The RCMP Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Services or CARS are currently undergoing training in Shearwater, Nova Scotia.
Police say my mimicking different accelerating, rotating and braking characteristics, they can model real-life collisions and help officers learn investigative techniques.
“It’s the boots on the ground course for all investigators that routinely investigate car crashes,” said Sgt. Chris Romanchych, one of three full-time collision investigators in Nova Scotia.
“This is really the foundation for evidence identification and terminology.”
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Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Services work to identify and collect evidence at accident scenes.
“When we arrive at a collision scene, we’re going to do a quick walk through the scene. We want to know what kind of evidence is there, we want to know if there are tire marks, if there are gouges, debris. There are a variety of different pieces that we’re going to find that put the pieces of the puzzle back together,” said Romanchych.
“Each piece of evidence has a certain set of characteristics to it. Depending on what those characteristics are, they tell us what the vehicle was doing, whether it’s accelerating, whether it’s breaking, whether its rotating around at center of mass.”
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For example, Romanchych says something like tire marks can tell officers a number of things.
“They’re going to tell us placement on the highway, they’re going to let us know which direction the vehicle was travelling and they can also provide us with the foundation to conduce a speed analysis,” he said.
While collisions can happen at any speed, RCMP say motorists need to slow down and obey the posted speed limits.
“It’s not unrealistic for our traffic members to be out on the highway and pull people over doing 160, 170 plus kilometers an hour. There’s not a high frequency of it but it’s high enough that it causes us concern,” said Romanchych.
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In the past year, Romanchych’s team has investigated 100 collisions. Half of the crashes had one thing in common — improper or no seat belt use.
“We go to a number of crashes where are ejections, partial ejections or just thrown around in the vehicle and really we could reduce a lot of death on our highway if people just buckle up.”
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Romanchych says the work done by collision analysts not only determines whether or not to charges should be laid following an accident but also helps bring closure to families.
“It lets them know what happened, that we’ve investigated it fully, we looked at all avenues of the investigation so that they can be at peace to know what has happened.”
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