11/30/2005· Expert Witnessing
Optimizing Your Use Of Motor Vehicle Experts
Participation of the proper automotive expert in a personal injury lawsuit can govern its success. This article develops four basic principles to optimize their use, while minimizing their cost, and describes some important techniques used by the accident reconstructionist
11/3/2004· Automotive - Vehicular
By: Ned Einstein
Since driving a 20- or 25-ton motorcoach is touted as so being difficult, it is only fair to ask why so much carnage, and so many law suits, occur apart from collisions. In particular, the number of incidents occurring at or near stops seems largely disproportionate to the perceived simplicity of handling things when the bus or coach is stationary
7/14/2009· Automotive - Vehicular
Whiplash During Low Speed Impact: Fact or Fraud?
A car is stopped for a light when it is unexpectedly rear-ended by a vehicle from behind. It is not a hard impact and there is little or no damage to either vehicle, because the energy absorbing bumpers have protected them. Nevertheless, the passengers of the struck vehicle complain of neck, shoulder and back pain. The next day they allegedly experience even greater pain and visit a medical person who claims that they have been injured. Insurance claim representatives, attorneys, medical, engineering and biomedical experts are then brought in and various conflicting allegations, testimony and opinions are expressed. Do we have a legitimate injury claim on our hands or a situation of fraud?
2/1/2003· Automotive - Vehicular
Developing An Effective Maintenance Program
Have you ever stopped to consider that maintenance is war? Your enemies are breakdown and deterioration; your soldiers are the maintenance supervisors and technicians; and the people you are protecting are the workers and customers of your organization
7/14/2009· Human Factors
When a person becomes aware of a dangerous situation, a time-interval must elapse before he can take defensive action against it. This time interval, commonly called the reaction time, has been found to be about 0.7 second for all normal persons, regardless of their background and training. This suggests that the reaction time depends on some basic aspect of the human physiology-involving the brain, nervous system, and muscles-which does not vary much from person to person.
5/17/2018· Transportation
Safety Compromises, Part 5 - Failing to Kneel the Bus or Coach
By: Ned Einstein
For many passengers, the 14-inch drop from the bottom step of a high-floor transit bus or motorcoach is challenging. In transit service, drivers do not assist or even spot boarding or alighting passengers. While motorcoach drivers typically assist or spot boarding or alighting passengers at the front door, the drivers of motorcoaches deployed in commuter/express service (provided by transit agencies or companies under contract to them) do not. Nor do scheduled service drivers do so consistently, especially at intermediate stops.
1/31/2018· Automotive - Vehicular
Safety Compromises, Part 3: Wheelchair and Passenger Securement
By: Ned Einstein
Among all the safety compromises pandemic to the public transportation industry, wheelchair tipovers are, by far, the least common to the motorcoach sector compared to other services which deploy accessible vehicles. Of course, this is largely because so few wheelchair users travel by motorcoach.
9/28/2017· Automotive - Vehicular
Safety Compromises: Part 1, Introduction
By: Ned Einstein
This new National Bus Trader piece is the first installment of likely a year-long series about types of incidents that result from trade-offs of safety for other benefits -- adherence to unrealistically-tight schedules (or drivers running behind schedule) being the principal culprit. Frankly, of the more than 600 public transportation-related lawsuits in which I have served as an expert witness, roughly half of all incidents see to be the result of some deliberate safety compromise.
7/14/2009· Forensic Analysis
Accident reconstructionists are often called on to determine the distance that a car, covers while being braked to a stop. Conversely, the reconstructionist may be given information as to the length of the skidmarks left by a car on the roadway, and may be asked to determine how fast the car must have been going at the beginning of the skid. An expert can accomplish this with considerable accuracy, based on a knowledge of the physical principles that are involved, plus available information relating to the friction of tires on various types of road surfaces.
8/24/2017· Automotive - Vehicular
Autonomous and Inevitable, Part 8: Access and Accountability
By: Ned Einstein
What is interesting, and the focus of this installment, is the glaring disparity between the magnitude of information available about a vehicle or driver's performance and the general disinterest in examining it. This disparity is not a technological problem. It is largely an institutional and attitudinal problem. Or one might characterize it as a cultural problem. Or a values problem in a money-oriented society. Nevertheless, it raises an important point about driverless vehicles: While a vehicle's brain may contribute to and/or improve safety (fewer accidents and incidents) and performance (e.g., better mileage, less pollution), this brain's extraordinary analytical capabilities may be pointless because no non-robot is likely to ever examine the data.
by Jeffrey Lucas
by Russell E. Darnell, PhD
by Angi Ma Wong, Yap Cheng Hai
