How To Identify The Tort Liability Of Traffic Accidents

With the development of road traffic, traffic accidents have brought a lot of law issues to the society. How to identify the tort liability of traffic accidents has always been the key issue during the processing of traffic accidents, and it has also been a bone of contention in the academic world. Nowadays, the 76th item of"Road Traffic Safety Law"is the basic legal ground to identify the tort liability of traffic accidents, which establishes the binary system with the principle of liability of fault as foundation and the doctrine of presumption as supplement. However, there are some problems of this method during the real practice of handling road accidents. How to establish a complete system to identify the tort liability of traffic accidents with easy practice, which can not only maintain the social orders and conform to social values, but can also protect the interests of traffic actors, especially the weak in the accidents, has become the focal point during the processing of traffic accidents.Under the 76th item of"Road Traffic Safety Law", the first part of this paper analyzed the related regulations and items concerning how to identify the tort liability of traffic accidents and pointed out two existing problems. First, it seems to be unfair to apply the doctrine of presumption in the case of accidents between motor vehicle drivers and non-motor vehicle drivers and/or pedestrians which cause damages to the motor vehicles. Second, there is no applicable principle to identify the tort liability when the accident happens between non-motor vehicle drivers and pedestrians. Though we can assume to apply the doctrine of presumption according to"General Provisions of the Civil Law", there are still some problems unsolved in that case.In the second part, the writer set up three kinds of game model to identify the tort liability in the accident between motor vehicles and pedestrians based on law and economy methods. By comparing these three models based on the principle of liability of fault, the doctrine of presumption and the doctrine of no-fault liability, it drew the conclusion that the principle of liability of fault is the most suitable principle to identify the tort liability of road accidents.In the third part, the writer tried to further improve the principles to identify the tort liability of road accidents based on the analysis of former sectors. It proposed to establish a system to identify the tort liability of road accidents, which regarded the principle of liability of fault as general principle and included the doctrine of presumption and equitable liability principle as supplementary principle.