<snip>
> [ <paul:> <snip>
> The first point to see is that ultimately the driver (who was causing
> the car to move over the road) was the Effective Cause
> of the accident. He was placing himself (and other people and property)
> in jeopardy by driving a car at all.

[MickyS] which means that maybe the driver should get the passengers to
sign a contract that clarifies hir culpability in a case of accident.
More on this below.

[Yes, certainly. The contract would specify the extent and conditions of the
responsibility for any harm that befalls the passenger, including no
responsibility at all. Under the NSC one is always free to contract *away* one's
default entitlements. See the definition of "Entitlement"
(http://selfsip.org/solutions/socialcontract_annotated.html#entitlement). For
example, if you visit my house in Arizona, you will have to sign a contract that
you cannot charge me for restitution if you or your kids fall down my stairs or
get bit by a scorpion, rattlesnake, etc. That is why I will warn you about these
potentials ahead of time. Over 50 years ago this responsibility of each for
himself only was considered to be the default situation between people, but
recent court decisions making the property owner responsible for harm even to
trespassers has changed this default. The effect has been to make social
interaction much more problematic and people much more hesitant to invite
strangers onto their property. Instead the tendency is to fence in everything in
order to protect oneself. --Paul]


> Even on a completely dry road a meteor hitting the ground in front,
> beside or on top of him could have made him wreck his car and be
> hurt, or hurt someone else.

[MickyS] now to *ME* it simply does not seem fair that if a meteor hit a
driving car then the driver is responsible/culpable for a passenger's
harm.

[It is not unfair if he has *contracted* to be so responsible, but to do that in
general, would be a foolish act. My preference for passenger contracting would
always be: "I will do the best that I can to keep you safe, but you are riding
with me entirely at your own risk. If you don't like that and don't trust me,
then do not ride with me." However, while it would be "unfair" (harm caused by a
meteor is unfair to *everyone*), nevertheless the car driver is the only
*effective cause* of the damage to anyone to whom he is not contracted (a
pedestrian or occupant of another car) and thus the driver must be held
responsible for restitution to those non-contracted out people. --Paul]


The driver has put himself (and other people and property) in
jeopardy (potential harm) because s/he might make a mistake while
handling the car, but not because meteors can fall on the car.

[Both. But the responsibility can be contracted away for a passenger. It could
also be contracted away for others by the contractual arrangements with the
owner of the road. However, there is a question of the quality of the driving
ability. Some drivers may be able to avoid doing harm in spite of the meteor and
the rules of the social order should be devised so that they benefit from that.
Some may be too inept or slow to avoid doing harm and the rules of the social
order should be devised so that they are penalized them for that. Reality should
be arranged so that as much as possible one always benefits from one's abilities
(competence in dealing with reality) and is harmed (suffers) from one's
inabilities (incompetence). This cannot always be accomplished with respect to
non-human causes, but with respect to human actions the rules of society should
be arranged to optimally attain this goal. That is one of the purposes of the
NSC. --Paul]


The passenger's harm resulted from the fact that s/he agreed to be a
passenger in that car on that road and not because the driver was
driving it.

[Yes, and that is why the passenger needs to give a "hold-not-responsible"
agreement to the driver/owner or an agreement which clearly spells out the
situations under which the driver is responsible for harm to the passenger. It
is imperative not to leave matters to "defaults" that may be understood
differently by different parties. --Paul]


I see it this way because the driver was effectively obeying
his "contract" by actually driving "safely".

[The problem with "driving safely" is who is to judge? (You show that you
understand this by having placed "safely" within quotes.) Where would you draw a
clear line? It is these situations where there is no clear line of demarcation
which must be avoided at all costs and are the reason for much of what I have
done in the NSC. Under the NSC, trials only judge validity of evidence. They
*never* judge lines of demarcation re. amount of harm, negligence, accidentness,
or even responsibility. Therefore, these problems are circumvented by having no
judgment of "safely" at all except ultimately by the social preferencing system
of the marketplace of social interaction (including the social preferencing of
the owner of the road against you - not allowing you to drive on his road if you
drive unsafely by his judgment!). If you are the effective cause of harm to
someone with whom you do not have a "hold-not-responsible" agreement, however
you were driving and for whatever reason, you are responsible for restitution to
them. --Paul]


I claim that the fact that
the driver happened to be holding the wheel and stepping on the
accelerator has nothing to do with the meteor hitting the car, in the
*culpability* sense of it.

[No. The driver was doing something that had the *potential* to be harmful. But
if the driver is not to be responsible for the damage to the pedestrian who he
struck because of the meteor, then who *is* to be responsible? Surely not the
pedestrian who was *totally* innocent and did not get struck by the meteor (it
was a small one). --Paul]


Trying to make my point clearer:
- would the driver be culpable if the car was motionless at a stop
light?

