Les bons samaritains

On two occasions in the past two years my spouse and I have benefited from the assistance of les bons samaritains (good samaritans) along U.S. and French highways.  The first time was on the eve of our family's move to France when the car we were driving inexplicably stalled in the middle of a busy Washington state highway span, just outside of downtown Seattle.  Cars behind us were traveling at highway speeds and we had no shoulder to which to escape.  We could do nothing except call 911 for help and hope that no one would hit us from behind.  A very brave and kind man stopped his car just behind ours to offer assistance and to alert other cars to the stopped traffic.  Luckily, a tow truck driver reached us before any damage could be done to cars or humans alike, and our good samaritan departed safely and anonymously.

On a very wet Saturday in Provence this past weekend, we had another similar experience, as we were trying to head south for a sports tournament and camping weekend.  As I was easing our car onto the autoroute, the car fishtailed suddenly, and then began hydroplaning, causing me to lose complete control.  We somehow slipped between the highway entrance barriers without touching them and spun around at least 1 1/2 times across three lanes of the highway without getting hit, and then came to rest with a little crunch, against the center median.  We all caught our breaths for a moment, and then suddenly realized that our car was wedged into the barrier and was directly facing oncoming traffic in the fast lane!  As my family escaped the car, scrambling onto the small gap in the center median, a driver in a minivan just entering the highway and perhaps witnessing our spinning, pulled over.  The driver ran up along the autoroute, opposite my spouse, and in the rain, both waved their arms up and down to slow the oncoming traffic as best as they could.  It appears that another good samaritan stayed in the car to call for assistance on our behalf.  Meanwhile, another car also stopped, with a third good samaritan making a call on his cell phone while yelling to us across the slick wet lanes to ask if anyone was hurt, and reminding me to put on the gilet (safety vest, an obligatory piece of car equipment in France).  Thankfully, highway traffic and public safety crews arrived shortly after, blocking our lane of traffic and helping us get out of the mess.  While these men were not what we would call good samaritans, as they were doing their jobs, their professionalism was dosed with empathy, and I appreciated that they didn't smirk or act frustrated with our French, which was even shakier than usual.  The man with the lane closure equipment and the tow truck driver were both especially kind, and somehow, all of these strangers were able to help us enough to send us back on our way.  (We didn't even merit a visit from the local gendarmes, or police, and the resulting damage to our car doesn't quite tell the harrowing story, although we tried to describe it the best we could to the waiting football families at our campground near Montpellier.)

The big surprises to us from the past weekend (besides the fact that our son's team actually won the tournament that we struggled to get to!) were the assistance and expressions of kindness from strangers that we experienced.  These are certainly not what one is taught to expect in France, if the countless books about the French are to be believed, and at least in terms of French drivers, in my experience, they aren't often even very generous about moving over for ambulances or police cars whose sirens and lights are on.  In the U.S., on the other hand, it seems that often, if a stranger is hurt, people will try to help in some way.  In fact, there are some interesting national differences in the sociolegal expectations associated with being a good samaritan.  In the U.S., being a good samaritan is seen as personally risky, especially if help is rendered without consent and if something goes wrong.  So, good samaritan laws, which vary by state, tend to protect the good samaritan's actions against liability, but don't require anyone to offer assistance.  The French law, on the other hand, actually requires passers-by to be good samaritans.  The protection lies with the one who is in danger, and thus, assistance must be rendered if it can be done so without peril.  Not helping someone can result in the charge of la non-assistance à personne en danger (non-assistance to someone in need), and a hefty fine and/or jail time. (Click here for a short piece in The Global Times, Oct. 31, 2011, comparing 3 different kinds of good samaritan legal scenarios, in China, U.S., and France.)  In a sense, these differences accentuate the U.S. protections of private rights and the French expectations of public responsibilities.  (The different assessments of risks are clear too; see La sécurité, Oct. 2011 for more on this topic.)  Yet, I think for those requiring assistance, whether due to car accidents in France, or tornadoes in the U.S. midwest, or even wars as in Syria and elsewhere, in the moment of dire need, it matters little what the civil incentives and protections are.  I have to speak from experience on this one: what matters the most then is that someone has stopped to help.

Rouge ou rosé?

