Patent ID: 7752061

Claim:
A method for determining liability of a party to a real vehicle accident, comprising: providing a computer system configured to access a memory, wherein the memory comprises sets of characteristics of two or more past or theoretical vehicle accidents, wherein the characteristics describe the past or theoretical vehicle accidents, wherein at least one characteristic in the sets of characteristics is a vehicle accident type describing a relationship between two or more vehicles' paths on a roadway at the time of the vehicle accident, and wherein the memory further comprises an estimated proportion of responsibility of a party associated with each of the two or more past or theoretical vehicle accidents; the computer system displaying, in a graphical user interface of the computer system, one or more vehicle accident types as one or more graphical images depicting a relationship between two or more vehicles' paths on a roadway at the time of the vehicle accident, wherein the one or more vehicle accident types displayed comprise vehicle accident types of the two or more past or theoretical vehicle accidents; the computer system receiving a selected vehicle accident type that corresponds to one or more vehicle accident types selected by a user from the displayed graphical images, wherein the vehicle accident type describes a relationship between two or more vehicles' paths on a roadway at the time of the vehicle accident, wherein the user selects the vehicle accident type based on the one or more graphical images that correspond to a vehicle accident type of the real vehicle accident; the computer system determining, from among the two or more past or theoretical vehicle accidents whose characteristics are in the memory, at least one past or theoretical accident having a vehicle accident type that at least partially matches the selected vehicle accident type corresponding to the real vehicle accident and whose characteristics most nearly match the characteristics of the real vehicle accident, wherein the vehicle accident type describes a relationship between two or more vehicles' paths on a roadway at the time of the vehicle accident; and the computer system determining an estimate of a proportion of responsibility that can be attributed to at least one party involved in the real vehicle accident, wherein the estimate of the proportion of responsibility for the real vehicle accident is based, at least in part, on the estimated proportion of responsibility of a party associated with the at least one past or theoretical vehicle accident having the at least partially matching vehicle type describing the relationship between two or more vehicles' paths on a roadway at the time of the vehicle accident, and whose characteristics most nearly match the characteristics of the real vehicle accident.