Hello, I was wondering if anyone could help me with details around a police interview following a car crash. Basically, three characters are in a crash in which the driver dies, but the other two survive and are taken straight to hospital with injuries. There is no doubt as to who was driving as the driver is stuck in the car when it crashes. In this circumstance, would the police want to talk to the two passengers while they were still in the hospital to obtain statements from them? Or would it wait until they were home? And if so, do hospitals generally have a room set aside for such procedures? I should add that this is set in the UK. Thanks very much!
Only if the medical staff give permission I believe, and obviously the patient has to consent and/or be placed under arrest or caution. And the hospital would need to provide a private room, they can't just question them in public.
I've never seen a room set aside specifically for that in a hospital. I imagine they would just use a consulting room or one of the rooms set aside for grieving relatives. Also, I don't think the police would be able to enter clinical areas or isolation areas.
Hi. I’m not police but NHS with experience of attending RTCs. There is no specific room for this in a hospital. As this is a fatal RTC, Traffic Police would be leading the investigation and would want statements from the passengers in the car. If they were not seriously injured they may take a statement at the scene before they even go to hospital. If they are severely injured then they would have to wait until they were well enough to give a statement. This would probably still be while they were in hospital. My feeling is as someone has died the police would not want to wait until they had been discharged home before getting statements.
I dunno about the first question, but there's no specific room. Just whatever room the hospital happened to have the patient in. I've been in one room with three beds, where one guy that got stabbed was being questioned, and on the other side of the curtain, the guy who stabbed him was being questioned. It was scary that they put them right next to each other . . . On an unrelated note, always loved transporting prisoners to places in the hospital. If the guy was particularly bad, you'd be escorted by like 6 armed guards while the patient/prisoner is just casually chatting you up (they're usually extra nice, I'd guess so the officers don't kick their faces in).
What is so urgent about this interview? Maybe if there was a murder to be investigated. I have never once seen police interview a patient in any hospital I've worked in (which is many). However it does happen on occasion. They will escort someone to the ED if they need them evaluated before they take them to jail. Why do they need to ask what happened? In the US they will block the road off for hours in a fatality crash while they measure every skid mark and scrape on the road. They will take pictures of everything. And if they have one of those fancy new 360 degree cameras, they will take pictures with that. The deceased driver will have drugs and alcohol in their system tested in the morgue by the medical examiner. There are other issues around drug/alcohol testing if the driver survives and someone else is killed. What sort of information do the cops need in your story that the passengers have and what's the urgency?
I have no idea what was actually happening, but when my husband was in Intensive Care in a hospital in Scotland, back in 2015, there was an unconscious patient (a young man in his 20s) in the bed beside him when I came to visit one day. Several police came into the room several times while I was there. They didn't seem to be questioning the relatives clustered around the patient's bed, but they were definitely there, IN the intensive care area, and hanging around that patient's bed. And occasionally they had words with the staff on duty. They were in and out several times. One of them nodded and smiled at me. I don't know how that turned out, as the patient wasn't there when I returned the next day, and my husband was too gaga at the time to notice what was happening around him. But the police were definitely in the Intensive Care area—big presence.
Thanks everyone, that's very helpful! The passengers don't have any hidden info relating to the crash or anything, but I was thinking that as it's a fatal RTC the police may want to speak to them as soon as they can, i.e. while they are still in hospital. My partner used to work in the court and he said that there was often a rush to collect witness statements while the incidents were still fresh in people's minds. Good to know that they most likely wouldn't have a special room either and would just use one that is available - thanks