My home state of Washington has just changed how it distributes alcohol for public sale.  As of June 1, 2012, hard spirits can be sold privately right alongside beer and wine, rather than by state-controlled liquor stores.  (The transition brought about a little shortage this past weekend, see A Taste of Prohibition as Liquor Stores go Private by Kirk Johnson, The New York Times, May 26, 2012).  Most U.S. states already allow for the private sale of alcohol but I have lived in places for most of my life where the state has controlled alcohol sales and access to some extent.  (For example, besides Washington, there were state-monopolies of sales of spirits, wine and most beer, in Finland and in Alberta, Canada.)  Such strict control over sales has in a sense made state employees the ultimate arbiters of taste, as Johnson notes in the article above; "....their decisions on what to stock dictating what people could order in bars or buy in the stores."  Laws can influence our behaviors certainly, but they can also reflect or even influence us to think in certain ways about the subjects in question.  Some might argue that attitudes towards alcohol in the U.S. are in fact relatively negative because of the greater state control over access.

In France, (like in most U.S. states now), governmental control over the sale of alcohol is much looser.  Beer, wine and spirits can all be purchased at our local grocery store at Monoprix, so long as the purchases are made before 21h30 (9:30 pm).  (I understand that there is a 10pm rule in some cities like Nice and Lyon, so I gather that the sale hours are by cities or other administrative units throughout France.)  The weaker state control over the sale and purchasing of alcohol in France is matched by relatively more relaxed social rules and attitudes towards alcohol consumption.  Children can sit alongside their parents in bars here, which greatly delights our footballer who can finally go to a local pub with his father to watch televised football games, and wine is a common lunchtime beverage, even during the work week (see it chilling here, in the photo on the left, in a lovely fountain adjacent to a restaurant in Aix).  It's certainly not one habitude (custom) I've adopted, but at midi (noon) when office work grinds to a halt and many shops close, if I'm dining out for lunch, I am always asked if I'll be having wine with my déjeuner (lunch).  I can even get wine at our family's favorite take-out kebab place, or at McDonalds!  On the weekends, the enjoyment of wine at lunch is even more pronounced (the choices for beer are surprisingly limited and tend to swing towards the lighter versions).  At the rugby regionals in Avignon a few weeks ago, parents walked around offering wine during our son's team pique-nique (picnic), and even the coaches had some despite an afternoon of matches still ahead.  This past weekend at a soccer tournament, in Antibes along the French riviera, I mistakenly thought there were pitchers of  juice on the table at our pre-paid group luncheon and poured some for my son, first from the pitcher with the dark juice, and then upon realizing my mistake, from the pitcher with the pale pink juice.   Both pitchers contained juice alright, but it was the fermented kind, meant for the the coaches and parents.  The inexpensive tournament meals were nothing to write home about, as they were cheap fare meant to feed hundreds of hungry adolescent soccer players, but each meal was three courses and included rouge ou rosé (red or rose wine) for the adults, and water for the children.  (French children typically drink water with their meals, not milk.)

 While I didn't expect to be drinking wine during the middle of an event organized at a youth tournament, or to see coaches doing so, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by it because the teachers at our boys' public middle school also may have wine at lunch, in the same cantine (cafeteria) as the kids.  And, the adult chaperones at the school field trip lunch I participated in last fall all had wine as a matter of course.  The wine drinking is all very normal; my spouse suggests that it's because drinking wine is not considered a vice here as it sometimes is in the U.S.  So long as alcohol is enjoyed in moderation, no one bats an eye.  But, as anyone knows, it sometimes hard to stop after just one glass or one bottle, and even one glass can impair one's judgment and concentration; one wonders how Peter Mayle made it home from the long wine-filled Provençal lunches that he describes in A Year in Provence, or who does the driving for those connoisseurs enjoying themselves at the many wine bars in Aix (lucky for us, we can walk home).  Alcohol is in fact the main cause of traffic fatalities in France according to the 2012 Code de la Route (the official French driving rules 2012).

When it comes to driving and alcohol use, or public safety, states do step in, regardless of the prevailing social attitudes towards alcohol or the degree of economic control over alcohol.  As elsewhere, French police can stop drivers, test them for alcohol use, and sanction them if their alcohol levels exceed the accepted limits (these limits are in fact lower in France than in Washington state and many other places: the limit is 0.5 g/l blood alcohol content).  This relies on the threat of sanctions though as a way to control alcohol use, which isn't always the most effective way to ensure that alcohol and driving don't mix.  Perhaps the French state recognizes this, because in just one month, on July 1, 2012, a new alcohol-related law goes into effect here, requiring that all private cars have ethylomètres (breathalyzer kits).  In France, the state is mandating that drivers have equipment in their cars that will give them greater access to information about their own alcohol levels and may hopefully encourage more personal responsibility for behavior.  In contrast, the Washington state law opens up greater economic and social access to alcohol, giving individuals more freedom to buy and make choices.  Both laws touch on alcohol, in different ways, but together they show us that ultimately, social forces external to individuals remain important influences on how we behave and what we think.