[Music] [Music] a man Mourns the loss of his sister after a terrifying head-on collision officer but he offers investigators few details about the driver who caused the crash and then fled the scene our passenger had a knee injury my suspicion is that's where it came from then a domestic dispute escalates out of control and ends in tragedy a grieving boyfriend suddenly finds himself facing a possible homicide charge and a driver mysteriously loses control of his 80,000 lb rig slamming into three cars can investigators figure out what triggered the deadly chain of events and who was at fault every year violent collisions kill 40,000 Americans and injure another 3 million but there is no such thing as an accident every Collision has a story as unique as the people involved Rusty hate is a leading Authority on accident reconstruction he trains investigators around the world to read the clues and solve the [Music] Mysteries sometimes sometimes we get the front end of the car to ramp up I'm not sure why that happened we'll have to look at the information the data and the video and we'll sort it out but for now that pretty interesting so 40 mph head on into another car might seem crazy to you but for me it's pretty much just another day at the office and there's a good reason for these kind of crash tests we can learn a lot about the physics behind the crashes and the potential for injury this was at 40 imagine one at 70 could someone walk away from that crash well that's what the investigators in Maryland are trying to find out [Applause] a quiet spring night in Suburban Maryland is suddenly rocked by the sound of a violent impact two passenger cars Collide at a busy intersection emergency workers discover a victim in each car both dead the first police officers on the scene take a statement from a lone witness and immediately put in a call for accident investigator Gary Lewis Gary's job will be to answer the tough questions what led to this fatal collision and who if anyone was at fault his first task is to survey the Damage Done to a vehicle driven by 28-year-old Ken Jones the first impression upon arriving on the scene in this record it was a very violent wreck there was a lot of damage to both of the vehicles involved one of the vehicles was located on the southwest corner of the intersection about 50 ft off the roadway the other vehicle was about 250 ft I think south of the intersection during the post crash travel it rolled it flipped it spun it had damage pretty much all the way around the vehicle and the occupant of that vehicle they had obvious head trauma they had obvious deformation of the chest area that occupant was beled at the time but because of the way this wreck happened and the forces involved in this wreck it wasn't enough to prevent injury or fatal injury the horror Lewis discovers in the first car is matched by the second a young woman Sarah hunt has sub mared it's a term investigators use for an unbelted passenger who slides underneath their airbag colliding with a dashboard at high speed there's massive swelling in the brain because of the injury uh to the small nerves and the blood vessels that swelling or edema within the brain can actually increase the pressure inside of the brain to such an extent that the the heart is unable to pump blood flow to the brain adequately in that case what will happen is that the brain will event die seeing an unbelted passenger submarine Is Not Unusual in a head-on crash but finding the rest of the car totally empty is surprising Gary Lewis knows that the driver has walked away from this wreck and is likely in need of immediate medical attention the clock is ticking Gary's got a really tough job ahead of him tonight he's got tire marks to deal with gouges evidence from the roadway evidence from the Cars he's got uh folks that are supposed to have walked away from this crash he's looking for at least one driver um this is going to be an interesting night that anyone could have walked away from either of these cars is a Real Testament to the safety systems and the design of these cars the the their ability to crush and absorb energy and and protect occupants airbags seat belts um limiting injury so someone can leave the scene a real important aspect of car safety as Gary Lewis continues to investigate the scene a fellow officer just blocks away sees a man stumbling through a mall parking lot officer yes sir I was just in an accident Jason hunt Flags down the patrol car and tells police he was a passenger in a car with his sister and her friend David when suddenly they crashed he is so he's like in his terrible too everything is she in an ambulance uh yeah yeah stunned by the impact he came to and realized that the driver David was gone and his sister needed help what caused the wreck is still a mystery but it's no mystery why Jason survived he was wearing a seat belt it's really no surpris that people surviv this crash despite speed it's not speed that kills you it's a sudden stop at the end and that's what we have here here this egg had a very sudden stop at the end very abrupt stop this egg didn't have such an abrupt stop it stopped from the same speed but it stopped over a longer period of time that was the key and how do we how do we equate an egg Landing in a pillow to a car crash well we take advantage in a car crash of crumple zones the cars collapse and crunch and that takes time it may be milliseconds in the bigger picture but in the real world in a crash that's a long period of time and we can extend that by taking advantage of seat belts once you've stretched the belts now you're going to continue to move forward a little bit that's