N.H. toughens up its negligent hiker laws

PrimitiveMan said:
Bushman,

Forgive me, I forgot you were born with outdoor skills.

I didn't say they would be REQUIRED to join an SAR team, I said they would have to do community service by doing Bit*h work.

But I don't think it matters to you what anyone says, you already know it all.
Click to expand...

uncalled for.
 
Let's stay civil...this thread still has some good opinions and info but is close to running the end of its course.
 
PrimitiveMan said:
Agreed.

You call for rescue, you should have to help those that need rescue in the future.

You may just find it a way to recruit future members of the SAR team from people who now realize the importance and want to give something back.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I would like to see it go quite that way... As far as them serving SAR it would be a punishment and would include stuff like cleaning the toilets at the F&G office:thumbup::D... trash pickup and menial tasks like that. I have to agree with Bushman5 that I wouldn't want to see these people somehow incorporated into SAR in any meaningful way... especially not in any way where they become someone others lives depend on... no way. I see them more as "prisoners" doing the crap jobs for SAR/F&G/whoever.

I've been finding a real "variety" of ways that different states/countries/counties etc. deal with this issue. It seems that in most places the volunteer or professional SAR members themselves do NOT want "reimbursement". They want to get you to safety for nothing (nothing for themselves).

BUT... once you are at the bottom of the mountain... are out of the river... are pulled out of the avalanche, you WILL be paying for services beyond that point (life flight to a hospital... ambulance ride... EMT services etc.).

Here is one example;

Now, at Denali National Park and Preserve, which like Grand Teton sees a lot of climbing SARs, rescued climbers are not billed for the missions. But those attempting either Mount McKinley or Mount Foraker are charged $200 per person "to provide educational materials to them ahead of time and to support the resource protection (Clean Mountain Can) and other operations we have on the mountain," says Denali spokeswoman Kris Fister. "Climbers do have to pay for the air or land ambulance service from Talkeetna to Anchorage. But we get them off the mountain."
Click to expand...

I also find that more places than I expected to find, DO have charges for "negligence" or "gross negligence" or "blatant disregard". If you intentionally ski off-trail, beyond posted "out-of-bounds" signs, you have broken a law, and they will get you for that "illegal action".

I still find the "insurance" idea intreiging... it's pretty common in Europe.

In the French Alps, for example, locals and visitors alike can purchase rescue insurance cards, renewable annually, for $30 to $40. That money trains, equips and funds professional rescue teams. These policies don’t cover medical costs. You still need a good health insurance plan, but the expenses of finding and evacuating you are covered, and a highly trained SAR infrastructure is created and supported.
Click to expand...

If you used SAR and didn't have "rescue insurance", (like not having car insurance), you've perhaps broken a law (like not having car insurance), and the bills might pile up.
 
This issue kind of reminds me of a good friend that Scuba dives.

He and his team went to Canada for several years on dive trips and after doing some reasearch on a very old wreck off the coast of a small town, they planned a dive. They found the wreck being smashed over time against the coast and ultimately, the Ships bell. They discussed raising the bell and donating it to the town where a memorial could be placed honoring those that died and the local government agreed it would be a great thing for the town as it would attract visitors, tourism and revenue.

The next day the RCMP's showed up and threatened to arrest all of them. Told them if they raised the bell or any other artifacts, they would be fined, all equipment would be seized and they may face jail time.

They packed their gear that day and have not been back to Canada since. After 10 years or so of helping the economy there, they will not be getting another cent and the shipwreck has almost sureley been destroyed by the sea losing any history along with it.
 
DOC-CANADA said:
Maybe a different approach. If you have to get rescued because of a lack of preparedness or skills, then you have to attend a survival course at some accredited surival school and then perform so many hours of community service helping to spread the 'word' or commit to so many hours of volunteer SAR work, working communications, or transportation, or something in that vein.

In other words, you have to take the necessary steps to prevent you from being in a similar situation in the future, and also to help others in the same circumstance.

If this is incoherent, please excuse - I just woke up :(.

Doc
Click to expand...
:thumbup::thumbup:
Thats a well though out rational solution Doc.

The idea of fining people leads to many potential problems and potential for abuse.
Fining people could be seen as a cash cow/income source by those in government.
And the standards of what qualifies as "negligence" may be changed at the governments convenience to maximize the potential for fines to increase revenues.
And really even if they manage to get people to pay the fines the government labor costs (bureaucracy) will probably cost much more than the fine itself.
 
Wow, I missed Doc's post!

Sorry bout that. That is exactly what I was thinking.

Kudos for beating me to it and sorry for restating.
 
