticipating for more though =p

Anonymous said...

In this case, the law is clearly violated and the offender did it knowing that it was wrong. Despite the various possible consequences, the offender should be fined. This is to prevent further violation from the offender as well as setting a good example for others. More importantly, people should be discouraged to unnecessarily take the law into their own hands.

Shan Shang said...

Thanks for your feedback ^^ Appreciate it much... =)

Yeap, agreed with your statement.

Anonymous said...

I somehow hate ambiguous answer... I never quite agree with "there's no right or wrong answer" statement. Especially in this context, rules have clearly been broken regardless of whether the police was present or not. So punishment is of course, imminent.

But the bigger question I think is this, most of the time, people can only recognize the executor/ the judge only when he can be seen (i.e. police). But how about when there wasn't anyone around? Does it warrant us to go ahead to do whatever we wanna do?

People just cannot see they have violated the law of God foremost, before they ever violate any law on earth.

So, it's not because there is no right or wrong answer, but people simply doesn't care about the right answer.

Shan Shang said...

Well, I do agree that there should only be right and wrong and no grey area according to God's words.

However, will the world takes that as how God intended it to be? Human are sinful and yet too arrogant to acknowledged that they need God. Therefore things like "Ethic" is created, to solve the "grey area".

Even a lie can be marked as right, do you then think this earth is doing the right thing?

May God's words guide and lead us all..