“The hypothetical reasonable person provides an objective by which the conduct of others is judged. In law, the reasonable person is not an average person or a typical person but a composite of the community’s judgment as to how the typical community member should behave in situations that might pose a threat of harm to the public. Even though the majority of people in the community may behave in a certain way, that does not establish the standard of conduct of the reasonable person.”
“He is an ideal, a standard, the embodiment of all those qualities which we demand of the good citizen … [he] invariably looks where he is going, … is careful to examine the immediate foreground before he executes a leap or bound; … neither stargazes nor is lost in meditation when approaching trapdoors or the margins of a dock; … never mounts a moving [bus] and does not alight from any car while the train is in motion, … uses nothing except in moderation, and even flogs his child in meditating only on the golden mean.“ A.P. Herbert
ReasonableCitizen lives in northwest Wisconsin and can be reached by email: Kindlingman@yahoo.com