Welcome to another edition of It’s in the Details, a short newsletter intended to provide helpful information for those in the litigation industry who deal with forensic engineering experts and their work.
Finding Vehicles After a Collision – Don't Take “No” for an Answer
Given the wealth of event-related electronic data stored in modern automobiles, getting access to a vehicle involved in a collision can provide key evidence for use in crash reconstruction. But many times, circumstances don’t play nice, and the car slips away before your forensic expert can get to it. What to do?
In the case where a vehicle did not sustain major damage during the collision and you suspect it has been put back on the road and purchased by a new owner, it’s time to enlist the help of a capable private investigation firm. Professional firms like these have access to vehicle records across the country, including photographs of vehicles taken by automated license plate readers which are constantly scanning the streets, documenting the whereabouts of innumerable cars each year. One such firm which Dial Engineering has trusted this work to over the years and which provides excellent reporting at a reasonable price is Hodson P.I. headquartered in Temecula, CA.
But what if the car you’re interested in sustained crash damage significant enough that you suspect it may have become dismantled? First off, don’t be dismayed if you’ve heard that the vehicle has been “totaled,” as this doesn’t necessarily mean the car (or most importantly, its airbag control module where the EDR data lives) has been sent to the shredder. In fact, many times cars are parted out and their components are catalogued for sale by used parts resellers. Remember, all your forensic expert needs is the module or modules that contain the data, and not the whole car, so it’s worth exploring whether the car’s “black box” computer brain is sitting on a shelf somewhere. The forensic firm Lightpoint Scientific has teamed with a major auto parts reseller to give you the ability to search for car parts across the nation via a few mouse clicks. All you do is provide a VIN and your contact information and they do the rest. While finding an ACM this way is still rare, the odds increase more than threefold if you get started as soon as possible after the crash.
Here's hoping the tips above increase the chances of your forensic expert being able to get crash-related data from cars which seem to have ghosted themselves from your case. Thanks for reading, and feel free to reach out to us with any technical questions you might have about this or other topics related to forensic engineering.