Sure, it’s possible, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I wager a gentle closing of the door which is too light to even make a bruise would make anyone instinctively withdraw their hand.
It’s illegal to speed on the highway too?
Does that stop anyone?
I think he should just drive away with the door open or don’t let the guy get close to you before you head for your car.
So again I ask, what should I do in such a situation? You’ve told me that closing the door on his hand is illegal. Great. Now give me a course of action that will get me out of my parking space in a short order of time. He won’t let go of my car pillar, but he’s made no move towards me personally. I call the police, but they tell me it’ll be at least 30 minutes before a cruiser shows up. Should I just drive away with an open door, trusting that he’ll let go before he gets dragged into traffic?
Would a reasonable course of action be to slowly start to close the car door? There would be no crushing of bones and it would be a clear signal to the panhandler that he needed to remove his hand. If he doesn’t, then you’ve demonstrated (in my mind anyway) that you’ve been reasonable and he hasn’t. At that point, I think a reasonable person would be able to claim that they thought that they were in legitimate danger and could escalate to more force up to and including a more forceful closing of the door.
Given that the factual answer to the question in the OP seems to be “it depends,” and that much of the subsequent discussion is based on speculation, it’s probably time to send this to GD.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Tell him to remove his hand. Raise your voice and tell him to remove his hand. Yell and tell him to remove his hand. Try to push him away from the car. Shove him away from the car. Close the door to the point that you are separated from him, but not to the point that the door is actually crushing his fingers. Yank on the door a bit enough to apply force to his hand, but also allow him to remove his hand without having his fingers crushed.
I believe that if the guy is persisting to hold on to your car after progressing through some or all of these options, then we have a very different situation than is presented in the OP, in which the beggar never threatens or touches the person in the car.
This. The accidental hand-breakages mentioned previously undoubtedly were the result of the door-slammer being unaware there was a hand in the way, which is not the scenario in question. In this situation, after telling the guy to let go, I’d swing the car door shut gently enough to bang, but not crush his hand. If he kept hanging on, I’d keep banging it shut harder and harder until the bastard let go (opening it just far enough each time to get another swing going) - or until I felt I’d closed the door enough to avoid it catching on whatever was stopping me from just taking off.
A more interesting question to me is what to do if the guy is standing in front of your car, as there is no great way to reliably remove the problem without leaving your position of safety. Even if you drive forward and bang his shins, if he doesn’t move what have you gained? If you knock him down, you still have to stop 'cause you can’t just run him over. So, what can you do? (Presume you don’t have a cell phone - yes, that still happens.)
I do not concur.
The OP was not that this guy came up to your car to ask for $, but rather was following (stalking) you for money. In a situation where the guy is that persistent and is now violating my personal space whether car, house, clothing or person I would definately feel threatened and because of that would do what it took to at least close the car door for protection.
Would it be any different if he followed you for two blocks and then put his hand on the doorjamb so you couldn’t close the door?
Why do you have to slam the door? Just close it slowly.
It depends on the situation. In the OP, it is pretty clear that the beggar isn’t doing anything threatening, which I take to mean that he isn’t placing his hand inside the car/house with any apparent intent to get inside or to prevent me from attempting to close the door. I’m envisioning this as more like someone leaning into the car and holding on to the frame of the door to balance one’s self. I wouldn’t take this as such an intimidating act that I would feel compelled to do serious bodily harm without the situation first being escalated.
The OP stated that the beggar was not threatening, so again I’m envisioning someone who is annoying, but not intimidating. Something along the lines of those kids who constantly try to sell Krispy Kreme donuts on the street. I don’t believe that absent any threat, nor absent any effort to first defuse the situation, I have a right to defend my “personal space” by doing serious bodily damage to someone.
From the OP:
To me this demonstrates that your image of the situation is not the one under discussion. I think we can all agree that if, when you say, “Get your hand off my car”, that he complies, you do not have the right to slam your door on his hand. (In fact it would be rather difficult to do so, once that hand had been removed.) So you are wrong - there is apparent and demonstrable intent to prevent you from closing your door, and this is what propells the situation into one where it is not out of the question that you resort to physical force of some kind to remove the beggar from the portal of your vehicle.
Again, the person you are envisioning is not the one in the OP, because the one in the OP will not back off and let you leave. And you don’t have to necessarily do “serious bodily damage” in the case of the guy holding your door-pillar, even if you do resort to physical force.
Did you at least free her hand from the door first?:eek:
I was thinking the same thing. But as far as I’m concerned, once an intruder has put his hand in the door, that is a personal threat. It doesn’t matter if he is polite.
