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Abstract
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The choice of a title for this paper is influenced by the fact that the writer is a psychologist at Harvard. When William James was a member of the Harvard faculty he wrote a book entitled Varieties of Religious Experience. This is a fundamental problem in science, namely classification. The title is influenced also by the fact that William James had a brother Henry who was a novelist. Critics who have read works by each of these gentlemen say that William wrote psychology like fiction, and Henry wrote fiction like psychology. The inference is true that much of our data depart so markedly from the general concept of the problem of automobile death that the difference is quite startling.
In attempting to study the automobile death, the problem was viewed by means of several procedures. These included hearings on license revocations, hearings on license reinstatement, special investigations, roadside interviews after observed violations, office study of records, and field observation of the process of investigation of automobile death cases.
The results of these efforts were the description of a research team, the gross methodology to be followed in research, and a general hypothesis concerning the data to be expected.
Results of the investigation of 100 cases of automobile deaths by a multiple disciplinary team led to classification of cases into seven groups: cases dominated by (a) environmental failure, (b) vehicle failure, (c) human failure: personality, (d) human failure: illness, pathology, toxic states, (e) suicides, (f) tampering, and (g) hypothesis.
Problems developed in the course of the study include (a) driver identification, (b) survivability, (c) blood loss, (d) reactions to sudden death, and (e) amnesia.
A recommendation for investigation procedures in order to serve the interest of justice and the public interest includes five steps as follows: (a) detailed examination of the scene and (b) of the vehicle; (c) post-mortem examination of the bodies, (d) physical, psychiatric and toxocological examination of any driver who survives, and (e) social and personal history of each principal. The steps should be dominated by an hypothesis of homicide, and should be required by law. A design challenge is presented to scientists, physicians, engineers and automobile industry policymakers to design an automobile which will offer 60g deceleration protection to each occupant regardless of impact site. |