Bushman5 said:
no way in hell would i want these idiots (the ones that disobey Boundary signs or F/G officers etc) working in SAR. hell no. That would be like rewarding them for their idiotic actions.

yay, if you go out of bounds you get to work in SAR if you get caught!

thats like rewarding drunk drivers with a truckload of booze and a free car or two....

hell no! they already have ZERO respect for rule regs and enforcers, no bloody way would i want them working alongside of any agency . NOPE, NADA :thumbdn::thumbdn::thumbdn::thumbdn::thumbdn:
Click to expand...

I think the more apt analogy would be making drunk drivers wash all the police cruisers for a month.

I'm not against the community service angle. Of course people apparently don't know that if you get fined and can't pay, you either arrange a payment plan with the clerk of the court, or arrange community service to pay it off.
 
Yeah, I wonder how much community service I would need to pay off my house if they seize it? Hahaha (Just kidding guys)

I am just against more regulations. We never seem to learn that it just doesn't work. You need a core set of rules to make sure we remain safe and don't do harm to others, but at this point things have become so legislated, that we have lost virtually all of our freedom it seems.

We don't need change, we need to change back. If you got lost back in the 50's what happened?

And I would be willing to bet that the deaths per thousand from wilderness accidents were less then than they are now.
 
Well, see what sparks all this legislation is the number of farking morons that really do go out in shorts, a t-shirt and their iPod, and get lost after dark, get snowed in because they don't understand that weather is different at the top than at the bottom, etc and just flat out use SAR as a convenience.

You see the same thing everywhere. People abuse something until it's either taken away or everyone is punished.
 
Bushman5 said:
SKIERS BANNED FOR LIFE & CHARGED FOR RESCUE: http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5h1xsPkVDyOEOTaz0JeXNmDelKFcA


these people are EXACTLY the type of people that i talk about that should have the book thrown at them and be billed for their idiocy. (and they were billed, full costs. Their parents will be footing the bill).
Click to expand...

They should have the book thrown at them!
What's frustrating, I would be willing to wager they will walk. Hope I'm wrong...
 
PrimitiveMan said:
"Those that give up freedom for security neither deserve, nor shall they have either"
Click to expand...
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." B. Franklin

Very different ideas.

Freedom - Responsibility = Anarchy
Responsibility - Freedom = Slavery
Freedom + Responsibility = Liberty

And a law like this my friends, certainly takes away your freedom to go into the woods in the manner you wish for the sake of saving the few who do not act in a responsible manner.
Click to expand...
You are free to go into the woods in any manner you wish. You are not free of consequences if you "negligently" cause SAR to have to bail out any part of your anatomy. (Still unhappy with a "director" making the determination without appeal. Smacks of lack of due process.)

Laws like this take your freedom and I contend NOT ONE PERSON will be disuaded from acting irresponsibly because of the potential for needing rescue. There is a good reason for this. If you asked the last 100 people to be rescued "when you started out, did you think you would ever need to be rescued?" Every one of them would answer "NO"
Click to expand...
Sounds accurate to me. No such thing as idiot-proof.

So you WILL give up freedom and you WILL NOT get any security.
Click to expand...
Still can't see how. The idiots will still go, as you argue. The educated will go as well. Who is kept away?

This is EXACTLY the method governments use to disarm their population.
Click to expand...
Nope. False simile so far as I can see. They want to disarm us by prohibiting certain THINGS, not certain behavior, as if things cause behavior. The behaviors with firearms they cite as motivation (murder etc.) are mostly already illegal and have been for generations.

We should have a sensible sized SAR team for an area based on the known dangers. They save as many as they can. The rest die. Others that would venture out see the report of their death and either take heed, or die similarly.
Click to expand...
If a fine won't work, dying will deter? That's not history, as you said so well. The clueless can't visualize consequences. That's why they're clueless. 400,000 a year die from smoking.

Again, it boils down to $.

For many of the examples given in this thread, the threat is not only to ones self, but the potential to harm others (Speeding, Drunk driving, etc.) and I will repeat again, these laws are designed for revenue, not safety. The agencies and lawmakers involved could give a rats a$$ whether you lived or died, they just want your money and statistically they know how much of it they will get in the next year..
Click to expand...
In which case, its not about detering conduct as you argue above. And I think you're right. It's about money -- lost otherwise due to "negligent" behavior. They say its about $$.

SAR teams already have a budget.
Click to expand...
$$ here goes to the Department of Fish and Game. That department apparently argued that rising rescue costs were eating into expenditures for F&G activities such as stocking fish in streams and lakes.

All rules limit freedom. All societies have rules -- more or less. Because government tends, by it nature, to expand it's control, we SHOULD question every new law.
 
