A driver of a bonnet-front Skoda Octavia was driving at night on a German motorway. He suddenly recognized something big on the roadside and immediately braked. In this moment there was a collision with ‘‘something”. The driver presumed it was an animal. He left his car to have a look, walked a short way back, saw no injured animal and wanted to secure the accident-site. A little later, the driver felt he was in a strange and bizarre situation. When he got back to his car, he didn’t realize that the rear- window was broken at first. After opening the trunk to pick up the warning triangle the automatic light in the luggage compartment switched-on and manifested a cruel view. The motorist was looking upon a polytraumatized and severely deformed male body.
He called the police. They were afraid of the possibility of a body dumping which was discovered accidentally. The person in the trunk was declared dead due to multiple heavy injuries by the emergency doctor. However, the police did not order a further forensic postmortem investigation as well as a technical investigation at the ‘‘crime scene”. They immediately transported the dead corpse to the institute of legal medicine and the damaged car to a local car workshop.
Fig.1 Initial position of the deceased in the trunk of the car leading to suspicion of a coincidentally detected body dumping transport by the police.
Fig.2 Front-view of the car: The right front light is completely destroyed, the right fender and the right part of the hood are heavily damaged and the windscreen is smashed.
The deceased was a 79-year old man, height 166 cm (5’5″), weight 70 kg (154 lbs), in good nutritional condition. He was initially partly undressed, but clothed in dark-blue jogging pants, which showed material melting and paint abrasion especially on the outer edge of the left popliteal fossa corresponding to the color of the car.
The pelvis was massively destroyed on the left iliac crest and the pubic symphysis was broken with surrounding bleeding. Additionally, the spine was broken in its lower thoracic segment. The abdominal aorta showed intimal lacerations. There were multiple fractures to the bony thorax including all ribs, the right clavicle and the left scapula. Both lungs were collapsed after some dislocated rip-fragments pierced the lung tissues several times. The thoracic aorta had been completely ruptured between the aortic arch and the descending aorta with heavy bleeding in the surrounded tissue. In total, 450 ml (15 oz) of fresh and unclotted blood was collected from the thoracic cavities.
Fig.3 Back-view of the car: The rear-window on the tailgate is completely destroyed.
The cause of death was a blunt polytrauma with only very short survival time. The mechanism of injury was typical for a collision of a pedestrian with a car, the manner of death was non-natural.
The victim of the accident wanted to cross the road from the right to the left side and was hit in an upright body position, both explainable because of the mainly left-sided located injuries on his body and the direction of the wedge-shape fracture on the left leg. The pedestrian was lifted up by the car, smashed into the bonnet with the left side of his body and pelvis (broken left scapula, smashed left iliac crest and rib fractures, injuries of abdominal and thoracic organs), turned over head with heavy flection of the right side of his body (aggravation of the thoracic and abdominal injuries), dived with his head and neck into the windscreen (fracture of the cervical spine, cuts of skin on the head, cuts on the left arm) so he was accelerated almost to the car’s speed.
Fig.4 Sequence picture in synopsis of the interdisciplinary results of the accident reconstruction. A) Initial collision between the car and the pedestrian. B)–E) Flight curve of the pedestrian while the car overtakes him. F) The pedestrian smashed the rear-window 48 meters after the initial contact during the braking process of the car.
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The impact energy was divided into lateral movement, deformation and rotation. Because the car didn’t brake the next 0.2 seconds during reaction-time after collision, the car could overtake the pedestrian. Due to the moment arm between center of gravity and the impulse at the lower body of the pedestrian, the person was sent into several body rotations. His flight curve ends directly at the roof during massive deceleration of the car, where he touched the roof aloft the c-pillar (with arm or leg), smashed the rear-window from outside and landed into the trunk. An aggravation of injuries and lacerations during this landing is probable.
Fig.5 A) Initial collision between the car and the pedestrian. B) Flight curve of the pedestrian while the car overtakes him.
Fig.6 Flight curve of the pedestrian while the car overtakes him.
Fig.7 E) Flight curve of pedestrian while the car overtakes him. F) The pedestrian smashed the rear window 48meters after the initial contact during the braking process of the car.
After the initial heavy breaking process the driver steered his car into the emergency lane, crossed the driveway and stopped at the end of the acceleration strip 207 m (679 ft) after collision.
The severity of the injuries, the damages to the car and the end position of the pedestrian inside the trunk could be matched in total with the introduced accident reconstruction. There were no other signs of injuries except those explainable by the traffic accident and clear signs of vital reactions for the accident-related bone injuries.
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