Road suicide

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Health notice This article is about suicide. For those at risk, there is a wide network of offers of help in which ways out are shown. In acute emergencies, the telephone counseling and the European emergency number 112 can be reached continuously and free of charge. After an initial crisis intervention , qualified referrals can be made to suitable counseling centers on request.

Suicide in traffic , road suicide or suicide by a moving road vehicle called a form of Suizides in which a man commits suicide by the intention to die an accident in the road caused. The suicide may be involved in the accident as a pedestrian , as a driver deliberately causing an accident or otherwise be killed by interfering with road traffic. Depending on the type of accident, there is a considerable risk to others. If the suicide intentionally drives on a road wrong-way , the injury or death of bystanders is usually accepted.

Compared to other possibilities of suicide, a suicide on the road can be more easily disguised as an accident. From the suicide's point of view, this has the advantage that he is not stigmatized for the suicide and that no additional restrictions with regard to insurance cover are to be expected. Other reasons for suicide on the road are consideration for the bereaved, the everyday nature of driving, an affective relationship with the car and the chances of success.

Statistically, about 1% of suicides in Germany are committed through deliberate car accidents . Depending on the source, it is assumed that 1–7% or 5% of road deaths can be traced back to suicide and that 1000 to 1500 traffic accidents in Germany are initiated with the intention of suicide. Criminologists find it difficult to distinguish a normal traffic accident from a suicide. A “high” number of unreported cases is suspected, suicide in road traffic is often underestimated and little noticed in public. From a statistical analysis for Switzerland and Bavaria it follows that 80% of suicide in road traffic is carried out by men. In addition, 50% of suicides took place on country roads and 27% on highways.

Individual evidence

  1. Tragic case in Aachen - woman jumps off the motorway bridge and kills motorists with her. In: FOCUS Online. August 2, 2017. Retrieved February 11, 2019 .
  2. Elena Erbrich: Another fatal accident on Friday: 50 pedestrians died on the autobahn in North Rhine-Westphalia. In: RP Online. May 4, 2018, accessed January 21, 2019 .
  3. a b c Kari Kälin: HIGH DARK NUMBERS : Committing suicide by car. In: Tagblatt. September 13, 2017, accessed February 11, 2019 .
  4. ^ Neue Zürcher Zeitung: Suicide by jumping out of the car
  5. ^ A b c Saskia Gauthier, Vladeta Ajdacic-Gross, Thomas Reisch, Christine Bartsch: Suizide im Strassenverkehr. December 4, 2014. AGU Zurich. At TraumaBiomechanik-gmttb.de, accessed on February 11, 2019 ( PDF ; 877 KB).
  6. G. Hagenau: Intentions to commit suicide as a danger to road traffic . In: Police . tape 64 , no. 9 . Carl Heymanns, September 1973, ISSN  0032-3519 , p. 263–266 ( trb.org [accessed February 11, 2019]).
  7. Number of deaths from suicide in Germany by type of method in the years 2012 to 2016. In: statista.com. Retrieved February 12, 2019 .
  8. a b c Experts puzzle: Car accident or suicide? In: Hamburger Abendblatt. December 21, 2005, accessed February 11, 2019 .
  9. a b Saskia Gauthier, Sybille Kraus, Vladeta Ajdacic-Gross, Matthias Graw, Thomas Reisch, Christine Bartsch: suicides by road in Switzerland and Bavaria . In: Proceedings of the 10th joint symposium of the DGVM and DGVP on September 5 and 6, 2014 in Munich. (Ed.): German Society for Traffic Medicine eV DGVM and German Society for Traffic Psychology eV DGVP (=  fitness to drive ). Kirschbaum Verlag, Bonn 2014, ISBN 978-3-7812-1927-4 , pp. 72–74 ( uzh.ch [PDF; 4.3 MB ; accessed on February 11, 2019]).