Search Results

A complete analysis of any vehicular collision needs to consider certain aspects of human factors. However, this is especially true of nighttime collisions, in which a more specialized approach is required. Classical collision investigation (frequently referred to as accident reconstruction) is comprised of kinetic and kinematic considerations including skid analysis, momentum techniques and other methods. While analysis based on these concepts is typically unaffected by low visibility conditions, the opposite is true of the perceptual and cognitive aspects of a “humans-in-the-loop” analysis, which can be enormously impacted by low visibility. Only by applying appropriate human factors techniques can the analyst make a defensible determination of how and why a nighttime collision occurred.