According to the most recent data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), police across the United States have reported more than 6.1 million traffic crashes occurring annually nationwide. Every car accident is unique in terms of the convergence of specific elements that result in damage to one or more vehicles, property, people, pets or wild animals.
Insurers, police, forensic and traffic experts, lawyers and others use many tools to confirm accusations made by all parties during a lawsuit. Accident reconstruction serves to clarify the exact circumstances that caused an accident, determine the degree of fault and liability, and establish the appropriate level of compensation owed to a victim or victims.
Accident Reconstruction Evidence Basics
Accident reconstruction, also known as crash reconstruction, when an accident involves a crash, makes a car accident easier to visualize and understand from multiple perspectives. It provides information about the scene from before, during and after the accident based on science-backed evidence.
A reconstruction commonly reveals the positions of vehicles and vulnerable road users, the directions and speeds of travel for all parties, acceleration and deceleration events, traffic signals and signage, and external factors. Non-human elements that can cause or impact the outcome of an accident include adverse light, road or weather conditions. A reconstruction can even show how vehicles, objects, and people moved or changed upon impact and reveal the locations of traffic and private or business cameras.
Methods Used to Reconstruct a Car Accident
The quality and quantity of details from an accident scene can limit the level of reconstruction. In fact, some accidents can’t be entirely reconstructed, such as remote rural accidents on roads that have no lighting or traffic cameras. Police, insurance investigators, experts, and others who provide accident recreation services analyze and interpret statements, autopsy and toxicology reports, when applicable, on-scene evidence, manufacturer crash test data, interviews, damage and injury patterns, skid marks, debris, and past accident and traffic statistics and information. They also use a wide range of technologies and experiments.
Professionals who reconstruct car accidents typically work backward using the evidence to guide their answers, unless they have traffic camera or other video footage available that shows them exactly how everything played out. Even with video, they look at all details from every angle and produce their reconstruction based on interpretations. They normally use text and visual formats, such as animation reenactments, charts, diagrams, forensic maps, sketches, reports, photographs and videos. With images, they usually tag elements with color-coded position markers, labels or text to make a scene easier to understand.
Why Is Accident Reconstruction Beneficial?
During a car accident claims lawsuit, accident reconstruction allows the evidence to tell the story and removes the subjective aspects. This tool for determining fault and liability creates a clearer picture when plaintiffs, defendants, witnesses and others give conflicting details in their on-scene statements and interviews. Accident reconstruction can reveal discrepancies and answer difficult questions. For example, it can reveal if a driver or pedestrian behaved negligently or if a technical glitch occurred with a traffic signal.
Crash and forensics experts with comprehensive specialized training can even use a reconstruction to determine if they’re dealing with a case of staged collision in which a driver or several people tried to commit insurance or personal injury fraud by purposely causing the car accident. When a reconstruction includes animations, photographs and videos, the imagery also helps law enforcement officers, plaintiffs, defendants, legal counsel, and court officials with visualization. Anyone who lacks imagination or suffers from a medical condition like aphantasia, which makes it difficult for them to mentally visualize what they hear or see, can effortlessly experience all elements of the accident and pre- and post-accident scenes via a reconstruction.