From the Author of "Accident Scene," internationally known Accident Reconstructionist Joseph E. Badger is providing you on these pages his expert insights into the handling all aspects of "Accident Reconstruction Basics."  Joeseph Badger is available for accident reconstruction consulting.  That is his business.  Let him hear from you.  Need an expert?  E-mail Badger at jebadger1@comcast.net .

INDEX

• About Joseph E. Badger 
• Errors in Accident Reconstruction:  Yaws    Flips, Vaults, and Falls  
  Misinterpreting Evidence   Combining Speeds   Incorrect Science  Drag Factors   Computer Programs   Rounding Down    Mixing Units   Bottom Line 
• Malfeasance of Office 
• Things Police Forget Two Weeks Out of Recruit School
• Cell Phone Usage While Driving 

Joseph E. Badger is an internationally known Accident Reconstruction Consultant and a frequent contributor to LAW and ORDER and to NRLO. You may reach Mr. Badger by email: jebadger1@comcast.net

 Be sure to check back for more articles coming
to NRLO's eTraining Basic Education Pages :
"Trailer Underride: Conspicuity, Human Factors and Rear Bumpers"
"Underride Accidents - they just keep happening"
"More Human Factors in Accident Investigation/Reconstruction"
"TIPS (Traffic Institute for Police Services)"

  Errors in Accident Reconstruction
As Seen by
Joseph E. Badger

It has recently come to my attention that some Police academies - for whatever reason(s) - limit their instructions regarding "accident investigation" to a two-hour segment on how to fill out he crash report form.  Another statistic I heard was that - at least for the aforementioned recruit school - that out of approximately 100 basic students only 14-20 take a 5-day, crash investigation course.

Trust me on this, a 5-day course - nay, not even a 5-week course - does not make a qualified "accident reconstructionist."  Neither does a 5-year physics or engineering course.  It takes not only training in the mathematics and engineering priciniples involved, but also it takes years of practical, hands-on, in-the-field experience.

Some agenices mandate its Officers to NOT take photographs unless there is a fatality.  Yet, we occasionally see reports of fatalities and serious bodily injury where only the standard crash report is completed.  No photographs, no measurements.

We find that some Officers, including those who have had no more than a couple of weeks of reconstruction instruction, are holding themselves out as "accident reconstruction experts," yet they make grievous blunders.  Sometimes without even realizing it.

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YAWS
For instance, just because a tire mark is curved doesn't necessarily mean it is a yaw mark.  (And while I'm on the subject, I'm forever seeing Police reports and diagrams that mention "Yawl" marks.  A Yawl is a two-masted fore-and-aft-rigged, sailing vessel similar to a ketch but having a smaller jigger mas stepped abaft the rudder.  Or, it's a ship's small boat, crewed by rowers. "American Heritage Dictionary.")

A yaw, on the other hand, is a whole other subject, described in Al Baxter's "Accident Investigation and Reconstruciton Terminology" as "The rotational or oscillatory movement of an object about its vertical axis; a movement about the z-axis of the vehicle axis system."  Yaws often occur when a driver makes a hurried steering maneuver:

(a) to avoid an object in the road or

(b) or remain on the pavement while entering a curve too fast, or

(c) while overcorrecting a previous situation.  "A yaw mark is that physical mark on the roadway caused by the rotating tires of a vehicle slipping in a direction parallel to the axle of the wheel during a maximum rate change of direction (turn)."

Speed determinations may indeed be made by correctly measuring genuine yaw marks; however, if those are merely spin marks, created by one vehicle that is impacted by another vehicle, then it is inappropriate to use equations that assume the mark to be a real yaw.  And for heaven's sake, you don't have to measure the length of a yaw mark - unless you simply want to know how long it is.  The length has no bearing in critical speed formulae.

For the critical speed equation to work, the vehicle in question must be both rolling in one direction and sliding in another; however one "expert" used a supposed yaw mark and came up with over 90 mph, but the front tires were both flat, and the front wheels were crushed, not allowing them to roll.

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FLIPS, VAULTS, AND FALLS
In one respect, the yaw is a like a vault or flip - circumstances that may befall vehicles in certain accident scenarios.  That is, a speed calculation determined from that action is final.  Whatever the vehicle does subsequently doesn't matter.  It can skid, crash into a tree, or roll over.  Once you've computed the yaw (or fail or valut or flip) speed you must not combine the speed following any of those events with the speed calculated in the event.  You may - and should - use data from circumstances following the yaw, fall, or vault to confirm the originally calculated speed.  If a collision or skid occurs prior to a yaw (etc.), then fine, speeds may be combined.

