Would the police routinely look for fingerprints on the controls in a car after a crash?

ToneControl

Does anyone know - If someone drunk and unconscious was found in the driving seat after a crash in which the other car was deflected into a river, and from which 3 people were saved but could have been killed, would the police fingerprint-check the controls to make sure that the person in the driving seat had been the person driving the car?

S56035

Don't know but finger prints on the steering wheel of a car doesn't guarantee they were driving it. Being found in the driving seat unconscious is probably more of a give away.

S56035

Hope everyone is ok.

Kittyfrisk

You an Archers fan?

ToneControl

S56035 said:

Hope everyone is ok.

Don't worry, it's hypothetical 

fretmeister

No. Not routine. 

In fact if everyone lived and there’s no serious injuries then plod might not even get the accident reconstruction team out at all. Depends how busy they were elsewhere that night.

Good luck with your novel! 

p90fool

It'll all come out in the end, and it'll be Harrison who solves it. 

Danny1969

In a fatal or near fatal accident they will examine the seat belt and coat / top the driver was wearing to determine who was driving. Finger prints wouldn't really mean anything as they could be there from a previous drive. 

There was a case round the corner of me where a teenager was killed when a car left the road on Portsdown hill. The driver at the time  fled the scene and the owner of the car claimed to be driving. However police proved who was driving by the pressure marks caused by the seatbelt on the drivers coat. 

Adey

ToneControl said:

S56035 said:

Hope everyone is ok.

Don't worry, it's hypothetical 

Are you writing a crime thriller?

ToneControl

p90fool said:

It'll all come out in the end, and it'll be Harrison who solves it. 

I think we'll see George fall apart first, more likely if someone thinks about the clues about fruit cider cans that have been dropped in . My guess is Joy hearing about the cider tins in the car and going full-on Mrs Marple.

ToneControl

Adey said:

ToneControl said:

S56035 said:

Hope everyone is ok.

Don't worry, it's hypothetical 

Are you writing a crime thriller?

It's just the plot of the Archers at the minute.
I'm trying to guess which way the story might go

Gassage

Nope. That needs a forensics team to turn up and unless there's real chance of a conviction from prints, which is unlikely as prints don't have a date stamp, they won't bother. If car stolen, there's a better chance.

(above from my partner who is an insurance fraud lawyer).

S56035

ToneControl said:

S56035 said:

Hope everyone is ok.

Don't worry, it's hypothetical 

Then I hope they're dead.

thumpingrug

As Gassage has said fingerprints are not dated - consequently CSI would only look for prints if there is zero chance that the person could have legitimately touched that area previously.  Also, steering wheels are not great for capturing prints - they tend to be porous or leather which will distort any prints present.  

Sesh

So, you invite an old adversary out for a drink to clear the air. You spike their drinks and in their stupor you load them into the passenger seat of their car. You make sure you are wearing their jacket. You drive out of town to a dark lane and purposely ram another car off the road. You wrestle your enemy into their coat and the driving seat. With a burner phone you call 999 and flee the scene. You recover your hidden bicycle from a nearby bush and get back to town using the back roads, losing the bike into the canal. You stumble drunkenly into a takeaway on the way home to get some cctv evidence that you were not near crash site. You get away with it. 
Until Columbo says, "One more thing..." 

digitalscream

Yup, fingerprints don't come with timestamps, so they'd be useless.

Funnily enough, that was the key vulnerability in one of the cases I sat on the jury for. The prosecution's only physical evidence was a single fingerprint, which was most likely left years before.

BillDL

These days the police would need a signed passport photo in an envelope with a utility bill to initiate an investigation, and even then they probably wouldn't solve the case

ToneControl

Danny1969 said:

In a fatal or near fatal accident they will examine the seat belt and coat / top the driver was wearing to determine who was driving. Finger prints wouldn't really mean anything as they could be there from a previous drive. 

There was a case round the corner of me where a teenager was killed when a car left the road on Portsdown hill. The driver at the time  fled the scene and the owner of the car claimed to be driving. However police proved who was driving by the pressure marks caused by the seatbelt on the drivers coat. 

I can believe it, I had a bad crash, and the seat belt changed the appearance of my cotton jumper, it took months for the difference to disappear

Kittyfrisk

ToneControl said:

Adey said:

ToneControl said:

S56035 said:

Hope everyone is ok.

Don't worry, it's hypothetical 

Are you writing a crime thriller?

It's just the plot of the Archers at the minute.
I'm trying to guess which way the story might go

Thought so, from the sheer quantity of 'ad's' for the plot lately on Radio 4.
I was a listener from the 80's after a kind of Stockholm Syndrome experience where the lab I worked in observed a no talking, just Archers listening rule while it was on.
Gave up listening altogether after Nigel Pargetter fell off the roof. Shark - jumped... but still they keep trying, again & again 

p90fool

I gave up on it when Grey Gables' gardener, Titwank, married widowed Mrs Fuzzyfanny in a plot twist so tedious I stuck a fork in my eyeball. 

(I think those were their names, or they were something equally Dickensian). 

EDIT;
He was actually the gardener at Lower Loxley Hall, sorry. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/5jpQkplyCHhWkJ3SsXpyPBd/edgar-titcombe

randella

I always thought programming on Radio 4 was according to a strict, timed schedule. Makes it all the more mysterious, then, that as soon as may car's tyres have crossed the give way lines onto a motorway, either the Archers or Gardener's Question Time will magically start.