Vehicular suicide is the use of a motor vehicle to intentionally cause one's own
death
Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...
.
Suffocation
Suicide by
carbon monoxide poisoning
Carbon monoxide poisoning typically occurs from breathing in carbon monoxide (CO) at excessive levels. Symptoms are often described as " flu-like" and commonly include headache, dizziness, weakness, vomiting, chest pain, and confusion. Large ...
may be attempted by running the engine in an enclosed garage, or by piping the
exhaust gas
Exhaust gas or flue gas is emitted as a result of the combustion of fuels such as natural gas, gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, fuel oil, biodiesel blends, or coal. According to the type of engine, it is discharged into the atmosphere through an ...
into the driver's compartment with a hose, but
catalytic converter
A catalytic converter is an vehicle emissions control, exhaust emission control device that converts toxic gases and pollutants in exhaust gas from an internal combustion engine into less-toxic pollutants by catalysis, catalyzing a redox chemic ...
s required for
air quality
Air pollution is the contamination of air due to the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the climate or to materials. There are many different types ...
regulations eliminate over 99% of carbon monoxide produced.
Traffic collisions
Intentional
traffic collisions may be a chosen method of suicide where
speed limit
Speed limits on road traffic, as used in most countries, set the legal maximum speed at which vehicles may travel on a given stretch of road. Speed limits are generally indicated on a traffic sign reflecting the maximum permitted speed - expre ...
s are high enough to produce fatal
deceleration
In mechanics, acceleration is the rate of change of the velocity of an object with respect to time. Accelerations are vector quantities (in that they have magnitude and direction). The orientation of an object's acceleration is given by t ...
. Modern cars have high rates of acceleration and can easily reach very high speeds in short distances, while most cannot protect occupants in frontal impact collisions exceeding per hour. Motor vehicles are ideal self-injurious or self-destructive instruments for persons intent upon camouflaging their suicidal motivation from others, because widespread use of the word
accident
An accident is an unintended, normally unwanted event that was not directly caused by humans. The term ''accident'' implies that nobody should be blamed, but the event may have been caused by unrecognized or unaddressed risks. Most researche ...
implies traffic collisions are unintentional. The percentage of suicides among the tens of thousands of people killed annually in United States traffic collisions is unknown because suicides are often misclassified as accidents if no suicide note is found. Considering the large number of suicides by other methods, it would be remarkable if vehicles were less used as a convenient method of self-destruction avoiding insurance and religious complications.
The probability and severity of traffic collisions may be increased by suicidal behaviors including
drunk driving and
speeding
Speed limits on road traffic, as used in most countries, set the legal maximum speed at which vehicles may travel on a given stretch of road. Speed limits are generally indicated on a traffic sign reflecting the maximum permitted speed - expres ...
. These risky driving behaviors are associated with
depression as contributing factors to vehicular suicide. Impact velocity may be maximized by exceeding speed limits or by maneuvering into a
head-on collision
A head-on collision is a traffic collision where the front ends of two vehicles such as cars, trains, ships or planes hit each other when travelling in opposite directions, as opposed to a side collision or rear-end collision.
Rail transpor ...
with a heavier and less maneuverable vehicle like a
bus
A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...
or
semi-trailer truck
A semi-trailer truck, also known as a semitruck, (or semi, eighteen-wheeler, big rig, tractor-trailer or, by synecdoche, a semitrailer) is the combination of a tractor unit and one or more semi-trailers to carry freight. A semi-traile ...
. Crash investigators found head-on collisions with heavier vehicles were a suicide method more common than the single vehicle crashes sometimes assumed to be more typical. These suicidal collisions may kill or injure others.
[
]
Implications
Aside from use for premeditated suicides, as commuters spend more time driving, vehicles may be available at the instant of a momentary and temporary impulse towards self-destruction fueled by road rage
Road rage is aggressive or angry behavior exhibited by motorists. These behaviors include rude and verbal insults, yelling, physical threats or dangerous driving methods targeted at other drivers, pedestrians or cyclists in an effort to intimi ...
. Suicides comprise nearly two-thirds of the 33,000 annual gun deaths in the United States.[
Understanding the fraction of traffic fatalities attributable to suicide is important because many ]traffic safety
Road traffic safety refers to the methods and measures used to prevent road users from being killed or seriously injured. Typical road users include pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, vehicle passengers, horse riders, and passengers of on-road ...
measures are unlikely to influence suicides. Unmeasured suicides in empirical data
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...
used to evaluate traffic safety measures will result in systematic underestimation of effectiveness for non-suicidal road users.[
People can also stand or walk in front of oncoming traffic.
]
See also
*Vehicular homicide
Vehicular homicide is a crime that involves the death of a person other than the driver as a result of either criminally negligent or murderous operation of a motor vehicle.
In cases of criminal negligence, the defendant is commonly charged ...
*Suicide by pilot
Suicide by pilot is an aviation event in which a pilot deliberately crashes or attempts to crash an aircraft in a suicide attempt, sometimes to kill passengers on board or people on the ground. This is sometimes described as a murder–suic ...
References
{{reflist
Suicide methods
Traffic collisions