: Re: How would law enforcement react to a "Jane Doe"? In my story there's this woman who has a seizure/stroke/something-capable-of-putting-someone-into-a-coma while driving and gets involved in a car

@Pierce369

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If I were writing this situation, my police would know that unless they charge the amnesiac character that they cannot hold them in custody indefinitely - assuming US location. They would likewise require probable cause for any arrest which they would have to seek in the testimony of the other driver and any possible witnesses. Your character sounds shady in that their vehicle has been stripped of all VIN numbers. She might regain consciousness with a police guard and find she is under arrest - depending on your plot.

Your MC has a different problem, though, in that seizures themselves would not cause a coma. A seizure is a brief disturbance caused by extreme electrical activity in the brain that triggers multiple simultaneous responses. Commonly, a person who is having a seizure would be moving without volition - anything from a slight twitch to an extremely noticeable convulsion. Such might last seconds or lapse into a series of seizures which must be broken by medical intervention.

Said lack of volition would be a defence as the police would require intent, which is not the case with involuntary movements.

Epilepsy does not cause comas or memory loss - memory of the actual seizure itself can be blurred, but in most cases the person so effected just shakes it off and carries on - probably calling their doctor to complain that this prescription was no better than the last one and let’s get it right this time.

Assuming your MC is not a criminal fleeing justice - might have borrowed the car from a shady character - the possible repercussions of this seizure induced accident is a loss of driving privileges due to ‘violating medical probation’.

You might want to find another cause for the coma - as an epileptic myself, I would wonder why the author chose epilepsy when the facts don’t fit. I realize that in extreme cases it can be quite a disability, but what you might want to try - if this MC must be epileptic and given the worst case scenario, brain surgery would have been performed severing the corpus collusum. With the two halves of the brain no longer communicating, that could lead to some intriguing situations.

I don’t mean to criticize, but this is something of which I have knowledge and rather than you hearing this from the associations after finishing the work and maybe publishing it, I thought it best to let you know.

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