Assessing the Human Side

As with accident reconstruction, biomechanical injury reconstruction is, at its core, the application of Physics to develop an reasonable, detailed, and quantitative understanding of the mechanism behind a specific injury, or pattern of injuries, sustained by an occupant, cyclist, or pedestrian in an accident where severity can be reasonably defined.  It also involves assessing the risk of injury given a set of alternative factors, including, but not limited to, seat belt use or helmet use.

Evidence

The same evidence that would be collected for an accident reconstruction is important to an injury reconstruction, but an injury reconstruction also needs evidence from other sources. Specifically, evidence should be collected from the treating hospital and any treating physicians that interacted with the injured party. Further, diagnostic imaging studies (i.e. plain radiographs, CT scans, or MRI scans) from those entities should be obtained. It may also be important to obtain historical records for an injured party, as a pre-existing condition may have influenced the outcome from the subject incident.

Injury Mechanism

Through the process of gathering the evidence, the character of the sustained injuries comes into focus and an analysis of the injury mechanism develops. The primary hindrance to understanding the injury mechanism is a lack of evidence to describe or depict the injury. This hindrance can be greatly alleviated if the injured party receives treatment in a hospital emergency department or if they receive an autopsy after succumbing to their injuries.

Experience

At Origin Forensics, our primary focus has been on head and spinal injuries, but we have a great deal of experience with injuries outside of these focus areas. We know what evidence to look for to make sure we have a complete understanding of the injury pattern(s) and associated injury mechanism(s). And, we can readily evaluate how alternative factors may have influenced the outcome.