[Forensic assessment of questionable railway suicides]

Railway deaths only seldom give rise to extensive inquiries. For the police there exists no absolute necessity of differentiating between accident and suicide. The reason is that accidents usually do not result in criminal proceedings. For the railway embankment the normal traffic rules are unvalid, and the guilt of the engine driver usually cannot be proven. In consequence these cases very often are declared as suicides without adequate support. This leads to complications in the field of insurance law. Since the "prima facie" principle in these cases was dropped our medicolegal institutes are increasingly engaged with expert opinions dealing with the question of accident or suicide. According to literature only a straight decapitation is regarded as typical for a suicide. But such can be found rather seldom in reality. That was the reason for us to study our own cases and to examine whether there are additional patterns of morphological findings proving a suicidal action. The respective case circumstances and, if available, testimonies were included in our study as well as the special constructional peculiarities of the engine frontages which logically contribute to the appearance of injuries.