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On the 25th December 2011 there was a hail storm in the state of Victoria, Australia, which caused approximately AU$712 million worth of damage. Some of this damage was caused to passenger vehicles. The authors conducted a number of inspections of hail-damaged vehicles as a result of insurance claims being disputed or rejected on the basis that some, or all, of the alleged hail damage was not created by hail but instead created intentionally by the vehicles' owners with the use of different tools and/or objects. As a result of the inspections and investigations of potentially fraudulent claims, the authors conducted a total of 119 tests designed to replicate damage caused to vehicle body panels by impacting hail and to recreate claimed hail damage by using tools and other objects. To do so, the authors created two sizes of hail: Ø20 mm and Ø40 mm hail. A total of 15 impact tests were conducted with Ø20 mm hail.

Within Australia there are seven States and two Territories, each with their own Government Authority which were until recently all using slightly different criteria to define the criteria between a Repairable Write-Off (RWO) and a Statutory Write-Off (SWO). Under the national framework for the management of Written-Off Vehicle's (WOV's) developed by the National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council (NMVTRC) any collision, fire, water or weather-event damaged vehicle declared by an insurer to be a total loss must be classified to be either a SWO or RWO. Under the current Australian regime a SWO may only be sold subject to a statutory restriction that it may only be used for parts or scrap metal. A RWO may be repaired and re-registered subject to the vehicle passing specific safety and identification inspections. A set of State and Territory based technical criteria determine when a WOV should be classified an SWO.

Critical speed yaw marks are commonly used in collision reconstruction to estimate vehicle speed. Research and laboratory testing have demonstrated that critical speed calculations can be used to accurately estimate vehicle speed. Thus, the principles supporting critical speed yaw analysis are fundamentally and theoretically valid and are not being challenged in this study. However, there are observed and documented limitations with respect to the appropriate application and execution of critical speed yaw analysis. This paper reviews the published research to-date and identifies limitations of critical speed yaw analysis. Examples of collision scenes are provided which quantify the inaccuracies associated with the misuse of critical speed yaw calculations. Areas for further research are identified and detailed.