Good Samaritan Law

Remember that final episode of Seinfeld where they all get put in prison because they were in a small town that had a good samartian law?

Germany also has a good samaritan law. We were told about it when we attended our "Welcome to Germany!" briefing. It's pretty common sense - if you see someone that needs help, you are supposed to stop and offer assistance; even if it's just to call police. As you can probably figure out from some of my former posts, the Americans at this base are not likely to follow that law.


On Saturday, we headed out to a couple of garage sales hoping to pick up some German voltage appliances pretty cheap. As we were driving on the main road that leads between our housing annex and the main base, there was a GOV (government owned vehicle) on the side of the road with the blinkers on. The driver was standing beside the truck. There were several cars in front of us, none which stopped, of course. We stopped, rolled down the window, and asked if he needed help. He had pulled over because his tools were rolling around in the floor of the truck, and had accidentally locked himself out of the truck with the keys in the ignition and the truck still running. At 8:11, he told us, he called Security Forces and they said that would call Transportation Logistics and send someone out. It was now over an hour and a half later, and no one had shown up or called him back. As we were rummaging through our car to see if we had anything that he could use, a Polizi car passed and just kept going. Niiiiiiice. The Germans in this area don't even obey their own laws. The Germans also have a law that you aren't allowed to keep your car running unless you are driving, so technically this guy was lucky that he didn't get fined for locking the keys in the truck. That would be our luck, the police stop to fine us for leaving the car running, but don't actually help us figure out how to get the keys out.


Unfortunately, we had nothing that would help him, so we decided to go by base and try and find a wire coat hanger. It had to be better than nothing, right? The Airman wanted to stay with the truck, so we told him we'd be right back. As we went through the main gate, we told Security Forces about the situation. They didn't know anything about it, which means the person in the security forces building who took the call didn't do jack about it. That's just sad. I shudder to think what would have happened if it had been a POV and there was a baby buckled into a car seat locked inside, because Security Forces is much more likely to rush to the aid of a GOV rather than a POV in the first place.


Once through the gate, we hunted down a wire coat hanger (they are harder to find than we thought) and headed back to, oh, let's call him Joe. We saw that Security Forces were there - finally - so we handed over the hanger since they didn't have slimjim, and gave Joe a bottle of water since he'd now been stuck outside in the heat and humidity for about two hours in BDU's which are long sleeved and not exactly the coolest things on the planet. After asking if we could do anything else, we headed on to search for German appliances on the el cheapo. We never could find the yard sale we were looking for (gotta love the wasted trip with gas $4.32 a gallon), and we got stuck in a huge line of traffic on the way back. Saturday was Open House, where local nationals could tour the base without being signed in. The base was using a huge field as a parking lot, and traffic was backed up on every road leading to base. Who knew that many folks would want to tour the base? I guess since we have every day access, we are underwhelmed.

We finally got past the worst of the traffic and saw, to no great surprise, that the Joe and the truck were STILL on the side of the road. We stopped again and he told R that he'd gotten the door unlocked and the keys out, and was just waiting for Security Forces to come back. We could see them down the road behind about 20 cars, so we left after he said he was fine. I sure hope he didn't have to be anywhere, since it was now after noon. There is a small measure of comfort in a twisted way knowing that it's not just the kids and I that get ignored when we need help. I'm glad that it turned out okay for Joe, and I'm glad we stopped.