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A number of accidents involve a vehicle going off the edge of the road and becoming airborne. In these types of accident, the engineer is typically faced with the problem of estimating the velocity of the vehicle at launch, based on evidence defining the launch position and point of impact at the end of the flight. Two options have been available to evaluate the dynamics of such problems. The first is to treat the vehicle as a point mass, and use simple trajectory equations to define the flight path. This approach considers only the two translational degrees of freedom of the center of mass of the vehicle, and neglects effects of tire contact during launch. The second option is to carry out a full three-dimensional analysis. This approach treats the sprung mass of the vehicle as a rigid body, accounts for the four tire contact conditions, and possibly models the suspension and unsprung masses.