In one case, the reconist actually added two airborne speeds together.  Go ahead and calculate both (hopefully the second one will be less than the first one); but don't add, subtract, or combine them.  Use the answer from the equation in which you have the best data.

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MISINTERPRETING EVIDENCE
Be careful when taking scene photos that you don't inadvertently create evidence that isn't there.  Watch those shadows!  Likewise, be careful when examining photographs taken at accident scenes.  Shadows created by overhead utility lines have an uncanny way of appearing as yaws or curved tire marks on the pavement.

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COMBINING SPEEDS
Speaking of combining speeds, there's a particular way of doing that.  "Combining" doesn't mean "adding."  If a car, say, skids 50 feet on concrete, 25 feet on blacktop, then 40 feet on grass, and smashes into a 75-year-old oak tree, there's a reasonably easy way to determine how fast the car was going when the driver first applied the brakes.  The not-so-quite-so-simple part involves first a "crush analysis," then backing things up wherein you compute the speed for each surface.  But you don't add all those speeds together.  It's like Pythagoras Plus.  Square all the speeds, add those, then take the square root of the answer.  Thay way, 36 mph and 23 mps and 24 mps and 20 mph doesn't equal 103 mph, it's 52 mph and some change.

In a motorcytcle case, a Ph.D. testified that a motorcyclist's speed, based upon post-impact throw distance, was 30 to 35 mph.  He then said that the speed of the motorcycle, based upon post-impact sliding distance, was 30 to 35.  Sounds great, right?  No!  He combined them and said that the speed of the motorcycle was approximately 46 mph.

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INCORRECT SCIENCE
Acceleration rates are interesting.  Car magazines print data regarding how fast certain cars can accelerate from 0 to 60, or the fastest speed attainable in a quarter-mile.  Be cautious using these data in intersection collisions.  There's the case where an opposing expert used an acceleration rate for 0 to 10 mph to show how quickly it could accelerate from 55 to 65 mph.

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DRAG FACTORS
Much of the time, assigning a precise value for drag factor isn't necessary.  In the overall scheme of things, there isn't a lot of difference between the speeds generated from a .65 drag factor as with a .75 drag factor.  For one reason, you end up taking a square root of the value.  As an example, if a car skids to a stop in 100 feet on a .65 surface, the slide-to-stop speed is around 44 mph.  On a .75 surface, everything else being equal, the speed equates to about 47 mph.  What's three miles an hour among friends?

Furthermore, if you perform a skid test (whether with a drag sled, bumper gun, or electronic accelerometer) on the surface where the accident skidding occurred and in the direction in the skidding happened, you should not add or subtract the grade.  The grade was "built in" when you completed the test.

But drag factors do make a difference when tractor-semitrailers are involved, and especially when bob-tail units skid.  ("Bob-tails," by the way, are truck-tractors designed to pull semitrailers but which are traveling without one.)  On a roadway surface that may be .80 for a car, may be only .30 for a bob-tail tractor.  And for that same 100-foot skid, the respective speeds would be 48 mph versus 24 mph.

Drag factors are different for heavy trucks for a number of reasons, including weight shift (no, not load shift; that's something else), tire pressure, and the idiosyncrasies inherent with air brake systems.

This was an actual case:  An Officer used a 0.7 for friction, because "all streets in the city have a 0.7."  He then adjusted for the 0.03 grade.  Next, he checked the striking vehicle and discovered that the rear brakes did not function.  He determined the speed of the striking vehicle by using momentum, then combined the impact speed with the speed loss from pre-collison skid marks.  He used the full friction (0.73) for both pre- and post- collision movement of both vehicles, even though he had determined that one vehicle did not have working brakes.  He used the 0.73 for the post-impact movement of the other vehicle, even though it was going downhill on grass, with only one wheel locked from damage.

Similarly, there are Officers who use the full drag factor - meaning 100% braking - for vehicles that are free-rolling from impact to final rest.

Then there are some who mishandle drag sleds (usually by pulling them way too slowly) and come up with drag factors of 1.20 on level blacktop surfaces.  This may approach possiblity on some brand new asphalt that has bits of embedded glass particles and a sled with really soft tire material, but beware anytime you come up with a factor of .95 or more.

