Motor vehicle accident or driver suicide? Identifying cases of failed driver suicide in the trauma setting

Self-inflicted burns: A case series

“…The female predominance of our recurrent self-immolation sample is consistent with the literature on self-harm, where deliberate self-harm, suicidal ideation and attempts have been found to be more common in females, whereas actual completed suicide is more common in males [16]. However, recent studies have questioned this apparent gender difference in the prevalence of deliberate self-harm, suggesting females may merely choose methods of self-harm that are less able to be concealed as an accident, such as self-cutting and overdoses [17,18], whereas males may choose more violent means that can be concealed, such as motor vehicle crashes [19].…”

“…Self-reporting was also relied on, which has been shown to lead to the underestimation of self-inflicted injury in the trauma literature [19]. In addition, this study does not include self-inflicted burns that were too small to warrant hospital admission.…”

Strangulation – Suicide at the wheel

“…Already some decades ago several authors have suggested, that some road traffic accidents (RTA) are in reality suicide attempts [1][2][3][4][5][6]. However, it may be very difficult to identify cases of drivers' suicides among motor vehicle crashes since the suicidal intent is not as self-evident in such cases as e.g.…”

“…in cases of hanging. Meanwhile, a number of risk factors for driver-assisted suicides have been identified (Table 1) [3].…”

“…However, other manners of suicide also use cars, such as vehicle-assisted strangulation, decapitation or carbon monoxide poisoning [2,3,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”