THUNDER BAY — Every serious traffic accident investigation is about finding answers—not only to determine what happened, but for the sake of the people who may have lost a loved one.
“The main thing we (investigate) is very serious or fatal motor vehicle collisions and at the end of the day, the reason we’re out here is for the families of the people who die so that we can figure out why the crash happened and to be able to provide as many answers as possible,” said Sgt. Tim Penfold.
“We’re never going to be able to answer all of them, but the more questions we can answer, the better it is,” he said.
Penfold works with the OPP’s Northwest region traffic incident management and enforcement team. The team conducts annual maintenance training for collision reconstructionists and traffic collision investigators.
They’re in training all this week, alongside city police. On Wednesday, the team was doing practical testing on investigative techniques for pedestrian crashes.
“We’re investigating what happens when you’re inside the vehicle during a pedestrian crash as well as what we see, what we feel, and, what happens with the pedestrian in the crash.”
To study this, they use a dummy. “What we’re looking for with the dummy is where it would have been when it was struck as well as where it came to rest.”
He said they look for skid marks, any road debris, “anything that can tell us exactly what happened during the crash.
Part of the training is to stay up to speed on evolving technology. “We’re constantly getting changes to our camera systems, to our survey equipment, to everything else,” Penfold said.
“Now we have drones, so we’re working with that kind of thing. We have different survey equipment because that reaches end of life every few years. So we have to update cameras, that kind of stuff.”
The practical testing, he said, enables the team to “answer different questions like if you hit a dummy, are you going to feel it? And I was in the vehicle during one of the tests and absolutely we felt it.”
He said during investigations, officers will be able to speak with paramedics or firefighters to get a general idea of where a persons final rest point was. “If we can’t get that, then we will look at the roadway evidence.”
This evidence includes clothing scrapes on the roads, where the clothing ended up, bodily fluids, anything that will point to where the dummy went.
“From that drag factor we have mathematical formulas that can tell us from the length of the skid marks, say, the minimum speed the vehicle was going when the crash happened.”
Penfold said it is the traffic reconstructionists who can determine the mathematical formulas to find out facts like the speed the vehicle was travelling from how the pedestrian moved.
The collision reconstructionists, he said, “are the ones that write the really long three to five hundred (page) or even more reports that we use for court. They are not involved in the court process except if they’re called to testify, they’re impartial.”
There are four levels of collision investigation training with the Ontario Police College. Level 1 is a requirement for all constables. Level 2 is at-scene training which is one week. Level 3 is a three-week, technical collision investigation course.
The fourth level is collision reconstructionist.
He said there is definitely a math component to the work as they work through formulas in each investigation.
“On top of that they can take more courses for photography or mapping or whatever. It’s always ongoing training,” said Penfold.
– With files from Leigh Nunan