where the airbag comes into play all of this together we extend the time we protect the [Music] egg where did it happen it's it's right over there while Jason has suffered minor injuries he claims to remember little about the accident itself and the driver David remains at large fortunately for investig a lone witness was willing to talk to police combining his witness statements with roadway evidence collected at the scene Gary Lewis is now able to piece together the chain of events that led to the deadly Collision we got quite a mess here what's going on from what the witness is telling us and the roadway evidence we found on the scene so far it appears we had a vehicle traveling in this direction went to make a left down the side street and was hit by an oncoming car that impact knocked the Turning car the whole way down there over 200 ft from the intersection and the Striking vehicle ended up here on the curb we got two dead you've got one overturned you've got a whole lot of tire marks and gouge marks and material to work with and the other car all tore up on the curve line you got a lot of work tonight it's going to be a long night y Gary Lewis is off to a good start but it will take more painstaking work to determine which car caused the accident and what happened to the driver who left Sarah hunt to die in the passenger seat of his car accident investigator Gary Lewis is struggling with a devastating crash scene spread across some 200 ft of suburban Maryland roadway he's got two cars at the scene each containing a dead body he's got one driver that's still there and one that's missing and the best Hope Police have of finding that missing driver lies with Jason hunt who's lost his own sister in this crash all right I'm just going to touch you lightly okay let me know um if it h another member of my unit had responded down to the hospital where a suspect was taken from this wreck someone who said they were involved in the wreck but not driving so you were in a car accident yeah okay were you driving no all right they told the officer that they were seated in the right rear seat and that they were wearing a seat belt when the wreck happened in fact the officer looked at this person and saw a seat Bel Mark however the seat belt Mark he saw went from the left shoulder to the lower right part of the abdom which is not indicative of a passenger side seat belt I think you're just a little banged up oh you didn't fa the officer also indicated that this person had received some bruising to the knees and that his jeans were either torn or brushed there was some kind of an abrasion mark on the jeans and he was complaining about um bruising and and soreness in the knees he also had some injuries on the back of his hand that were consistent with um impact from glass the dicing that occurs in a wreck when it shatters into a lot of small [Music] pieces so how did you do this how did this happen I um punched a window really in the car yeah investigators are confident that Jason hunt can give them some personal insight into the crash that killed his sister Sarah and 20 8-year-old Ken Jones but when his version of event starts to conflict with the evidence uncovered at the scene Jason hunt unwittingly puts the spotlight on himself Sarah Sarah when people get in crashes they think of a lot of goofy excuses especially when they're trying to get out of trouble if it's serves them they'll come up with the wildest ideas hitting for example glass on a window isn't going to do anything her your hand a little bit but it didn't going to do anything so somebody that's sought treatment or somebody that's claiming that they've hit the window trying to get somebody out they're not getting anything takes a lot of effort from an airbag to crack the window and uh you're not going to do it with your hand it's going to take a lot more on the side in the movies you know you see the star cracking him with his elbow not in real life the car is going to give us the evidence the car doesn't have a dog in this fight okay people do while unimpressed with Jason Hunt's explanation for his injuries Gary Lewis has little choice but to keep looking for David the missing driver as officers continue the search Lewis begins an examination of the car in the safety systems that saved Hunt's life what they reveal threatens to further destroy his credibility as a reliable witness our passenger in this wreck originally said he was seated in the right rear seating position we look at that and we see the seat belt has no signs of being used in this crash but yet our passenger had a mark on his chest and that Mark was consistent with signs of a driver's side seat belt not a passenger so we turned our attention to the left rear seating position we see that that seat belt is retracted completely into the retractor and in fact it's tucked in behind the seat cushion with no indicators of use during a wreck so then we turn to the front seat and we see that our front seat belt does have some signs of use in a wreck it's been locked out it's been locked out by an impact consistent with use in a front crash further examination of the car continues to erode Jason Hunt's carefully constructed Alibi our passenger in this wreck had a knee injury to his left knee with some abrasion and some marks on his jeans in that area also the left knee my suspicion is that's where it came from what I'll do is I'll take this Dash console s send it to our lab for analysis to see if it matches up with the fibers from his pants and therefore relate that injury to that Mark in the vehicle while in the hospital exam room Jason hunt also submits to a blood alcohol test more