Accident Reconstruction

Accidents have been described as, “An unforseen event which occurs without the will or design of the parties involved.”  Often, law enforcement traffic accident investigators are faced with conflicting accounts or deliberate concealment of the chain of events or causative factors which occurred immediately before a motor vehicle crash.

Currently four members of the Sheriff’s Office have received extensive classroom and practical training from the NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services in the field of accident reconstruction.  Comprehensive training focusing on the collection of supplemental evidence and data, technical preparation, reconstruction, and cause analysis permits those specially trained members determine not only how, but why, those seemingly unexplainable accidents occurred.

With this training, a few of the many abilities members are capable of include:
Determining vehicle speed from skid marks and impact damage,
Examining a vehicles light bulbs and knowing whether they were on or off at the time of impact,
Determining initial impact location,
Being able to identify each vehicles location throughout the entire chain of events.

Unit members are procedurally dispatched whenever the Sheriff’s Office investigates serious injury, fatal, or fleet vehicle involved motor vehicle accidents. When called upon, these members frequently perform many, and sometimes all, of the following tasks.

Obtaining scene measurements
Taking pertinent scene and evidence photographs
Preparing sketches and scale diagrams
Conducting evidentiary examinations
Relative application of a voluminous amount of mathematic formulas
Preparing written reports
Providing expert testimony