Physical Evidence Analysis and Roll Velocity Effects in Rollover Accident Reconstruction 2001-01-1284

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 examines the effects of vehicle roll velocity on scrape angle, presents a method to more accurately determine vehicle orientations in rollover accident reconstruction, and briefly discusses the relationship between vehicle revolutions and translational distance.