Comment by wzdd
3 years ago
My reasoning was that in emergencies, typically, certain rules don't apply to certain groups of people if their actions are related to the emergency. Therefore, a police officer driving a police car into the park (assuming they're doing it because of the emergency) is not a violation of "no vehicles in the park" because for that officer, in that situation, there effectively is no such rule.
In the real world, we might debate whether it was actually an emergency and so on, but here we're told straight up.
I thought the instructions were pretty clear that it's a violation, even if e.g. your religion says it's okay.
I think the instructions are ambiguous. The instructions first say to disregard any "rule in your jurisdiction which overrides certain rules", or whether your "religion allows certain rules to be overridden". But both of these hypotheticals are reasons why you might disregard the desires of the hypothetical park owner who instituted the rule. This is different from the police and ambulance examples, where the park owner would almost certainly want to allow those vehicles.
The instructions then continue, "Again, please answer the question of whether the rule is violated (not whether the violation should be allowed)." But again this could be interpreted two ways.
One interpretation is that an emergency vehicle entering the park would technically violate the rule, but everyone (including legal and religious authorities and the park owner) would agree that the violation "should" be allowed. However, I interpreted "should" more in line with the previous statements as referring to some kind of controversy (park owner says it's not allowed, but for legal or religious or moral reasons I think it should be allowed). Under this interpretation, the rule has an implicit exception for emergency vehicles, so they are not violating it. The exception is just so obvious that it's not worth including (especially given the text length limits of the signs where park rules tend to be written down).
My interpretation might sound like a stretch. But imagine if the rule instead said "No vehicles in the park, including emergency vehicles." Wouldn't that be materially different? Yet the difference doesn't affect whether a violation should be legally/religiously/morally allowed. At most, it might hint that there might be some practical reason why emergency vehicles shouldn't enter (perhaps it's dangerous), and perhaps a reasonable emergency vehicle operator should take that information into account when determining whether violating the rule would be justified. But that's only an indirect effect, and there's clearly more to it than that. Regardless of whether there is any justification, the clause would clarify that the park owner really doesn't want emergency vehicles, when otherwise we would assume they do. And to me that difference is best interpreted as affecting "whether the rule is violated".
The exception for emergency vehicles is just another rule. And even that rule can be more complex, like a police car could be not allowed to drive on railways. Or military rules that are above emergency vehicle exceptions. A police officer is not above the rules.
And in the given case we had none of them. It was just one simple rule - no vehicles inside the park.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
I don’t think there’s ever effectively “no such rule” but only “(expected) immunity from consequences of said rule” which is subtly different.
This is very jurisdictional dependent, and the exercise was pretty clear that you are not in any of those jurisdictions.