Vehicle injuries to joggers. Case report and review

A medico-legal case is presented where a jogger was struck by a car while crossing an intersection and later sought major damages in a civil court. This incident is reviewed in the context of overall information on injury to joggers by vehicles, and the possibility (raised by the defendant's counsel) that the euphoria generated by prolonged exercise may have created a sense of "invincibility" that predisposed the jogger to reckless actions. The defendants argued that the young man concerned was taking an amount of exercise that could have led to a jogging addiction and alteration of consciousness in a susceptible individual, and a history of alcohol, drug and video addiction was advanced as evidence that he may indeed have been a susceptible person. During the actual incident, the jogger recognised that the driver of the vehicle had not seen him, but nevertheless he proceeded to enter a crosswalk that had already been 75% traversed by the car, leaving himself only 0.6 metres of space, a half of the lane width normally required by a runner. A calculation of the relative velocities of the car and the jogger suggests that the latter must have veered 1-2 metres onto the main highway in order to pass in front of the care and be hit from the side. The behaviour of the jogger was plainly reckless, but more information is needed on the relative incidence of traffic injuries in joggers and walkers, on the prevalence of jogging addiction, and on diagnostic criteria for this condition before the accident could be categorically attributed to a jogging-related euphoria.