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COMPUTER PROGRAMS
Beware also of accident reconstructionists bearing software.  Paraphrasing Charles Grosvenor, former Representative from Ohio, "Computers won't lie, but liars will compute."  I'm acquainted with two engineers who on separate occasions used a particular program (with which I've had years of experience and special training), one to calculate that a vehicle was astraddle the centerline during a collision; the other who figured how two women pushed a car up a grade at over 10 miles an hour.

And I've seen Police Officers who have used sophisticated mapping and measuring software to calculate the departure angles of cars in intersection crashes based on the center of mass of the cars at final rest, rather than the angle at separation.

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ROUNDING DOWN
They always tell you to "give the benefit of doubt to the violator;" but wait, you don't need to give them the farm.  Truncating the energy equation is one way to do that.  Sure, round down; but wait until you're finished, then round down the final answer.

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MIXING UNITS
This sort of error crops up in measuring critical speed scuffs or curved roadways.  If you measure a chord in feet, measure the middle ordinate in feet also, not inches.  Likewise, if you're dealing in feet per second, don't use miles an hour as formula input.  Imperial and metric don't mix very well either.

Don't mix prices with pounds.  This actually happened when an engineer checked a NADA book for the weight of a used vehicle and wrote down the retail price of a pickup truck instead of its weight.  Then he entered that number in the momentum formula.

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BOTTOM LINE
Before you hold yourself out as an "accident reconstructionist," be sure you can back up your methodology.  Such support is not simply saying you read it someplace or some teacher told you.

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Joseph E. Badger is an internationally known Accident Reconstruction Consultant and a frequent contributor to LAW and ORDER MAGAZINE. You may reach Mr. Badger by email: jebadger1@comcast.net.

Malfeasance of Office
Written by Joseph E. Badger

What is malfeasance?  It's misconduct or wrongdoing, especially by a public official (American Heritage Dictionary).  A similar word is Maleficence (Law) "The doing of an act which a person ought not to do; evil conduct; and illegal deed. (Written also malefeasance)" (Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary).

Some Police Departments - and some Police Officers - for some reason don't think accident investigation is such a big deal.  It evidently doesn't matter that more people die in traffic accidents than in suicides, homicides, and related crimes.  And it apparently doesn't matter that more property damage occurs as a result of traffic accidents than in all the burlgaries and robberies.

Too many Police Chiefs and Sheriff's, and Officers working the road, feel that traffic accidents are something best left to insurance companies.

Consequently, so many Law Enforcement personnel do shoddy work when called to investigate accidents - or crashes, collisions, whatever name you give them.  And this can come back to haunt you.

The good news is, most states have laws protecting Police Officers and Police Departments.  For example, Indiana Code 34-13-3-3, Immunity of governmental entity or employee, states:

"A governmental entity or an employee acting within the scope of the employee's employment is not liable if a loss results from the following" and it goes on to innumerate several points including:

"(8)  The adoption and enforcement of or failure to adopt or enforce a law (including rules and regulations), unless the act of enforcement constitutes false arrest or false imprisonment.

"(9)  An act or omission performed in good faith and without malice under the apparent authority of a statute which is invalid if the employee would not have been liable had the statute been valid.

"(10)  The act or omission of anyone other than the governmental entity or the governmental entity's employee.

and "(22)  An act or omission performed in good faith under the apparent authority of a court order discribed in IC 35-46-1-15.1 that is invalid, including an arrest or imprisonment related to the enforcement of the court order, if the governmental entity or employee would not have been liable had the court order been valid."

That being said, lawsuits can still be brought against Police Departments and individual Officers for failing to do a proper "investigation."  Some Officers simply fill out a report and be done with it.  Some interview some witnesses, but not all... or they use the information from select witnesses and ignore the statements of others.

More good news is that lawsuits against government entities frequently end in summary judgements for the defense based on immunity grounds.

The bad news is, such lawsuits still cost a bundle to defend, plus they bring untold embarrassment to the Officer who botched the job and to the Police agency who dropped the ball as far as "training the Officer" is concerned.

If not malfeasance, how about negligence?  To succeed in negligence action, the plaintiff must establish:  a duty on part of defendant to conform conduct to standard of care arising from relationship with plaintiff; failure of defendant to conform conduct to that standard; and injury proximately caused by breach of duty. (Westlaw 674 N.E. 2d 580, page 1.)

Does your agency have written policies and procedures outlining what the standards are in various situations?  If not, why not?  And if so, are the Officers adhering to those standards when conducting accident investigations?

