Norway. In June 2003, a small Mazda 232 automobile was involved in an accident. In a sharp left curve, the car in high speed had hit the guardrail on the right side of the road. The rail was bent and destroyed. Several road sign poles with warning signs of a sharp curve were on the other side, close to the guardrail. The head of a young woman with dark blond hair was found close to one of the poles. Fifty meters from the nearest pole, the car had crashed into a mountainside after first having collided with the guardrail. The motor of the car was still running.
Fig.1 The car after the accident.
Fig.2 The car with the deceased in the front passenger seat. Safety belt seen behind the deceased.
All car doors were closed, and both frontal airbags were released. The window on the passenger side was broken and the glass had fallen out. The windscreen was fractured and covered with bloodstains on the passenger side. In the passenger seat, a young decapitated woman was found sitting, leaning forward. The seat belt had not been in use. There was much blood inside the car on the passenger side. The driver had disappeared but was later found and arrested.
Fig.3 The head of the passenger. Severance lines through the base of occipital skull.
Fig.4 The warning sign with poles. Arrow points to the place where the head of the woman was lying.
The autopsy showed a well-built 34-year-old woman with some skin abrasions and bruises on the right arm. On the chin and in the front of the neck, few abrasions were found, indicating the site of impact. There was a little irregular cut in the skin in the front of the neck right below the chin. Around the rest of the neck, the skin was relatively sharp cut along the circumference.
On the head, the cut went through the lower temple on both sides, leaving the left ear and parts of the right ear on the neck part of the torso. The occipital bone was fractured, leaving the base of the skull on the torso, and the mandible and tongue connected to the head. The cerebellum and the basal part of the occipital lobe of the brain were bruised. The pons and the medulla were torn and severed. There were fractures in the mandible, but no fracture of the cervical spine. A toxicology blood screen detected 0.18% of ethanol.
Fig.5 Guardrail and warning signs at the place of the initial impact. Arrow points to the place of impact.
Fig.6 3D Reconstruction of the accident. The warning sign with poles.
The investigation revealed that both frontal airbags were released at the initial impact. The plastic cover of the right airbag had been pushed into the windscreen which was fractured but in place. The deceased in the front passenger seat did not wear seat belts. She was probably already out of the normal position in the seat when the airbag was released. She, therefore, was pushed against the right front passenger seat window, which then was broken.
Owing to the release of airbags and the impact, the head of the female probably was pushed through the open window, and a pole hit the neck. The rounded pole close to the guardrail was intact. The large squared metal sign with the yellow arrow also was intact, but this sign was situated too high up to could have inflicted the injuries. The accident was therefore registered as a blunt force trauma caused by the pole.
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