Accident Reconstruction Tells the Real Story

As personal injury attorneys, McCoy & Sparks have a long list of tools and resources we use when facing insurance companies. Among them is Vehicular Accident Reconstruction. Big name, simple idea. It’s basically the scientific process of investigating, analyzing and drawing conclusions about what happened during an auto accident and how it happened.

Though eye-witness testimony, photos of the scene, and police records can be crucial in determining what happened—and ultimately who’s at fault—often the true story is told by the actual scene of the accident, along with information retrieved from an automobile’s event data recorder (yes, many cars have that famous black box you always hear about in airplane crashes!). We work with expert reconstructionists to conduct in-depth analyses of all of the evidence to identify key factors like the role of the drivers, roadway and environmental conditions, and vehicle response. The laws of physics and engineering principles do the rest, determining actual speed, acceleration, momentum and other vital details our reconstructionists can present at trial as expert winesses.

Steering angles. The use of headlights and turn signals. Engagement of anti-lock brakes. Length of tire marks. Road surface conditions. It’s all analyzed to recreate the scene in as much detail as possible. And often the findings can contradict the original narrative of events found in the police report or as told by witnesses on the scene.

In one of our recent cases we used vehicular reconstruction to reverse the original police report fi ndings. Our client was originally thought to have been at fault in a high-speed collision. However, after careful review of evidence of the scene such as skid tracks, along with the data contained in the black boxes of both vehicles involved, it was determined conclusively that our client was not at-fault. The other car swerved into the oncoming lane at a high rate of speed, never applying the brakes. In this case, vehicular reconstruction told a vastly different—but more accurate—story. That’s why we at McCoy & Sparks employ it when possible. We want to make sure our clients get the absolute best representation in court, especially when facing insurance companies who have bigger bankrolls and access to full-range of resources.