Overview

Rail and road accidents are examples of new sources of harm, particularly personal injury, which arose almost simultaneously across Western Europe. The area of rail accidents provides early examples of a move away from fault liability in certain countries, but not in others. Although statutory regulation and extra-statutory standards form part of the context of liability, private law actions for damages and the plasticity of fault ideas remain central to the law's response. Insurance determines the relative importance of private law actions. Traffic liability is a field in which different solutions have been developed by different legal systems. For example, while France developed strict liability in the 1920s and 1930s and no-fault liability in 1985, English law has remained wedded to fault. The stability of each legal solution suggests that the background insurance position has been settled in the different countries, albeit in differing ways.