Adjusting my moral compass

Yesterday, I had an interesting experience. I was driving down Aurora, just about to head into the Battery Street tunnel, when a teenage boy ran across the street in front of my car. I glanced into my rear-view mirror and saw that I was being quite closely followed (i.e. tail-gated) by a truck. I was traveling the speed limit, which I think is 40mph at that point. I had Zachary in the car with me, and I immediately calculated that if I slammed on the brakes to avoid the teenager, the truck would rear-end me. With Zachary happily babbling away in the back seat of the car, the choice was obvious. Luckily, the teenager made it across the road in time.

* Note to non-Seattlites: Aurora/SR-99 is a divided highway that runs through downtown Seattle. In order to run across the road, the kid had to climb over a fence, run across two lanes of traffic, climb over the median barrier, then run across two more lanes of traffic. Basically, it's not a place where one would expect to encounter a pedestrian.

** I'd guess that if I had hit the kid, I would be arrested for criminal negligence or something similar because I didn't try to avoid him. Even though he was breaking the law by running across a 4-lane divided highway, and the guy behind me was breaking the law by following me too closely. In making the decision to protect my child, who was put in a dangerous situation by other people's bad choices, I would end up being the one at fault. That stinks. But you know what? I'd still do it.