I’ve blogged in the past about the importance of measuring in forensic engineering investigation.\u00a0 About getting on site and getting your hands dirty and mud on your boots. This is particularly\u00a0true when an engineering failure or a personal injury accident involves\u00a0the natural environment or the foundations, soils and water beneath the site – wet, messy, untidy places.<\/p>\n
Everyone\u00a0should do this – experts, civil litigation lawyers and claims consultants alike.\u00a0 Go and see and measure things.<\/p>\n
I was reminded\u00a0of this\u00a0on Monday\u00a0when I\u00a0attended a workshop on Advanced Collision Reconstruction\u00a0<\/em>in Moncton – read on, your eyes won’t glaze over\u00a0at what I tell\u00a0you, and you may gain some insight into what’s important to experts.<\/p>\n The workshop\u00a0was organized by the Canadian Association of Technical Accident Investigators and Reconstructionists (CATAIR) and presented by\u00a0Advantage Forensics Inc, Toronto.\u00a0 The course instructor was Jason Young, B.E.Sc., M.A.Sc., P.Eng., a senior collision\u00a0reconstructionist with Advantage.\u00a0\u00a0There was some emphasis in the course\u00a0on simple measurement with tapes and rulers.\u00a0 Also considerable emphasis on the analytical technique used by Jason.<\/p>\n Police officers – present and former, professional engineers and others attended the workshop, people who reconstruct accidents. \u00a0There’s a lot of very impressive expertise in this field in Atlantic Canada.\u00a0 We do have\u00a0a lot of\u00a0car accidents in the area.\u00a0 Also people like me attended who\u00a0practice forensic engineering investigation.\u00a0 I\u00a0have a good\u00a0interest in the techniques used in fields of investigation related to my own.<\/p>\n The session topics were:<\/p>\n The topics might look heavy to non-technical people\u00a0but they\u00a0rely on\u00a0simple measurements – first and foremost – and\u00a0an analytical procedure and\u00a0software.<\/p>\n We’ve all seen those pictures of horrible car crashes.\u00a0 Cars and trucks so mangled in some that you are hard pressed to see a vehicle in the mass of metal.\u00a0 In illustrating his lectures, Jason showed us a lot of pictures like this, also video of simulated field trials and tests.\u00a0 Head-on crashes, T-Bones, rear end crashes, roll-overs, and pole and tree impacts.<\/p>\n The speed of the cars and trucks in an accident is key information in learning\u00a0why and how the accident happened – reconstructing it.\u00a0 No surprise there.\u00a0 Speed is obtained from analytical procedures – Jason briefed us on one he uses, and software that are fed a lot of simple measurements.\u00a0 But important measurements because\u00a0garbage in garbage out.<\/p>\n Two basic measurements are a site survey –<\/em>\u00a0like in\u00a0land surveying of old, and the crush depth<\/em>.<\/p>\n The crush depth<\/em> is a simple\u00a0measure of the\u00a0length and depth\u00a0of\u00a0the hole\u00a0in the front, side or rear of a vehicle\u00a0hit\u00a0by another during\u00a0an accident.\u00a0\u00a0These measurements give\u00a0the “damage profile” in accident reconstruction.\u00a0 It’s not\u00a0much different than measuring the length and depth of a trench excavated in your garden by a backhoe or yourself.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n The site survey<\/em> is just that – measuring\u00a0and describing the location\u00a0and height of the\u00a0features that characterize the surface of the site.\u00a0 These would be the natural features in the terrain, the layout of the road, the position of the vehicles, the location of poles or trees that were hit, and the location of marks left on the ground by the crashing vehicles.\u00a0 We do this simple kind of survey of a house lot before we build on it.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Two measurements – crush depth<\/em> and site survey<\/em>, that\u00a0quantify the mess of\u00a0a car or truck\u00a0accident.\u00a0 There’s more involved, of course –\u00a0analytical procedures and software, also knowledgeable reconstructionists, but nothing happens until the measurements are taken.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve blogged in the past about the importance of measuring in forensic engineering investigation.\u00a0 About getting on site and getting your hands dirty and mud on your boots. This is particularly\u00a0true when an engineering failure or a personal injury accident … Continue reading \n