Road Accidents: Presumptions of Fault

It was often difficult for the victim of a car accident to prove the driver was at fault. The accident would happen very quickly and witnesses might find it to recall what happened clearly or might not be present on a country lane. The complexity of the vehicle might make it difficult for the owner to be at fault where the car was defective or had a mechanical failure. It would be hard for the victim to show that the owner or driver was at fault in failing to identify the defect.

To help the victim, many legal systems introduced a rule that the driver of a vehicle was presumed to be at fault unless he could show that the accident happened as a result of some external cause or without a defect in the car or without the driver’s fault. In Sweden, such a rule was introduced by Parliament in 1916. The Italian Civil Code of 1942 also contains a rule by which the driver of a car is liable to pay compensation for the damage caused to people or to property unless he proves that he did all that was possible to avoid the damage (article 2054). The burden of proof imposed on the driver is difficult to square with the classical notions of liability for fault. This rule was inspired by German law and also by ideas developed by a joint Italian-French committee for a common civil code, which reported in 1927.

In Spain, the Supreme Court decided in 1943 that ‘despite the fact that the principles of strict liability for car accidents are not acknowledged in any law’, it would create such principles through case-law. It decided that, to avoid paying compensation to an accident victim, the driver had to prove that he was as careful as circumstances required.