자동차사고로 인한 손해배상에 있어서 과실에 관한 비판적 고찰

With regard to liability for damages caused by car accidents, the legal principles of liability without fault and changes of the burden of proof have established an epoch-making milestone for relief efforts for the victims, but it still has a long way to go to establish the scope of damages and fulfillment procedures. With regard to damages caused by car accidents, the matter of fault rate has been the perennial object of dispute ever since automobiles were introduced. Currently the main matter of controversy is not involved with the theoretical aspects such as the background of adopting fault theories in the case of car accidents or fault of the victims, or negligence of drivers but how to establish concrete application criteria and how to actually apply those criteria. It is because the rate application exerts direct influence on the amount of the compensation for damages. Accordingly, the arguments are bound to be sharply conflicted, resulting in numerous disputes. The principles of trust formed through German criminal precedents carry an important meaning in that they are not only the theoretical grounds on which negligence in car accidents is judged but also are widely applied to the accidents in all means of transportation including automobiles in our country. Particularly, the court in our country recognizes the principles of trust as legal principles of burden sharing by applying them strictly to car-to-car accidents, and leniently to car-to-person accidents. However, there are still problems with them, so I presented the ways to resolve them. First, in the case of the car-to-person accidents, there is a problem with the practice of expanding the negligence of victims, so they should be applied as subtraction elements, rather than addition elements, to those who are weak in mind and body. And conventional negligence of victims should not be imposed and it should not be counted against the victims unless it is clear that the damages have been expanded because of the victim’s violation of laws. This is the way to protect the victims as much as possible while complying with the principles of fair burden sharing of damages. With regard to car-to-car accidents, institutional improvement is needed in order to resolve the problems of increasing social cost caused by continuous sharp increase in traffic accidents and accompanying excessive negligence lawsuits. Through the revision of car accident damage compensation laws, the binding force of compensation dispute deliberation committee should be reinforced. And the ways to prevent waste of time in determining negligence rate by reinforcing the personnel composition of the committee and to reduce the disputes by reducing the procedural difficulties are needed.