After suffering serious injuries in an accident, the cause of the accident determines whether you can receive compensation. If another person caused the accident, he or she may have to pay for damages. One of the ways to prove the circumstances of an accident is through accident reconstruction. An accident reconstructionist has no bias. Instead, he or she will use engineering principles to determine who is at fault.
The National Society of Professional Engineers, NSPE, uses accident reconstruction to aid forensic investigations.
Purpose of accident reconstruction
After an accident, it is common for people to forget the details of what happened. Over time, witnesses become less reliable and different biases can come into play. The Expert Institute explains that when you are in an accident, you may go into survival mode. This mode makes it difficult to create reliable memories and so different participants in the accident might have completely different claims about what happened.
The science of accident reconstruction
Those who perform accident reconstructions generally have an engineering education. The reconstructionist has to figure out the speed of the vehicle before the impact and the circumstances that led to the accident via the type of damage caused through it. During the legal process, the reconstructionist has access to the field observations, photographs and measurements taken at the scene of the accident. Some police officers may have training and certification to know how to gather correct evidence in support of the reconstructionist.
Engineers the necessary experience and education that others may not have when it comes to reconstructing the accident.