When there’s a serious accident on a Nova Scotia roadway, Cpl. Corey Ford is one of seven people who are called in to help.
Ford is the acting manager of the Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Service, or CARS, for the Nova Scotia RCMP.
“We’re called by the local detachments if they’ve got a fatal or serious injury collision,” Ford told reporters while standing in front of the mock accident, staged at the dead-end of an empty stretch of road in Dartmouth’s Burnside Industrial Park.
“We’re generally given some information prior to arriving, you know, the nature of the collision, the nature of the highway, injuries, vehicles involved, those sorts of things. When we first arrive, we’ll talk with the investigators, the local general duty investigators, perhaps what they’ve come up with so far and what their observations have been,” he said.
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When CARS arrives, the scene has already been secured by first responders and any injured passengers have been taken from the scene by EHS. The unit then begins to document the evidence found on site.
“What we’ll do then is we’ll identify our evidence, as we’ve got marked out behind me here with our yellow cones,” Ford said while gesturing at the T-bone collision set up behind him.
“We use plenty of [cones] to mark out our evidence, whether it be road marks, debris, gouges, scrapes on the asphalt, those sorts of things, and we’ll take photos and detailed notes of all of those items.”
Once the scene has been thoroughly examined, it’s time to map it, which will provide a detailed diagram of exactly what the scene looked like after an accident.
“Then what we do is we go into a survey. We use what’s called a Total Station, which allows us to collect measurements and point locations on a scene to recreate a two-dimensional drawing. A two-dimensional scale drawing to explain our observations, the scene as it were, to somebody who wasn’t there,” he said.
“You know, if this collision is being investigated and perhaps charges being pursued then it would go through the courts and all the interested parties would have access to that as well.”
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The Nova Scotia RCMP is the first in Canada to use robotic Total Stations. It greatly decreases the amount of time it takes to map a scene, which was part of the justification behind its introduction.
“Using the robotic Total Station allows us to oftentimes cut our survey time in half, which could give us an hour of grace when it comes to opening up the highway and that’s what we want to do, we want to open up the highway as soon as possible. But in the same instance, we need to collect the evidence in order to provide the full true story, or the complete story of the scene and the incident.”
The robotic model has been in use for about a year and right now, only the three full-time officers are trained to use them. But Ford says eventually all seven will be familiarized with the newer tech, a process that takes a half day.