A Falsely Reported Case That Cell Phone Battery Explosion Caused Death / 대한법의학회지

A 34 year-old excavator driver was found dead at stone quarry in Cheongwon, North Chungcheong Province, with a severely burnt mobile phone in his shirt pocket and with his chest bruised and ribs fractured. An emergency physician examined him and said that high pressure from an explosion damaged his lungs and heart, leading to his death. So, a number of Korean and foreign newspapers reported that phone battery explosion killed the man. Autopsy showed that the deceased had fractures all over the chest and lacerations of the heart and the lungs. The damages seemed too extensive to be caused by a single mobile phone explosion. Lithium-ion polymer batteries used in mobile phones can catch fire by external forces but they hardly explode like a bomb. We recommended police to reinvestigate the scene and co-worker. So, police reinvestigated the accident scene and the co-worker. The co-worker told police that he hit the deceased while reversing his drill rig at a stone quarry. The incident reminds of us that our postmortem investigation system must be revised.

Study on the Approaching and Examination Methods of the Traffic Accident / 대한법의학회지

Traffic accident leaves various traces on vehicle, road or pedestrians and these can be viewed as the failure mechanism of relatively moving obstacles. This paper introduces tribology and fractography, which are the parts of failure mechanics, as a means of theoretical analysis and approaching methods on the traffic accident. Actual specific traces are introduced as illustrations of tribology and fractogrphy. A verified traffic accident is also introduced as a case report.