What is Occupant Kinematics?
Occupant kinematics, simply put, is the motion of vehicle occupants during a collision. It relies heavily on Newton's Law's of Motion to explain the paths occupants travel along during a collision events and how they react to external forces.
Occupant Kinematics can be used to answer important questions such as:
- Who was driving scenerios
- Mechanism of injury
- Low speed impacts and injury fraud analysis
- Occupant positions inside of the vehicle
- Effects of safety belt usage or non-usage
- Forces applied to components of the human body
How does Crash Tech Conduct an Analysis?
Careful vehicle analysis
In order to complete an accurate occupant kinematics analysis, Crash Tech's investigators will conduct careful inspections of the involved vehicles. Not only does the exterior vehicle damage need to be documented and analyzed, but the interior damage needs careful consideration as well. This would include inspection of the vehicle safety systems and interior components.
Careful scene analysis
Just like the vehicle inspections, a careful scene inspection is necessary for an accurate occupant kinematics analysis. It is extremely important to know how the vehicles moved throughout the collision event in order to determine how collision forces were acting on the involved units.
Careful injury analysis
Once it is known how the vehicles interacted with one another and traveled throughout the collision event, Crash Tech Investigators will then analyze the injury patterns of the involved occupants. Injury patterns can then be matched to the vehicle components that caused the injury.
Careful mathematical analysis
Completing a mathematical analysis of the collision allows Crash Tech investigators to calculate the delta-V for each involved vehicle. The delta-V can help investigators determine the severity of the collision throughout a defined time frame.