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Automated Voice:
October 17th, 2021. 15:38:53.
Dispatcher:
911.
Caller:
Someone just got hit in the street. They're laying in the street. He's not moving at all.
Dispatcher:
Okay. Again, what kind of vehicle did he get hit by?
Caller:
He got hit by... The car is here is a Mercedes. He was riding his bike. I saw the whole thing. He ran right in front of the car.
Dispatcher:
Do you know if he's conscious and breathing?
Caller:
Somebody's trying to check him. [inaudible 00:00:33]
Joseph Neal:
We were contacted for a bicycle and motor vehicle collision. What the client wants to know is what was the speed of the Mercedes?What was the bicyclist doing at the time of the impact? We know the Mercedes swerved or steered into the other lanes, but did they reduce their speed overtime? The client is trying to understand what they are working with here.They're trying to figure out the facts of the case so they know the best way to move forward.
We were provided with a video from the east side of the roadway that showed the entire scene. It showed from when the Mercedes entered the frame, when the bicyclist entered the frame, through impact, until theMercedes left the frame. When a vehicle hits a pedestrian, oftentimes the case is the impact isn't enough to trigger the airbag control module to record an event. So there was no event to be had. The motor vehicle was traveling northbound in the northbound lanes, but the bicyclist was traveling south bound in the northbound lanes, in the same lane of travel as the Mercedes. And one of the questions that we had was, did the Mercedes' brakes apply? It was a bright sunny day and you can't tell from the video if the brakes lights illuminate from the video itself.
In the police report, the average speed of the Mercedes was reported because they just took one spot and then another spot and divided the distance by time, so they got the average speed. What we wanted to do was to determine the initial speed, the impact speed. So we broke that down into smaller increments and here's how we did it.
We went to the incident location. We created a 3D scan of the entire area, that's creating a point cloud of all the buildings, all of the roadway features, the trees, the curbs, the parking lines. Anything that was visible in the video, we obtained a 3D scan of. Then we bring that 3D scan back, put it all together, and then combine the video with the 3D scan. That's called camera matching. We match the features in the video to the features in the scan. Now we have created a 3D environment with an overlay of the video.Now we can track the Mercedes at much more discreet instances throughout the video.
Once we put all the pieces together, we were able to determine the speed of the Mercedes at the beginning, the speed of the Mercedes at the time of impact, as well as its trajectory and the speed of the bicycle, as well as its trajectory. And what we found is the speed of the Mercedes decreased from the beginning of the video to the point of impact. Bicycles don't have to operate in the roadway. If they do, then they have to be following the rules of the road. We are pointing out that this was an avoidable incident for the bicyclist had they been following the rules of the roadway.