One state case - which will remain nameless - came about because the Highway Patrol "....had no policy regarding how to secure an accident scene (where to put flares, when to block the road, etc.), and the State Patrol's lack of a policy regarding crash scene management was negligent and put the victim in harms way."

According to one source, some jurisdictions have laws or rules & regulations stating that an Officer "can be removed from office for dereliction of duty."  Such things as "failure to investigate" may fall in this category.

There is some case law that shields Officers and Municipal agencies in certain circumstances.  For instance, Crouch v. Hall, Breen, et al. individually and in capacity as Police Officer for the City of Indianapolis, 534 N.E.2d 1083.  While not about failure to investigate a traffic accident, it did dealt with failure to investigate a rape.  The Indiana Court of Appeals held that "Officers were immune from suit under discretionary function provisions of Indiana Torts Claims Act and that Police Officers owed no special duty to rape victim and therefore could not be held liable for damages to rape victim's mother who claimed that rape and death of her daughter resulted from Officers' failure to properly investigate earlier rape."

Another case is Boyle v. Anderson Fire Fighters Ass'n Local 1262 (1986) Ind. App., 497 N.E. 2d 1073.  This case dealt with the issue of whether plaintiffs have a legal claim for damages against individual striking firemen based upon their conscious refusal to fight a fire on the plaintiffs' property.

In Indiana, the Tort Claims Act provides numerous immunity provisions which preclude actions against the state or its agents under certain circumstances.

Law Clerk Jeremy Peelle writes: "There is also a general 'public duty' immunity which has been judicially recognized.  The courts have held that under Indiana law, there will be no governmental liability to individuals for negligence when the government entity owed a duty to the public at large or as a whole.  Stratmeyer v. U.S., 67 F.3d 1340 (7th Cir. 1995).  The Comparative Fault Act does not apply to claims brought under the Tort Claims Act and contributory negligence will act as a complete bar to recovery actions.  Town of Highland v. Zerkel, 659 N.E.2d 1113 (Ind. Ct. App. 1995)."

However, individual Officers need to realize there is a considerable price to pay even if you win or if the suit gets dismissed.  In some cases, you are liable for your own defense costs.  Your name ends up in print, often on the front page.  Your ability to function as a Police Officer can be hampered by such publicity, whether it's warranted or not.  If the public thinks you've been direlict in your dutues in one case they may conclude, rightly or wrongly, that you may have been derelict in other matters.

Police agencies should be held accountable for the negligence and/or stupidity of its members; however, it seems gross incompetenece isn't enough.  Individual Officers should likewise be answerable to not only their misdeeds but also to their non-deeds.

Writing for the "Indianapolis Star" (May 23, 2003), Tom Spalding tells readers about an Officer whose accident reports left a lot to be desired.  Though there was no mention of the Police Department being sued, Spalding quotes the agency's legal advisor as saying, "He had a problem doing reports correctly, or doing them at all ... even at times when a supervisor ordered him to."  (The Officer) declined to talk about the reports but pointed to a lack of training as the root of the problem, according to Spalding.

This sort of thing can come back to haunt a Police Department because, as Spalding points out, "Police reports are critical, officials said, because they can affect a citizen's insurance after a car crash, or the completion of a burglary investigation."

You may have even been around other Officers (city, county, state) who pride themselves on "working" traffic crashes by never even exiting their vehicle (names and agencies withheld to protect the incompetent).  Ineptitude, lack of skill or ability, coverups, lack of or inadequate training can all lead to lawsuits or at least drown a Department or person in hot water.

Remember, you have a reputation to uphold.  Do your job!

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Joseph E. Badger, a nationally known Accident Reconstruction Consultant, is a frequent contributor to NRLO.  He may be reached at jebadger1@comcast.net .

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Things Police Forget Two Weeks Out of Recruit School
by Joseph E. Badger

For some unknown reason, Officers forget things.  I had a State Trooper ask me one time if I would help take some measurements for a scale diagram.  The request was later changed to: "Would you make the measurements?  I forgot how."  How do you forget how to measure?  The reply was a lack of an opportunity to practice.

When I asked how many accidents the Trooper had investigated (the answer was several minor ones), I advised to practice with the minor fender-benders to better prepare for the big ones that come along.  It is the same thing at crime scenes:  No, you do not need a scale drawing each time, but practice for when you do.

Practice taking latent prints at home.  Have friends over and dust their drinking glasses after they leave.  What about nighttime photography?  Unless you attended some specialized course, I suspect many of the pictures you take at night are too dark.  Find out why.  Film is cheap; and if your agency has gone digital, shoot up a whole disk and then erase the memory card and start over.  Practice, practice, practice.