than 2 hours have elapsed since the crash and it comes back at .11 well over 08 the legal limit for anyone driving in the state of Maryland for Gary Lewis this is the last remaining piece of the puzzle the physical evidence paints a clear picture as to who was behind the wheel at the time of the Collision Jason hunt the glass injuries to the back of his hand the seat belt data and the fibers from his genes in the dash console all plays hunt squarely in the driver's seat the blood alcohol finding suggests a likely motive for fleeing the scene it's obvious now that Jason's story about David was complete fiction a rose to divert suspicion from himself the experience I've had with people who leave the scene of a wreck most times that driver had an agenda he wanted out of there he did not want to talk to the police he was either drunk suspended his license privilege suspended he may have been wanted for something he might have done another crime that we don't even know about yet and was trying to get away but he definitely did not want to meet the police and didn't want to hang around to be accountable for what he did but one key question Still Remains which driver was at fault Jason's blood alcohol level aside Gary will need to determine why the cars collided in the first place to do that he must examine the airbag control module in Jason's car the readings captured at the time of the crash can tell him exactly how fast his car was going when it entered the intersection Gary's analysis and the data from the airbag control module tell us that the straight through cars doing about 67 mph the left turning car has been robbed of time that's the idea behind miles per hour met per second cubits per fortnight whatever we're doing we're talking about distance and time and when you go faster you short someone time if we know the point of impacts here that's a fixed point and we know we're going to start and go at 67 mph a certain distance if we were actually going 55 M hour starting at that same point we would never have made it to the point of impact we would have made missed a crash so going tooo fast a little impairment next thing you know you've robbed someone with some precious time to clear the intersection it's clear from the roadway evidence and data from the airbag control module that Jason Hunt's Car was simply going too fast for Ken Jones to get out of the way if Jason had stuck to the speed limit through the intersection this night could have ended very differently barely 24 hours after the Fatal Collision Gary Lewis is finally able to say exactly how this wreck came about Jason Hunt is speeding southbound as he approaches a red light meanwhile Ken Jones finally gets his green and enters the intersection to make a left turn unaware what is coming up and over a hill in his Direction Ken Jones has no time to react as Hunt's car enters the intersection at 70 M an hour the force sends Jones car flying backwards when it lands it rolls 200 ft downhill where it finally stops Ken Jones is killed on impact suffering massive internal injuries his bones are literally crushed by the force of the crash inside Hunt's Car his sister unbelted submarines under the airbag and is killed when her head slams into the dash Gary Lewis examines the physical evidence at the scene as well as the injuries to the only surviving passenger Jason hunt despite efforts to lead him astray he concludes that Jason Hunt is actually the missing driver his work offers the Jones family some consolation Jason Hunt is sentenced to 8 years in prison when you've been drinking to put together a good believable Alibi a good stories no small feat or so I've been told and then add to that uh potential for a head injury you know the Dazed and Confused effect things get kind of complicated for someone trying to deal with a competent investigator and in this case what Gary did as a competent investigator was use the objective physical evidence from the cars the bodies the roadway and piece together a good solid reconstruction he figured out what happened okay something he'll do now and in the next case and in the next case the same way let me see my kid H go out of the way no why don't you let me see my kid would you give me some money every night spending money on beer and God knows what oh for crying out loud whatever in the early part of the evening neighbors close to the home of a young family hear yet another shouting match my kid I just gave money okay what for your groc Jenny Franklin and Patrick Hall parents of a three-year-old toddler are at it again the argument is about money money Patrick borrowed from Jenny wait a minute I'm not finished with you yet finally Jenny has had enough and decides to drive over to her mother's house to pick up their daughter upset and distracted by the argument she makes what will proed to be a fatal mistake she neglects to fasten her seat belt [Music] Patrick isn't finished arguing and quickly follows Jenny's car in his own by the time they reach a deserted stretch of road in the Maryland suburbs both cars are flying and Jenny's car isn't going to make it all the way around a [Applause] curve Jenny Franklin is a Ed from her car and dies on the way to the hospital Frank Carson a senior accident investigator gets the call it'll be his job to find out exactly what caused this tragedy road range is pretty much a fact of life folks will do things in their car they wouldn't necessarily do face to face the car gives us a certain amount of anonymity when you're upset you also do things you may regret the rest of your life in this instance could the boyfriend have come up and rear ended the girlfriend's car and