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Vehicles involved in rollover accidents almost always leave a debris trail. This debris trail is useful for the accident reconstructionist; it assists with identifying the vehicle path during the rollover and the location and orientation of the vehicle at various vehicle to ground contacts. Often it is helpful to know when and where various vehicle windows fractured. This is possible by comparing glass obtained from the accident site with glass samples still attached to the accident vehicle. The limit of this analysis is controlled by the manufacturing tolerance of the vehicle glass and the specified pane thickness. This paper presents a series of measurements made on various automotive tempered windows and presents: 1) the thickness range in individual panes, and 2) the thickness variation seen from pane to pane in the same vehicle.

Rollover accidents often have a vast amount of information available for determining vehicle and occupant kinetics and kinematics. Physical evidence and photographs of the accident scene and vehicle can be used to determine trajectories, distances, velocities and orientations. The direction, angle, and chronological order of scrapes or scratch patterns and other directional indicators on the vehicle peripheral surfaces are typically used to reconstruct the vehicle orientation throughout the rollover sequence. Evidence from the scene and vehicle, however, can sometimes appear inconsistent, because they suggest a substantially different vehicle orientation at a particular contact point. An apparent inconsistency of this nature can often be corrected by accounting for the effects of vehicle roll velocity during surface contacts.

This paper presents results of full-scale instrumented rollover testing on ROV type recreational vehicles. Five tests were conducted using two instrumented side-by-side ROVs at speeds between 20 and 32 mph on unpaved surfaces. Each test vehicle was brought to speed and released, allowing remote steering inputs to initiate turn sequences resulting in rollover. Accelerations were determined using x, y, and z axis accelerometers mounted at the vehicle CG and recorded using a robust data acquisition system. Roll rates were measured using a rotation rate sensor. Roll rates and key acceleration events are presented for each test. Mapping and measurement of the test site includes photography and digital survey of resulting tire marks, impact marks and gouging. Documentation and reconstruction of test roll sequences includes roll rates, vehicle positions and velocities, peak accelerations by impact, and scratch mark and damage examination. These are included in the appendix .