field notes

Site Inspection

Site attendance is a cardinal concern when arranging an investigation. Is it useful? Is it essential? What are the pros and cons?

The site might have marks from the incident, special perception problems, or grades and contours essential to calculation of speeds from vehicle paths. Sometimes even the type and location of debris can help to understand how an incident occurred.

Marine sites have their own special problems. No skid marks. Sea state, wind and weather can change over a very short period of time. But still there is value in a site inspection, to get a sense of the scene.

Here is an extreme example, but look how the snow has bent branches to cover the STOP AHEAD sign.

Then, a few days later, this is the same scene in daylight. The sign is easily seen, though a close inspection would note that branches are close, and after a heavy snowfall they might obscure the sign.

Once, months after a crash we found a gouge that looked as if it could have been made by one of the vehicles. A few hours of careful work later, and that gouge was matched to abrasions on the rim of a wheel. The tire had deflated on impact, and the wheel gouged the asphalt. This allowed us to position that vehicle at impact, and by the damage patterns, the other vehicle. As it happened, both were left of centre, which led to further puzzles to solve. But without that gouge we would never have known where the vehicles were at impact. That turned out to be the key to understanding how the collision happened.

Site inspections can be essential to understanding other information about the incident.
But when non-essential, the question of efficiency needs to be addressed. It may be that the expense of a site inspection simply is not warranted, considering the nature of the incident. Usually these questions can be answered during an initial review of the circumstances of the incident.