“I’m the guy that gets called in when there is a disagreement about the cause of an accident,” says Matt, “Often both parties claim they’re blameless and I get to examine the physical evidence, apply the appropriate physics and determine who is right.”
Doctor Matt King, Principal Lecturer on the Bachelor of Engineering Technologies (Civil and Mechanical) programmes has over 16 years’ experience in forensic accident investigation. He has worked on over 2000 litigation and insurance cases for and against municipalities, attorneys and insurance companies, including the United States government, the French government and cases in New Zealand. 75 per cent of his work involves automobile crashes including those involving trains, big rigs, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians.
In 2014 he was invited to share his expertise at the Independent Forensic Practitioners Institute annual conference held at the University of Auckland.
His presentation focused on a $20 million multiple car accident case he worked on in California and how a multi-modal scientific presentation of his analysis of the physical evidence (involving physics equations, 3D models and computer simulation) to the jury in court vindicated an innocent party, and demonstrated the multiple failures of one driver. A key aspect of the analysis was the data gathered by downloading the ‘blackbox’, or airbag controller, in one of the vehicles.
Matt believes multi-modal presentations are the most effective way to present the result of scientific analysis for complex cases where multiple events are occurring simultaneously and will become much more common in the future inspired by television shows such as CSI:
“Accidents can be highly contentious issues that have a major impact on a person’s life. Often no one wants to admit fault. Sometimes the people involved don’t know what the cause was, but their perception of the incident differs from other involved parties. Line drawings or videos can only present one perspective of an event, but 3D computer simulation software can be used to demonstrate a time sensitive engineering analysis from multiple perspectives for a single event.”
King, M. D. (2014). The Pro's and Con's of Multi-Modal Scientific Presentations Independent Forensic Practitioners Institute 2014 Conference, University of Auckland, NZ, August 2014.
