Line-of-Sight for a Pedestrian and Bicyclist
Background
Bicyclists passing a parked SUV on a residential street struck an eleven-year-old pedestrian as she was crossing the street. On the investigating officer's body camera footage, the pedestrian stated that she did not see the bicyclist coming when she looked prior to stepping out from in front of the SUV. The bicyclists claimed that the pedestrian ran out into the road from behind the SUV without looking and insisted that if the pedestrian looked both ways before crossing the road, she would have seen them coming.
Process
To characterize the speed and route of the bicyclists, Explico’s team of experts used a handlebar mounted Garmin GPS system which was utilized by one of the bicyclists during the incident. Because the bicyclists’ testimony indicated how they rode near to the right side of the road then shifted towards the middle of the road to pass the SUV, a range of pass initiation distances were also considered. These distances included both a wide maneuver and a tight maneuver around the SUV. Our teams also reconstructed the entire scene using a 3-D environment to evaluate scenarios in which the sequence of events would lead to the SUV obscuring the pedestrian's line-of-sight of the oncoming bicyclists.
Results
The visualization demonstrated that the SUV could have obscured the line-of-sight of an alert pedestrian who looked left and right prior to crossing the road. While the case settled prior to going to trial, Explico provided the client with an interactive, fully rendered visualization application that allowed exploration of the incident from multiple vantage points as well as pass initiation distances.
