The competing rights in the scenario presented are: 1) Stay on the road, saving yourself and your partner, or 2) veer off the cliff to the left and save the 6-year-old. Based on our textbook reading, the coping mechanisms used to evaluate competing rights are to "Defuse the Conflict...Decide What's More Right...Seek Advice” (Whisenand, 2013). The relevant coping mechanism for this exercise is to decide what’s more right. Fundamentally, this exercise forces us to evaluate our own morality. What is right, what is wrong, what is more right or more wrong.
Through God, John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” In this verse, I believe we can expand the term friends to mean the community in which we, as law enforcement officers, serve and protect. Realistically, I would operate my squad into the rock wall, thus stopping the vehicle and saving the 6-year-old. After negotiating a turn with due regard on a narrow
single lane road with a 100-yard cliff to one side, the vehicle would not be travelling fast. However, to answer the prompt, I would veer off the cliff to the left and save the 6-year-old. Children are generally much more innocent and have much more time to live than adults do. Children should always be saved whatever the cost.
