Recent Developments in Automobile Accident Compensation

Abstract

In 1932 the Columbia Committee to Study Compensation for Automobile Accidents made a Report concluding in favor of a system of compensation for automobile accidents modeled on the workmen's compensation laws. The Report was based on a careful factual study of accidents in ten widely scattered areas in the United States, both in large cities and in smaller cities and rural communities. The study showed that there was little chance of recovery from any but insured motorists and brought out the hardships to the injured person and his dependents resulting both from his not collecting damages and from the delays and costs of recovery. It indicated the burden cast on public and private relief by injuries for which no damages were paid. The study covered the various plans then existing to improve the situation, through financial responsibility laws and through the then recent Massachusetts Compulsory Insurance Law, and included a statistical study of the effects of the Massachusetts law and of the various financial responsibility laws then in effect. In the Report was included a study of the law of torts as applicable to automobile accidents as well as a study of the costs, both to the parties and to the public, of court proceedings. A carefully drafted compensation plan was submitted, with a persuasive memorandum by Professor Noel T. Dowling supporting its constitutionality. This Report, combining the legal and the factual elements in automobile accidents, aroused wide attention and was much discussed pro and con. Its factual conclusions have not been seriously questioned, but the remedy has not been accepted as yet in any state of the Union. It has, however, had an effect in stimulating discussion and, I believe, greater legislative attention to improving financial responsibility laws as an answer to the challenge raised by the Report. Mr. Grad's study tests the conclusions of the Report in the light of developments since it was published. He has also taken into consideration the developments in the law of torts to see how far that law is becoming a more satisfactory instrument for meeting the social problem of automobile injuries. His article should stimulate new thinking on an urgent problem.