The bus driver was trying to provide safety for two elderly women passengers from his bus; he was not jaywalking (does not jaywalking require intent?).

Would you give a jaywalking ticket to someone who dashed out in the street to retrieve a child who had wandered out, but the good Samaritan was hit by a car? Think about it for a moment, it is the exact same thing. Yeah, his dashing out (jaywalking) contributed to the accident, but the child was saved

Wow - on the face of it this headline is shocking indeed.

This story reminds me of something InjuryBoard member Greg Cuisimano covered in his webinar yesterday.

The general public has long been growing weary (and wary) of government, the legal system, and lawyers for what they see as a "gotcha" or "loophole" approach to applying and upholding the law. Jurors, for example, will occasionally defy a judge's instructions or ignore laws they feel are wrong, unjust, or defy common sense if interpreted literally.

Ever clever politicians are very keen to tap and enflame this public anger for votes and support, as we saw with Governor Bobby Jindall's story about the "Sherrif Who Was Prevented from Rescuing Katrina Victims" because the rescuers didn't have the proper insurance and registration papers. It certainly sounded ridiculous.

The media also love to enflame the public using soundbytes and wild headlines that defy logic and good sense (a prime example is Stella Liebeck's McDonald's coffee case, which has become American folklore at this point). The danger of these stories is that they (as intended) elicit a knee jerk response, a type of automatic thinking or "rush to judgment" that may always not be accurate, fair, or right when the "rest of the story" is told.

In this particularly sensational jaywalking case, I feel I don't have nearly enough information to determine why someone saw fit to give this man a ticket, and whether or not it was justified. It certainly doesn't sound like it with what little info we have, but I wonder what the "rest of the story" is.

Brian: I understand your point of view, but a couple of things in this instance stood out to me. 1) He is a bus driver and probably drives this route every single day, he should have known whether or not it was legal to cross the street where the bus stopped. 2) If he was cited, then an investigation by the Colorado State Patrol obviously came to the conclusion that it was not legal to cross there. And 3) If he was truly looking out for the safety of the passengers, he would have directed them to the crosswalk.

Darren: You are always so smart. You make a great point about the misleading media. The way I read the article it sounded like, Mr. Moffett was escorting the women to the other side of the street. He was not just "darting out" to save them. The public will NEVER know what really happened because we weren't there to see it, and with every retelling the facts will change.

Thank you both for your comments, this is a no-win situation. I want to root for the remarkable man willing to risk his life to save others, but I also know that the officers wouldn't choose to hold him to the law if they didn't think it was important. Heroism v. Public Safety, it's a real life ethical dilemma if I ever saw one.

Your post misses one critical point in the article. Specifically, the two elderly women were not cited for jaywalking. Only the two men (the bus driver and a passenger) were cited at the scene by police. So if it was jaywalking then all four people should have been cited, not just the two men.

That uneven application of the law is what I find most troubling. That apparently little old ladies can jaywalk with impunity, yet people trying to help them cannot.

The ladies haven't been cited YET, the investigation is ongoing. It makes sense. Like the first commenter said, jaywalking requires intent, if the ladies didn't know that they weren't allowed to cross there and were just following the bus driver and the other man, they may not be held responsible. I am wondering who made the decision to cross there, but of course we'll never know.

If the bus driver can be held up as an authority, someone who should know where it's legal to cross considering he drives this route everyday, then can the public be responsible for taking his directions and doing what he told them to do? (I don't know if that's the case in this instance, but it bears thinking about.)