In April of 2008, I attended the week-long Special Problems in Traffic Crash Reconstruction at I.P.T.M. in Jacksonville, Florida. The activities for one day included witnessing a staged collision in which the target vehicle was a sedan towing a personal watercraft on a trailer. The bullet vehicle struck the extreme rear of the target vehicle and the boat with trailer, resulting in a spin for the target vehicle, separation of the boat and trailer from the target vehicle, and separation of the boat from the trailer. Two objects into the collision became four objects out. One of the videos of that crash, which is slightly over 1 MB in size, can be viewed by clicking on the following link:
This movie is in Windows Media Player format and should play automatically on virtually any computer using Windows (98SE or later) as the operating system. If you don't have the free Windows Media Player, it is available as a download from Microsoft's Web site.
The following three photographs are stills taken during the collision sequence:
The following two shots show the target vehicle, the bullet vehicle, and the boat and trailer at their final positions:
The purpose of this and another, virtually identical staged collision was to demonstrate the validity of applying conservation of momentum principles to a collision in which one (or potentially both) vehicles became separated at impact and traveled to diverse final positions. The vehicles were traveling at known, documented speeds, and the final positions and other aspects of physical evidence were carefully documented. Rigorous numerical analysis revealed results which were within one mph of the known impact speeds, proving that conservation of momentum can be applied to such situations where there is sufficient documentation.
Another of the field day's activities was a series of experiments designed to test the validity of the application of certain formulas to the projection of pedestrians. Breakout sessions on other days involved a variety of cutting-edge topics relating to motor vehicle collisions, motor vehicle safety, and accident reconstruction.
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