Accident Vs Assault Cases With Specific Emphasis on Lateralization of Injuries

A prospective study involving 805 medicolegal cases was carried out between mid-2009 to early 2012 keeping in mind lateralization or “sidedness” of injuries and applying this concept to injuries suffered in accident cases and assault cases and finding if there is any difference between the two. This perhaps is first of the studies done to study different patterns of injuries focusing on the side of body being inflicted with injury whether right or left sided rather that the pattern of injury, of which many studies are available. An important conclusion of this study is that in road traffic accident cases the injuries happen to occur mostly on dominant right side of body (lower limbs) in right hand side driven vehicles where as in assault cases the injuries on the victim happen to be common on non dominant left side (head) of the body suggesting an interesting analogy that; Are humans instinctively built to hurt another human on most vulnerable vital area of body as in case of assaults and conversely are they built to withstand mortal injuries instinctively by exposing their non vital dominant areas of body to maximum and lethal impacts as in case of road traffic accidents ?