Automobile Accidents: A Comparative Study of the Law of Liability in Europe

Abstract

The progress in the technical sciences which followed the industrial revolution, bringing with it the development of machiine industry and the speeding-up of communication, has had as important effects upon certain rules of law as upon the human relations which are regulated by those rules. The increased pace of a mechanized society has had a particularly strong influence upon certain aspects of tort law. From the time of the Roman law down almost to the present, legal liability for invasion of interests of personality or property through external violence presupposed the existence of fault on the part of the actor, whether that fault consisted of misfeasance or nonfeasance. Liability without fault was only exceptionally recognized, either by the Roman jurists, in the modern Eturopean codes, or in the English common law. Various norms were set up in what seems like an attempt to provide a convenient legal yardstick for measuring fault. Of such norms the most striking is that of an ideal standard based upon the theoretical conduct of an ordinary person or a bonus pater familias. If the individual measured up to this standard, the law attached no importance to the fact that his acts had prejudiced another, and the actor was under no duty to make compensation for the injury which he had caused. Today we find a different approach to this problem. The change did not occur suddenly, but was the result of a slow evolution. The causes and course of this evolution make a fascinating chapter in legal history for those who are interested in the effect