A meticulous post-mortem review was undertaken in the department of forensic medicine at the Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) to find out trends in homicides during the period 1992-1996. Standard procedures for autopsies and a review of the inquest papers were carried out. Out of 3,886 medico-legal autopsies performed in the department during the said period, only 232 cases (5.9%) were homicidal deaths. The commonest age group of the victims was 21-30 years (38%). Males were victimized three times more often than females. The incidence of crime was slightly more at night than in the daytime, though evenly distributed during the winter and summer seasons. In our series, sharp weapon injuries were the most common type (34.9%) followed by blunt force injuries (15.9%). Defence wounds were present in 35 cases (15%). Violent rage/quarrel was the motive in 61 cases (29%).

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A person driving a passenger car depends on the rear view mirror and two side-mounted mirrors to observe the surrounding in order to see vehicles approaching from behind. However, the approaching vehicle may enter a region outside the driver's field of view, making it inconspicuous to the driver. Such a region is known as the blind spot zone (BSZ). Although driving schools emphasize the importance of checking for vehicles in BSZ before attempting to change lane, many fatal collisions have occurred during lane changing. Thus, it is important to understand BSZ particularly its corresponding parameters in order to develop an effective system to detect approaching vehicles and provide warning to the driver. In this paper, a systematic approach using a grid-based technique is proposed to model the BSZ. An experiment was conducted using a commonly used passenger car in Malaysia as a test bed to model the BSZ. Controlled experimental parameters were introduced, and the final results showed that BSZ can be identified using the grid-based technique.

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