[If a tornado picked it up and slammed it into something, yes. The car is in the
control of the driver and is capable of doing damage. Again, if not the car
owner/driver, then who is responsible for the damage to the completely innocent
harmed party? But it again depends on the terms of the contract with the
property owner. --Paul]


- would the driver be culpable if the car was driving veeeery slowly at
a parking lot?

[Yes, fully speed makes no difference. Again, if not the driver, who else?
--Paul]


- would the driver be culpable if the car has just parked safely in a
parking lot?

[Only if it were picked up by a tornado and did damage to something else, since
only then would the driver be the Effective Cause (perpetrated the last human
action that placed the car where it could be the agent of harm - if the car had
not been there the harm would not have occurred). Again, if this is not the
case, or if such harm responsibility has not been contracted away, then who *is*
responsible? - surely not the property owner whose building would not have been
harmed but for the car. --Paul]


I say no, no, and no.
Yes, the driver was the effective cause according to the NSC definition,
but I disagree that s/he would be responsible/culpable.

[You cannot have it both ways. That is the whole purpose of the definition of
Effective Cause. If you cannot accept it then convince me who *should* be
responsible and the Effective Cause definition will have to be changed. Either
that or it cannot be used as the basis of imputation of culpability, in which
case it has no place in the NSC. --Paul]


When a driver
agrees to take a passenger, it does not make sense to me that the driver
should be responsible for falling meteors, unless s/he had a reasonable
(to be decided by a trial, or admitted by hir) chance of avoiding it.

[No. It is absolutely imperative to eliminate all these "reasonable chance"
types of arguments and judgments. That is perhaps *the* major purpose of the
NSC. *No one* can judge these things in any direct manner since there is no
objective basis for deciding where the separation between reasonable and
unreasonable occurs. Such decisions can *only* be decided by the marketplace
judgment of social preferencing, including the decision of the relevant property
owners for their own social interaction purposes about what *they* think is
reasonable and unreasonable. If it is the prerogative of a trial, a person or an
institution to make such decision for *everyone*, this would distort the
operation of such individual social preferencing. This universal or public
judgment rather than individual judgment based on one's own priorities,
knowledge and values is a major error of our current system. --Paul]


Paul, you said that you defined "effective cause" that way because you
wanted to define the last *human* *responsible* cause. And I suggest,
why not define it just as that: the last human responsible cause.

[That is exactly what I maintain that I do. The entire purpose of the definition
is to assign responsibility. --Paul]


And the difference would be in the usage of the word 'responsible',
because then this definition would not find the driver responsible for a
meteor hitting the car s/he was driving (in the sense that a trial would
likely not find hir culpable).

[You have missed the point. Sure the driver is not responsible for the meteor
hitting the ground or car, but he *is* responsible for the car being there where
it can do damage. He is not responsible for any other damage done directly by
the meteor. Again, it is not up to a trial to decide Culpability, but only to
judge objective evidence of Effective Cause. In this case, the trial judges
whether the damage done resulted from the car or from the tornado (or meteor)
directly - or perhaps some from both. --Paul]


Meaning I'm leaving some leeway for
common sense in the definition of "effective cause", or, you can leave
the definition of "effective cause" as it is but add a subcategory of
"responsible cause",

[That would be pointless, since the whole purpose of Effective Cause is to be
the responsible cause (which could well have been the name given to it right
off). --Paul]


and I admit that there might be vagueness in
deciding when an "effective cause" is also responsible and when the
human factor did not have a reasonable "chance" in avoiding the harm.

[Exactly! And to eliminate such vagueness, which is rampant in the current legal
and judgment system, is a major purpose of SMN theory and the NSF. --Paul]


This reminds me of the 'credible threat' thread where the credibility of
the threat might be a judgment call, as much as the responsibility in
this "effective cause" case.

[I have responded to that post already, but I now understand that somehow the
group email did not get to you. --Paul]


Now specifically this could be circumvented by the driver having hir
passengers sign a contract that removes the responsibility from the
driver in such cases where the driver had no reasonable chance of
avoiding the harm, but again, the general principle for me is whether is
was humanly possible for the driver to avoid the harm.

[You have the solution in the first part of the sentence except that the
contract would never use the word "reasonable", because that is impossible to
judge by one person for another (for example I would never agree to give anyone
the *contractual* power to judge what actions of mine are reasonable or
unreasonable for *me* to have taken - even though I realize that others will
judge my actions all the time by means of their social decisions regarding
interactions with me). Instead the contract would have to name specific,
objectively measurable actions for which the driver would be responsible (for
example, that he will be responsible for all damage to the passenger which
occurs as a result of going more than 100 mph).

As for the second part of the sentence, if you are going to interact socially it
is not possible to totally avoid harming others. And that is why the imputation
of culpability is so important. Even with the best of intentions by everyone,
accidents will still happen. Remember that we cannot hope to construct a utopia
where everyone is omniscient and omnipotent. --Paul]


Micky.