Injury Biomechanics & Accident Reconstruction
Jewkes Biomechanics LLC
Making Sense of Cause and Effect
The complex puzzle that relates the cause and effect can often be solved when using a combination of scientific methods:
Review of Police and Medical Records
The police report often presents the first evidence of the (automotive) accident circumstances, preferably including the location and type of tire-marks or other ground contacts of the vehicle, the point of rest, occupant location at rest, and if extrication was used. Police photographs of scene and vehicle are invaluable evidence.
Medical records provide the majority of the known puzzle-pieces regarding the injury outcome. Detailed medical descriptions and/or medical imaging of both superficial and internal injuries may aid in understanding the injury mechanism.
Vehicle or Equipment Inspection
Whenever possible, Jewkes Biomechanics inspects, photographs and takes measurements of the subject vehicle or equipment inspection to gather the majority of the vehicle or equipment related evidence. This evidence offers insights into the accident conditions, vehicle motion or equipment behavior/failure.
Furthermore, the inspection may reveal the injured's use of the (safety) equipment, occupant kinematics, location and mechanism of the sustained injury, or possible exit timing and location of an ejected occupant.
Surrogate-Exemplar Inspection
Jewkes Biomechanics may inspect an undamaged vehicle or piece of equipment similar to that involved in the accident to measure the extent of the damage and to determine the accident conditions and severity.
A surrogate occupant may be asked to aid in studying the possible occupant kinematics and to identify unlikely scenarios.
Crash-Test Analysis
Because crash-test conditions rarely match those of the real-world accident, Jewkes Biomechanics analyses a variety of crash tests relevant to each automotive accident for three purposes:
1) to provide stiffness data of the vehicle to calculate the severity of the accident
2) to receive information of vehicle behavior under various crash conditions
3) to study occupant kinematics and injury risk under a wide set of circumstances relevant to the accident case.
Analytical Calculations
Jewkes Biomechanics prides itself in deriving innovative and scientificaly sound analytical calculations to determine case-specific unknowns, e.g. the trajectory of an ejected occupant, or the kinematics and dynamics of the occupant at time of impact. These calculations greatly enhance the understanding of the injury causation and risk in previously untested circumstances, or in hypothetical scenarios.
Statistical Analysis
Statistical analysis of real-world accident data may be used to provide insight of the likelihood of the injury outcome under actual or hypothetical accident circumstances.
Crash- or Component Testing
Testing of the vehicle or equipment may be essential to determine or illustrate the actual behavior of the vehicle or equipment under the unique real-world accident conditions, or under equally distinctive hypothetical scenarios.
Computer Simulations
Jewkes Biomechanics may use advanced computer simulations (MADYMO) to study complex occupant kinematics, as well as injury causation and risk in case-specific accident conditions. The simulations are able to predict and clarify injury outcomes in hypothetical scenarios.