Larry Randolph, who went through the State Police Academy with me over three decades ago, remembers that when rookies get excited during their traffic stops, they often forget the basics such as how to park the cruiser, spot light placement, and their approach to the vehicle.

Part of the problem is that many Officers do not want to bother learning the basics in the first place.  Some Officers prefer to bypass what they consider low priority learning and jump right into the meat of drug investigations or high-profile murder cases.  Nevertheless, if they nodded off during the session where you learn how to interview witnesses, their investigationa suffer.

A former Officer and long-time acquainance of mine, Aric Steve Frazier, wrote a book a couple of years ago titled Introduction to Traffic Investigation and Enforcement.  Where many textbooks merely tell Officers how to do things, Frazier's 16 chapters include a dozen lessons for Officers to take self-tests to see how much they have forgotten.  You can flip through the 239 pages and find all kinds of things you have probably forgotten how to do.

How many of you remember how to compute the cosine error if you are taken to task on the witness stand in a radar speeding arrest?  What do the letters VASCAR stand for?  What does your state law say about when you can tow an abandoned vehicle?  How many ways are there to manipulate the results of an infrared spectrophotometer?  What is an infrared spectrophotometer?

With teaching experience at three different academies, Sergeant Barry Walker noted, "The guys spend their time dreaming of being the K-9, SWAT, undercover drug agent, detective, or supervisor.  They do not pay attention to the stuff that they will have to do to get those positions.  The most common thing they forget is field sketch and measuring techniques."

They also forget to document the various steps they take in an investigation.  Walker said, "Officers will do the work, track down leads that end in dead-ends, go onto other leads, talk to neighbors, follow-up on suspects, etc., literally spending hours on an investigation; and then they do not write it down."  That means the Criminal Investigation Section has to duplicate many steps all over again.

George Ogilvie, formerly with the Oregon State Police, is concerned that many seemingly experienced Officers have forgotten how to fill out a simple report form.  "They put information in the wrong box, leave critical boxes empty, etc.  The second thing is also dealing with report writing  They should use spell check and grammar check.  Sometimes the reports are so confusing that I have no idea what the Officer is writing about."

Granted, a few Officers still prepare reports the old-fashioned way (hand-written or typed on a typewriter) where spell and grammar-checking is not as easy as a mouse click or two; however, somebody should proofread those reports before the clerk files them away.

Detective Gary O'Brien (Ontario Provincial Police, Anti-Rackets Section, Investigation Bureau) complained that Officers have evidently forgotten everything they learned in Interviewing 101.  "Without attending advanced interview/interrogation classes, most Officers I deal with do not take a very good statement.  The statements, in a word, are brutal!  With all my recruits, I stress the need for proper, detailed statements.  However, before I could achieve that goal, I had to get the rookies to listen to what people were trying to tell them.  Listening skills go hand-in-hand with the interview, but are a sadly overlooked component."

Baltimore County Police CRASH Team Officer Rick Esenwine came up with a half-dozen items that Officers commonly forget:

• How to ask all the (right) questions needed to complete a simple report
• How to write a report so it is intelligible and flows with the story of what happened
• How to practice Officer safety during traffic stops and contact with suspicious persons
• How to drive
• How to take constructive criticism (something not taught in the academy) from Field Training Officers and supervisors
• How to be assertive without being arrogant and aggressive

Retired Alabama Trooper William Neal expressed dismay not just with the current state of training, but with those who do the training.  Specifically, Neal said he has serious problems with those occasions. "When someone who has spent only two or three years on the road is now a Sergeant teaching new recruits Patrol procedures."

Canadian R.W. (Bob) Rivers, prolific author and retired RCMP Officer, noted that as far as accident reconstruction training goes, we seem to be possessed with the issue of speed.  Granted, in nearly every traffic collision someone always asks, "How fast was he going?" But too often training falls short in other areas of concern.  Rivers pointed to the medical profession, behavioral science specialists, dentists, metallurgists and others who are experts that accident investigators and reconstructionists routinely fail to bring into their cases.

How many Police Departments utilize the services of psychologists to really get the whole picture of why a driver or suspect did what he did?  In addition, Rivers opined, "Just maybe there is more to investigations and reconstructions than speed analyses!"  Perhaps it is time that those in charge of training review their agency's training policies and procedures.

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