done that in an act of passion that we need to know when I originally got to the scene I had two cars there and the victim the one vehicle the deceased had been transported to the hospital she was gone from the scene the only person left aside from the officers at the scene was the driver of the other car Patrick Hall is on the side of the road when the first officer arrives at the crash scene he is not seriously injured but he is in shock he immediately tells police that it was an accident and explains to the officer what happened the boyfriend came around the curve and he saw another vehicle in the roadway he hid his brakes and swerved to one side to avoid hitting that car he ends up going off the road his car ends up on his side he climbs out of the car and he realizes the other car that's in the roadway is his girlfriend's car and he looks around that's when he sees his girlfriend laying in the roadway the car that she was driving is smoking and he thinks he's going to catch on fire so he grabs his girlfriend and drags her over the shoulder the road tries to do what first date he can and then calls 911 to get an ambulance send an ambulance so this guy's story is he just came up on the accident scene and he didn't have any time to stop is that possible well it is but accident scenes and Hazards in the road don't just appear in front of you magically they're in the road and the deal is you have to be able to see them that's why we have headlights you can overdrive your headlights you can drive faster than your headlights will illuminate in front of you and when you do that you've created a problem for yourself you can't avoid things that all of a sudden appear and then out of nowhere you have to be able to stop in time to avoid [Music] them Frank Carson walks around the scene looking for physical evidence a tire mark a car part any clue as to what could have caused the accident if he finds out that Patrick is lying the investigation could quickly shift to a homicide he needs to go back in time and figure figure out what happened in the last minutes of Jenny Franklin's life the tire marks from her car can be seen coming around the curve leaving the roadway this poor girl in this car wasn't wearing a seat belt and she struck the embankment then the tree so violently it caused her vehicle to rotate and the vehicle rotated so violently that she was ejected from the window of the vehicle and tragically if she had been there was there was little enough damage to the passenger compartment of the vehicle that if she had been wearing her seat belt she would have stayed in the vehicle the airbag would have gone off to partially protect her and there's very good possibility she would still be alive Frank Carson also has a medical background he worked for several years in the emergency room and on ambulances so he seen plenty of fatal accidents and knows exactly what injury would have ended the young woman's life what killed her is an injury called a transected aort the aort is the largest artery it's on the top of the heart and it's about as big around as your thumb and it leads into the heart when you're sitting up your heart is for all intense purpose is suspended by tissue and it just hangs there what happens when you're in a collision and you suffer a violent deceleration you go forward the heart goes forward then you go backward and the heart goes backward well unfortunately when that happens the aort tears because of that motion and once that aort tears uh unless it happens right there and there's a medical team standing by very few people survived that honey this poor girl in this car if she had been wearing a seat belt she would be here today raising her child sending him to school and enjoying all those things the parents do because she didn't do this Click put on a seat belt she's dead that's a very simple thing Tak you how many seconds put on your seat belt second you get point where you back out you back down your driveway you put it on it should be Instinct you should feel naked without it on but people don't do that Jenny's boyfriend was wearing his seat belt and that's very likely what allowed him to walk away when his car crashed shortly after [Applause] Jenny's the boyfriend's car was on the opposite side of the roadway was sitting up on its end on their side well that must have been a wild ride you know by the time you're 30 half the population will have been involved in a collision and collisions bring on symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome in this case there's no surprise this guy's upset so can you tell me what happened here well my girlfriend and I we just had a fight at the house indeed even an hour after he made his 911 call Patrick Hall is still shaken and stressed out she was going way too fast the boyfriend when I talked to him was walking around agitated upset trying to figure out how he was going to explain what happened to the girl girlfriend's family to the child when the child got old enough and trying to figure out for himself what exactly had happened um all things very typical of someone who's been in a traumatic situation had experienced it remembered it and was still there he was fully aware what was going on I just heard when I swerved Paul tells Carson it was a heated argument that led him and Jenny to be on this road on this evening in separate cars for Carson that's a key part of the puzzle and could lead to serious consequences for H you don't understand I am a father okay said no you're not you're a loser that's what you are when the boyfriend explained me that they had had a domestic argument that made me think for just a couple minutes