A “Toolbox” for Forensic Engineers

360 Forensic Materials Engineering: Case Studies
Figure 11.7 Positions of car A and car B at the moment of collision, reconstructed
from bodywork damage.
An independent engineer and a crash reconstruction expert later examined
all three vehicles together and compared the damage to the circumstances
described in the drivers’ statements. Many discrepancies were found.
The most significant were:
1. With car B set to make a left turn into a narrow road the steering
would have been turned to the left, but the rear damage caused by
car A was concentrated toward the right-hand side and indicates the
relative positions at the moment of contact must have been as illustrated
in Figure 11.7. Moreover, the trunk top of car B appears to
have been open, as its edges had left clear impressions on the front
hood of car A. The most severe compression of the brackets securing
the rear bumper to car B was at the right-hand side and the left side
bracket appeared to have been broken by pulling away the bumper
with an upward twist.
2. Car C had registered two separate frontal impacts against the driver’s
door of car B about 25 cm apart. This evidence is clear from the
photograph in Figure 11.8 (top) showing the front door (driver’s side)
of car B taken in the recovery breaker’s yard. The front crash-resisting
bumper structure of car C had dented the sill below the door in two
places. (It was this deformation of the floor pan and buckling of the
side members that necessitated car B being written off.) In the first
impact the rim of the right side headlight of car C had lightly dented
the middle of the door panel. This shows toward the right side of the
photograph where at the 1 o’clock position there is paint damage
showing that a single break in car C’s headlight glass had cut into the
door panel (Figure 11.8, bottom). The second impact a little nearer