When looking for the persons who might have been injured in a car accident, should you check all spaces of the crashed car, including the car boot?

In the photo you can see the open boot of a passenger car. When looking for people who may have been injured in an accident, you must check all the spaces of the crashed vehicle, including the boot. The answer is: yes.

The Road Traffic Act requires a driver involved in an accident in which someone is killed or injured to give the necessary help to the victims and to call an emergency medical team and the Police, and the State Emergency Medical Services Act obliges anyone who notices a person in a sudden medical emergency to notify the emergency services; failure to help a person in danger is a crime. You cannot help someone you have not found - in a hard impact, a passenger without a seat belt may be thrown onto the rear parcel shelf or into the luggage space, and in an estate car or a minibus the boot is sometimes the place where someone was sleeping. So after securing the scene of the accident, you check all the seats, the floor, the boot, and the shoulder and the ditch around the vehicle, counting the people and asking those who are conscious how many of them were travelling.

Legal basis: Art. 44 para. 2 point 1 of the Road Traffic Act (Prawo o ruchu drogowym); Art. 4 of the State Emergency Medical Services Act; Art. 162 of the Criminal Code