Road accidents, sexual assaults

A scooter rider is knocked down near Vashi station at night. A bystander wants to lift him into a rickshaw but hesitates: what if he is blamed if the man gets worse? At the hospital, a clerk asks who will sign the police papers before anyone examines the patient. Road accidents and sexual assaults both produce injured people whom the law wants treated first and investigated second. This topic asks what duties the law puts on drivers, bystanders, hospitals and doctors in these two situations, and what the medical evidence is for.

In two minutes

In road accidents and sexual assaults the law's first demand is immediate treatment without procedural delay, its second is a proper medico-legal record with the victim's consent, and its third is a duty to inform the police.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Law and Medicine on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.