PrimitiveMan said:
My apologies if I offended
Click to expand...


aw no worries, peace :foot: . Its a passionate topic that kinda hits close to home here. The North shore here sees a LOT of the kinds of rescues like the link i posted above. Its seriously starting to piss off the residents, the ski hills and backcountry lodges, the Police, EHS, Fire depts and SAR teams. Every year this debate erupts in the local papers with everyone screaming for the heads of the people that keep violating the patrollers and the Out Of Bounds signs.
 
Wow Thomas, that's a lot to respond to!

You bring up some good points and food for thought, so please do not take the following as overtly negative. After all, what the heck do I know?

If you look up my quote, you will see that it has several iterations that are attributed to several authors including Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, but let's go with yours.

This law makes no one safer, temporarily or otherwise. It is an after the fact tax, fine or whatever else you want to call it. After the fact. The knuckleheads in the recent skiing example would have gone regardless. After all, their parents have to pay.

Consequences are fine. I firmly believe in making someone responsible for their actions, especially when those actions affect others, in this case SAR. However I am also strongly of the opinion that they should PERSONALLY be responsible. One person may easily be able to pay for the fine where another is ruined. Like most fines, little justice there.

I think you are completely wrong about guns. They don't want to prohibit things. They know they can't. They can put any law they want out there and the "things" (guns) are still going to exist. Look at countries that have completely outlawed firearms, they still have murders by use of firearms and the murder rates overall do not decline, they just change weapons. The main reason a government outlaws firearms is to deter one behavior, that being an uprising.

Please tell me one behavior a fine has deterred. Thousands still drink and drive, EVERYBODY speeds, poachers still poach. Fines are NOTHING but revenue. They deter nothing. Yes, death does deter. Addiction is probably the exception because it may be stronger than the deterrent. Hence the 2% of Heroin users that ever come back from their first hit.

If SAR teams need more $, I am all for it. Pay the Governer less and take his money.

I am not liking the idea of giving some beauracrat the power to decide who was negligent. And I certainly do not like the idea of a required set of items as was suggested.
 
PrimitiveMan said:
. . .
If you look up my quote, you will see that it has several iterations that are attributed to several authors including Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, but let's go with yours.
Click to expand...
Yes. Nice quote. Apparently made by no historical figure. Certainly not by men who helped write a document, The Constitution, that creates a framework for a government of laws, given that laws inherently limit freedom in the interest of creating liberty. It's the "Social Contract." We give up freedom -- including the unrestricted right of self-help through violence -- in return for the collective security and common good government is supposed to create as a tradeoff. Whether the G keeps its part of the bargain is open to dispute by crime victims -- and others. We seem, as a society, to have trended back towards self-help in the last generation (castle laws; no duty to retreat; CC; and all that).

This law makes no one safer, temporarily or otherwise. It is an after the fact tax, fine or whatever else you want to call it. After the fact. The knuckleheads in the recent skiing example would have gone regardless. After all, their parents have to pay.
Click to expand...
And we agree, as I posted. No deterrence. Just $$ IMO -- and as the Dept. said in hearings on the proposed law.

Consequences are fine. I firmly believe in making someone responsible for their actions, especially when those actions affect others, in this case SAR. However I am also strongly of the opinion that they should PERSONALLY be responsible. One person may easily be able to pay for the fine where another is ruined. Like most fines, little justice there.
Click to expand...
So who should bear the price of clueless behavior? The taxpayer? This is usage-sensitive pricing. You create the burden; you pay if negligent and otherwise not.

I think you are completely wrong about guns. They don't want to prohibit things. They know they can't. They can put any law they want out there and the "things" (guns) are still going to exist. Look at countries that have completely outlawed firearms, they still have murders by use of firearms and the murder rates overall do not decline, they just change weapons. The main reason a government outlaws firearms is to deter one behavior, that being an uprising.
Click to expand...
The beau ideal of these creeps is to destroy the guns and cut off access to ammunition -- things. The behavior is already regulated. They argue that it is necessary to remove the things from the environment because the things, by their very existence, cause the already regulated behaviors. They ignore Jefferson's argument (borrowed from an Italian criminologist) that when weapons are outlawed, only outlaws have weapons - arms. The fact that they are wrong, IMO, does not change the argument that they make.

Please tell me one behavior a fine has deterred.
Click to expand...
Few. We agree, as I posted above. It's my story, and I'm sticking to it :D(with Doc's proviso that the executed do not reoffend).

If SAR teams need more $, I am all for it. Pay the Governer less and take his money.
Click to expand...
Not my choice. Not your choice. The voters elected thier reps and they made the law. Representative democracy. They elected to try and recover some of the expense from those whose neglegence caused the expense. Just screwed up on how the liability is attached, IMO. And once again, as I posted, we agree.

Since we agree on most everything, how can I see your post as negative?
Well said! :thumbup:
 
It's nice to be in agreement.

I'm heading out to NH to overnight in a jockstrap with a rubber chicken and some hairspray, anybody in?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top