In the event of serious injuries or fatalities, it is possible for injured persons to seek compensation in excess of the at-fault drivers insurance coverage.In some cases, involving a defect in the design or manufacture of motor vehicles, such as where defective design results in SUV rollovers or sudden unintended acceleration, accidents caused by defective tires, or where injuries are caused or worsened as a result of defective airbags, it is possible that the manufacturer will face a class action lawsuit. Art
Cars have come to represent a part of the American Dream of ownership coupled with the freedom of the road. The violence of a car wreck provides a counterpoint to that promise and is the subject of artwork by a number of artists, such as John Salt and Li Yan. Though English, John Salt was drawn to American landscapes of wrecked vehicles like Desert Wreck (airbrushed oil on linen, 1972). Similarly, Jan Anders Nelson works with the wreck in its resting state in junkyards or forests, or as elements in his paintings and drawings. American Landscape  is one example of Nelsons focus on the violence of the wreck with cars and trucks piled into a heap, left to the forces of nature and time. This recurring theme of violence is echoed in the work of Li Yan. His painting Accident Nº 6 looks at the energy released during a crash.Andy Warhol used newspaper pictures of car wrecks with dead occupants in a number of his Disaster series of silkscreened canvases.
In an 1860 paper, the great French forensic medical expert Auguste Ambroise Tardieu gathered together a series of 32 such cases, of which 18 were fatal, the children dying from starvation and/or recurrent physical abuse; it included the case of Adeline Defert, who was returned by her grandparents at the age of 8, and for 9 years tortured by her parents – whipped every day, hung up by her thumbs and beaten with a nailed plank, burnt with hot coals and her wounds bathed in nitric acid, and deflorated with a baton. Tardieu made home visits and observed the effect on the children; he noticed that the sadness and fear on their faces disappeared when they were placed under protection. He commented, "When we consider the tender age of these poor defenceless beings, subjected daily and almost hourly to savage atrocities, unimaginable tortures and harsh privation, their lives one long martyrdom – and when we face the fact that their tormentors are the very mothers who gave them life, we are confronted with one of the most appalling problems that can disturb the soul of a moralist, or the conscience of justice". His observations were echoed by Boileau de Castélnau (who introduced the term misopédie – hatred of children), and confirmed by Aubry and several theses.These early French observations failed to cross the language barrier, and other nations remained ignorant of the cause of many traumatic lesions in infants and toddlers; almost one hundred years would pass before humankind began to systematically confront Tardieus "appalling problem".