I don’t know which point of view has more adherents today vs say in the 1950’s or the 1850’s. The moral/philosophy question is this; Person expresses to you th

I don’t know which point of view has more adherents today vs say in the 1950’s or the 1850’s. The moral/philosophy question is this; Person expresses to you the intent to do something that will likely result in their own death and possibly the death of others, what is your responsibility to that person and the others they may intentionally or unintentionally cause to die? As a diagnostic tool, the question illuminates a lot of constructs in the morality, empathy, and objectivity of a person. You can play around with it in a number of ways, is there “intent”? Is there malice? Forethought? The debate over seatbelts, helmet laws, and other traffic laws often falls into this debate. Would it be different if you could say that insurance companies don’t have to pay the medical bills of people who become injured after not wearing a belt? Can you take vehicular homicide off the table if a DUI driver kills someone by hitting their car and they aren’t wearing seat belts? Especially if its provable that if they were wearing belts they would not have died? Because the consequences of the choices the person makes impacts others, does the group have the authority to limit those choices to protect itself from harm? I think my freshman philosophy class spent like 4 weeks on just this topic.