Accident reconstruction isn’t just about vehicles and crash dynamics—it’s about understanding what happens to the human body during an impact. That’s where biomechanics comes in. By applying scientific principles to injury analysis, biomechanical experts determine how forces act on occupants, evaluate injury mechanisms, and clarify the relationship between an incident and resulting injuries.
Understanding the Role of Biomechanics in Accident Reconstruction
What exactly is Biomechanics in the context of forensic accident reconstruction investigation?
Biomechanics revolve around the structure and function of biological systems by studying forces and their effects. In other words, did a body part move in a way that is outside its normal form and function, and was the force on that body part higher than known thresholds, or what is seen in normal day-to-day activities?
Why including a biomechanist is critical to reconstructing an accident
Biomechanists evaluate how occupants move within a vehicle during a collision and analyze the forces, accelerations, and loading experienced by different regions of the body. By combining principles of engineering, physics, anatomy, and injury mechanics, they can assess how a crash event may have affected an occupant and whether the reported injuries are consistent with the collision dynamics.
What biomechanists look for during an inspection
To investigate physical and data evidence in an accident, YA’s certified Event Data Recorder (EDR) technicians will download the vehicle data to acquire the change in velocity (delta-V) that the vehicle experienced. If the vehicle remained untouched since the accident, looking for physical evidence is also beneficial. An example could be hair follicles or marks, suggesting an occupant’s head contacted an interior part of the vehicle.
Research and data used to investigate TBI accidents
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) conducts vehicle testing to evaluate crashworthiness across a range of categories. These tests use instrumented crash dummies equipped with over one hundred sensors, including those that measure head acceleration. The resulting data provides established reference values, which can be used to compare measured or reconstructed head accelerations from real-world incidents, including those involving traumatic brain injury (TBI).
The benefits of reconstructing an accident
In order to determine the forces and accelerations acting on an occupant’s body, it is vital to determine the forces and accelerations that the vehicle experienced. Thus, for motor vehicle accidents, the accident reconstruction always precedes the biomechanical analysis.