It is not out of the question that physical force be used if the guy won’t remove his hand. But obviously, if the guy has his hand on the door of the car, and I tell him to remove it, yet he does not immediately, I am not inherently justified to poke him in the eye with a sharp stick, nor take a lead pipe to his knee, nor slam a door on his hand.
If you told him to scram, gave him a push, and he still persisted, then closing the door on his hand is a much more reasonable next step.
I’d call closing a door with enough force to potentially break fingers to be “serious bodily harm.” I’m certain the law does, as well.
I bolded your two goalposts here for you. Note the distance between.
Closing the door nearly all the way and then ‘gently’ banging it shut on his hand is a great deal more defensive of a position than half-climbing out of your car to try and get in range of his torso to shove him, and you are left in a much better position to keep gradually escalating the situation as needed with the former as well. Comparatively speaking, climbing out of your car and starting a fight is moronic.
I didn’t suggest climbing out of the car to start a fight. I don’t know about your particular physical situation, but I’m a rather thin guy with normal length arms, and I would have no problem to remain seated in the car and be able to give most people a shove. If someone had tyranosaurus rex arms, or were obese and unable to maneuver in one’s seat, then obviously one’s choices on how to react to the beggar would be different.
And I previously said in post 86 that I saw a difference between closing the door with minimal force to allow him to remove his hand vs. slamming the door on his hand.
So I am not suggesting that someone have to go through a lengthy list of items before being able to forcefully close the door, I’m saying there are many different options other than one verbal warning then crush the fingers without mercy – which I’m not sure that you disagree with, either.
I said “half-climbing”. If your arms are as long as their arms, then your shoulder will have to be outside the car in order to even start to shove them, if they had the slightest inclination to try and keep their torso out of range. Was our intent to get push them far enough from the car to have time to get the door shut before they regained their footing and returned to interfere, or to just give them a nice little pat on the chest?
Hey, I just objected to your mischaracterization of the beggar as a harmless annoyance when he was actively refusing to let go of your car, and then you started in with the finger-breaking stuff. So don’t look at me.
Absolutely. However, the degree of threat (as perceived by a reasonable person) determines what an appropriate and justifiable response would be. If a five year old girl walks up you on the street and says, “I"m going to kick your ass,” you can hardly argue that a spinning mule kick is a rational response (unless you’re in a Will Smith movie). However, if a six foot five muscle jockey walks up with a crowbar in hand in a dark blind alley and says, “Do you have a funeral suit?” you may well be justified pulling out your trusty 1911 and ventilating his prerogatives. The threats may be implied, but a reasonable person could justifiably fear for their life and feel that they had no other suitable recourse of action.
In the case of an obnoxious but otherwise non-threatening panhandler (or petitioner, if that avoids the issue of appropriate charity), the answer is obviously that you cannot just slam the door on his fingers, as it is out of proportion with the threat. However, if he had unduly detained you (refusing to move, made any implied threatening statements or behaviors, is intruding into the vehicle) then you may well be justified in upping the ante. You certainly have every right to evacuate out of a threatening situation, and if the person in question is deliberately obstructing your immediate route of escape you are justified in using “reasonable force” (i.e. the level of force necessary to egress), which may include an intentional act of injury.
I can’t think of any reasonable scenario in which a driver is justified in running over an unarmed, unaccompanied pedestrian that is blocking the path of the vehicle; if this were the case, the obvious thing to do is to remain in the car, lock the doors, and lean on the horn and/or call police or security on a cell phone. If the person in question is armed and brandishing, threatening to intrude into the car, or otherwise represents a real threat then the situation may justify using the car as a weapon.
Setting aside what a “reasonable person” would do from a legal perspective, an intelligent and aware person will avoid getting into this kind of situation to begin with. While it is impossible to be so vigilant that you could never be in a tactically compromised position, the fact is that most predatory criminals look for opportunities where a potential victim isn’t paying attention to their surroundings or displaying awareness to potential threats. Just demonstrating that you know the threat exists and are willing to be proactive and assertive in responding to it is enough to deter most single predators, even if they are physically larger than the intended victim. If you let some stranger follow you this close to your car that the scenario postulated in the o.p. is an issue, you’ve already made several basic mistakes. Slamming their hand in a door without due cause to reasonably feel threatened would be compounding those errors.
Stranger
Not if you close the door hard enough :eek:
Just kidding!
I would think that relative size of each party and other circumstances would matter. Is the driver a 6’4" 220lb. healthy male in his 20s while the panhandler is a 75 year old drunk on his last leg of life?
Or is the driver an elderly petite woman and the panhandler a roided out freak?
If you had a young child with you, I think that would add to the reasonableness of your actions should you use force. But, I don’t think there is a definite, “Yes, you can do this, but no, you can’t do that” answer.