there may be something more to it than just an accident there's a possibility that this may have been an intentional act when you get to the scene of one of these collisions you have to think of all the possibilities and that's one thing that made me think this maybe something outside of just a for all intense purposes a regular automobile Collision in other words it's just possible Hall was angry enough to try to teach his girlfriend a lesson Maybe by giving her car a bump if that's true it's also possible the bump made her lose control and then lose her life alcohol is not a factor here so what Frank's going to have to do is rely on his investigative skills to sort out the objective physical evidence to figure out how fast the cars were going who was where whether the boyfriend was telling the truth or whether the boyfriend's going to jail his first task will be to figure out the car speeds from that he can sort out where the boyfriend's car was when the girlfriend's car left the road and went out of control coming up investigators uncover more clues that seem to show a woman's death was no accident and later a truck driver with an impeccable safety record stands to lose it all unless he can explain why his rig suddenly spun out of control and killed two drivers [Music] [Music] over the course of his career Frank Carson's handled three cases where someone used a vehicle as a murder weapon so when he's called out to a multiple crash site involving a couple who'd been having a heated argument he's immediately suspicious Jenny Franklin was ejected from her vehicle and pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital but the boyfriend Patrick insists that her car crashed before he came around the bend in the road Frank's job is to find out whether or not Patrick's telling the truth the first step is to figure out how fast his car was going before it went off the [Applause] road the skid marks left by the boyfriend's car are the Silent Witness Frank measures the marks and he finds they're 63 ft long long he applies a little bit of math and he knows Patrick was going 37 mph even if he leaves the Collision scene Carson still has a lot of work to do to figure out why Jenny lost control on the curve but first he needs more information on Jenny and Patrick's relationship and he gets it when he conveys the tragic news to Jenny's parents Frank becomes even more suspicious of Patrick Hall's story you can't believe him between the girlfriend's family and the boyfriend they've been fighting recently they were fighting just today and they explained to me that there had been some arguing and that they had their own suspicions that again this wasn't just an automobile Collision did anyone see the accident they didn't quite believe the story that I was relaying to them that the boyfriend had told me you look at him you look at him I have already talked to him he stayed at the scene he told me pretty much what I just related to you they've never got along well he must have run her off the road investigators obviously can't let their emotions overrule the fact and right now there's no real proof that Patrick Hall caused his girlfriend's car to crash he should be in he should be locked up typically statistically our fatal collisions happen at night they happen within a short distance of where the person lives and there's some kind of excessive speed involved so this all made it also look like and there were skid marks on the road way to indicate that the path of travel of her vehicle indicated that she had left the roadway for all those reasons it looked on that blush as just a a typical Collision cuz all those facts were there but that's again you have to look at all aspects of these collisions and not just take one part of it and run with it even an experienced crash investigator can draw conclusions when they first roll up on a crash scene they see a narrow winding road cars in the middle of the road all overturned and a warning sign an advisory sign that tells people there's a problem there's you you need to slow down for some reason unfortunately sometimes drivers don't make that connection you got a warning sign says 25 it's there for a reason it's so you slow down to give you a little bit of time to react to hazards in front of you that because of the winding narrow conditions might not be visible early [Applause] on if Hall bumped Jenny's car there should be evidence on one or both vehicles the first thing I look for in a case like that contact between two vehicles you look for some kind of evidence transfer and the most typical thing I find in these cases is paint transfer look at the boyfriend's car there's no red paint on the front end the evidence suggests the two cars didn't actually make contact but Frank's got to take it a step further he's got to figure out exactly where on the road Patrick's car was when his girlfriend's car came into view Frank NOS Hall was driving 37 mph when he saw his girlfriend's car it took him about 2.5 seconds to react that takes him 137 ft behind the start of the skid marks on the other side of the curve in other words Patrick could not possibly have tried to bump his girlfriend intentionally because he started hitting his brakes over 100 ft before he even got to Jenny's car this physical evidence is clear I was able to figure out that the boyfriend could not have run into her vehicle was too far behind her as a matter of fact didn't even see the Collision when it occurred which tended to prove the boyfriend's story that he comes around the curve and there's a car in the roadway and he swerves to avoid it I am a father okay so no you're not your Frank can