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.
City Transit Buses as Rolling Camera Dollies
In our vehicle collision practice, we are being provided with more and more videos of crashes captured by the CCTV systems on board city transit buses, often when the bus itself is not involved in the crash. These videos are provided after the bus driver witnesses a crash during an otherwise normal route and reports it so that the video can be saved for potential use by law enforcement or parties to litigation.
Naturally these videos can provide a wealth of information for not only a crash reconstructionist, but also for the folks involved in a litigated case, like attorneys and their clients. Buses often have multiple cameras running synchronously while capturing a variety of viewpoints, any of which might provide useful for reconstructing a crash sequence. For example, the images below compare the cropped view from a bus camera which captured a real-world incident (left) with our office's computer simulation of the same incident (right).
Besides possessing a number of cameras that constantly capture images, city buses are doing so while traveling along busy city streets and intersections where crashes often occur. Thus, buses not only have the capability to capture crash videos, but they also have the opportunity to do so.
So, the next time you or your forensic expert is investigating a crash which occurred in a metropolitan area, think about contacting your local transit authority soon after the crash to see if there was a bus with video cameras operating nearby. 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.