Road Accidents: Insurance-based compensation in Sweden

In the light of ideas discussed abroad, and especially laws passed in part of the United States and Canada, Sweden passed the Traffic Damage Act 1975. Compensation based on personal insurance for tort/delictual liability (as in France and Germany) would not always provide he victim with a remedy. For example, where a driver skidded off the road and collided with a tree, the victim could not be liable to himself. Instead the law provides an insurance-based liability system.

Under the Act, whenever an injury results from traffic involving a motor vehicle, the victim could gain compensation from the state fund. No longer would the victim have to go to court and show that the vehicle had caused the accident or that the driver was at fault. The victim simply has to make a claim to the state insurance.

The wide scope of this compensation is shown by the fact that the contribution of the victim to his own injury is not taken into account, unless it was deliberate. But the courts can be generous in applying this. In a 1981 case, a man was desperately in love with a woman. He was driving his car with her at his side, and he proposed to her that they should die together. Refusing this proposal, she tried to speak with him, but in vain. On a motorway, he drove the car to its maximum speed and said: “Now we are going to die.” He then ran the car into a parapet. Some minutes later he died in her arms. His wife and their son claimed for full compensation under the Traffic Damage Act. The insurer finally offered to pay 75% of the claim but the Supreme Court said it should pay in full. The man had not wanted to commit suicide in order to get money for his family.