now say exactly how and why Jenny's tragic accident occurred after an argument with Patrick she rushes out of the house to pick up her daughter she's driving too fast for the road she's on and has not fastened her seat belt at a particularly sharp Bend in the road she simply loses control of her car she hits a tree and begins to rotate because she is not buckled in she is ejected and the force tears her aorta a fatal injury just seconds later Patrick Hall rounds the curve and has to avoid hitting both Jenny and her car sending his own car out of control and onto its side no charges were filed against Patrick Hall we may never know for sure what caused this woman to lose control on this road in this particular instance you know what though speed played a big role she was going too fast on this road for these conditions not a good thing another thing that played a role was her attitude her distraction she had her mind on something else she was upset when you're upset when you got your mind on something else when you when you'd rather be doing something other than driving it's time to pull over and do that something else driving demands your attention pay attention to the driving task or pull over until you can next can a damaged Fender and a smear of rubber tell investigators what triggered a deadly tractor trailer crash that has left two drivers [Music] [Music] dead you know being in heavy traffic is bad enough but being behind a tractor trailers where a lot of drivers are uncomfortable there's a US Department of Transportation survey that says one in four truck drivers reported falling asleep behind the wheel in the last month some of them twice now if a driver was to fall asleep drift off the roadway and then try to suddenly correct back onto the road he can jack knife his truck and even roll it over causing a pretty substantial pile up for investigators that's one possibility of a crash involving a tractor trailer and three cars Jeff and Monica Lee are fed up with City living contemplating a move to the country they spend their evening searching for a new home it was very nice I I just were able to trve you don't mind driving come on returning into town late one night they find themselves beside an 18-wheeler driven by experienced trucker Bill Halliday then without warning disaster strikes within a matter of seconds the 80,000 lb rig skids across four lanes of traffic striking three cars two drivers are killed instantly when their vehicles collide headon with the truck Jeff Lee's SUV however is only slightly damaged as it collides with the truck's back end he and his wife suffer only minor injuries and are taken to the hospital truck driver Bill Halliday also walks away unscathed by examining the vehicles at the scene they tire marks and the scattered debris accident investigator Brad Muer and his team H to solve the mystery of what suddenly caused this tractor trailer to lose control the victim's cars offer the first clue they tell investigators that this crash developed very quickly in the curb Lane there was a set of skid marks that were left by the car that was the most seriously damaged which was the one that came to rest in front of the truck and that shows me that the driver of that car saw something happened in front front of him to the point of panic breaking where he applied The Brak suddenly enough that tires locked and he skid and then suddenly this transport truck was on top of him the other driver coming along there was no reaction apparent by his actions nothing that I could see that indicated he knew anything was coming until suddenly this transport truck appeared in front of him and he was in a serious crash the initial roadway evidence seems to suggest that holiday's truck triggered the accident but Brad mure knows there's a lot of work left to be done people driving by a crash like this are going to see the truck and the car is all tangled up and they're going to probably assume oh the truck driver was going too fast or been driving too many hours maybe he was on some sort of drugs but it could be a number of other reasons that could have caused this crash somebody cut the driver off any number of things could have happened these guys are going to have to sort out the human the vehicle the environment HV to figure out how this crash happen the most puzzling question facing investigators involves the fourth vehicle in this crash the leaves have been taken to the hospital although shaken up their SUV tells investigators they experienced only a minor Collision unlike the drivers who were killed in the crash however there is no doubt they played an integral part in this deadly chain of events and investigators need to determine exactly how they were involved and it would seem a logical thing of well why keep the road closed and do all this investigation when you know you could just go and talk to these people and they could tell you what happened well experience tells us that people that are involved in in crashes let alone very serious crashes they don't see everything that's happening there so we have to do the investigation so we can try to get the physical evidence to speak to us so Brad how do you figure the uh SUVs tied into this whole wreck well I'm just uh looking at the damage here now to compare it with the transport truck just trying to determine whether This SUV hit the transport truck causing this unfortunate series of events or whether it was the transport truck that hit the SUV and was the causational factor so the physical evidence here is going to give you the clues you need to really make sense out of this huh I'm hoping that's what'll happen by comparing the