Philosophy Now Forum

I live on a high floor in a tall building. One time our fire alarm went off which disables the elevators and we were told to take the stairs downstairs. For whatever reason while going down this long flight of stairs there was a handicapped person with crutches taking the stairs causing a lot of backlog and extremely hard to try to get around. He was directly ahead of me. I realized that the fire alarm was probably a false alarm. But looking back on it I was wondering in a real emergency if it would have been the right thing to do to push him out of the way or something for the sake of saving lives.

marsh8472 wrote:I live on a high floor in a tall building. One time our fire alarm went off which disables the elevators and we were told to take the stairs downstairs. For whatever reason while going down this long flight of stairs there was a handicapped person with crutches taking the stairs causing a lot of backlog and extremely hard to try to get around. He was directly ahead of me. I realized that the fire alarm was probably a false alarm. But looking back on it I was wondering in a real emergency if it would have been the right thing to do to push him out of the way or something for the sake of saving lives.

Interesting ethical question. I am sure that if there was a real fire, then a lot of people definitely would push him out of the way (ever seen children at a lolly scramble?), but hopefully there would be a couple of selfless and strong people to carry him down.
I don't know if there is a 'right and wrong' in this situation. People can't help wanting to survive.

stair surfing in a wheelchair is even more fun

-Imp