Medicolegal problems in determining cause of death in motor vehicle accidents

Abstract

Fatalities associated with traffic accidents may generate an impressive number of medicolegal problems of vital importance to the families of victims, insurance companies, compensation boards, prosecuting attorneys, traffic regulating authorities, and the public at large. The medical and legal causality of death, the determination of the role played by the victim in the accident, the responsibility of the victim in initiating the accident, the estimation of the postaccident survival incurring legal compensation for pain and suffering and problems of survivorship related to inheritance, are only some of the more important motives in the medicolegal potpourri of traffic accidents. Obviously, the pivotal medicolegal problem is the determination of the causality of death: did the demise occur before or after the accident, and is any causal relationship present between the traffic accident and the death?