damage together with members of his team Brad mure is trying to turn back time in an effort to determine which vehicle was at fault the answer to that question could have life-changing ramifications for one of these drivers he needs to know what happened in the crucial seconds before the tractor trailer lost control finding rubber transfer on the right front fender of the SUV he hopes to match it with the left rear tires of the tractor trailer a careful comparison will tell him who hit who and when and ultimately which of these drivers initiated the crash with a truck driver looking on Brad's team makes a startling Discovery the rubber transfer on the SUV is higher off the ground than the truck tires themselves meaning that the rear tires of the tractor trailer were actually off the ground when they struck the SUV so you figured out how the SUV was involved in this now I have the impact between the truck and the SUV was just down here where Mark is standing and it all started right over here where we first see the tire marks on the road where the truck is in that hard left swerve so as the truck's going through here we only see one set of tire marks so the there's some Dynamics the loading yeah as the truck swerved hard to the left it's starting to tip over leaning on its right side which puts its left tires up in the air and that's where the impact occurred between the truck and the SUV the tire marks show the truck was already out of control when it came into contact with the SUV investigators now know that Jeff Lee must have endured a few frightful seconds unsure whether he or his wife would survive so you got the left side of the truck off the ground as it's starting to climb over the hood of the SUV that must have been no fun for those guys yeah I wouldn't want to be him he had no choice but to follow the truck right through the crash roadway evidence has given investigators a crucial timetable of events leading up to the crash they now know the truck began to fishale First its rear wheels becoming airborne and striking the fender of Jeff Lee's SUV helpless to regain control of his car Lee is literally dragged into a scene of total Destruction miraculously he and his wife escape with their lives an 880,000 lb truck has swerved across four lanes of traffic hit three cars and killed two drivers the ad scen evidence tells investigator Brad M that the truck lost control first so Brad's going to have to focus on the activ activities of the driver Bill Halliday now holiday is an experienced truck driver still in all one of the things Brad will have to consider is that fatigue may have played a role in this crash unfortunately most of us don't realize how severely we can be affected by fatigue you need 78 hours of sleep without it reaction times can be tripled lapses in attention and judgment in fact you can act as if you were legally drunk in these 20 years as a truck driver Bill how has enjoyed an impeccable safety record until now immediately after the crash he willingly accompanies the investigators to an interrogation conducted by a detective with the Ontario Provincial Police well I reported the terminal on my starting time and I picked up my unit did my pre-trip inspection then I left to make my deliveries I made my first delivery on my way to my second one on the highway I heard a loud bang and the vehicle swerved drastically to the left he testifies that right before the crash he heard a loud bang this driver described something happened very suddenly bang it's all over with but that's his perception sometimes perception is clouded by the events in this case he may have actually had something that happened very suddenly and that is what he recognized happened on the other hand it may have been developing slowly over time and he didn't notice it for some reason he was tired he was distracted whatever it happened to be either way it didn't leave him much time to react a driver suffering from fatigue could be startled by a collision with debris a mechanical failure or an engine backfiring and suddenly lose control and if the driver falls asleep even for a moment the results could be catastrophic just maybe we could have a look at your log book however diagnosing fatigue hours after the crash is almost impossible truck drivers are required to keep a detailed log book their hours behind the wheel rest stops and meal braks must all be accounted for the log book is a crucial piece of evidence for investigators trying to determine if fatigue is a factor however it's a source of frustration that some of the information police need is seldom [Music] documented when looking at a driver's log book it'll tell me they're on duty hours which is essentially when they're around the truck maybe while it's being loaded their driving hours their sleeper birth hours but what it doesn't tell you is when they're off duty for say a couple of days before they're into drive for their block we don't know what they've done on those days it doesn't tell us how much sleep he had the night before it doesn't tell us how much sleep he's had in the last couple of days before we don't know where he's been what he's been doing you know might have been very physically active in that period of time we really don't know one in five crash is a result of driver fatigue someone tired behind the wheel this thing called micro sleep has word micro in it it sounds small but it can have really big consequences you're driving down the road Road you doze off a little bit 1 second at 60 MPH that's 88 ft you cover a lot of distance and a little bit of time so as you can see even a short period of time in what effectively would be a micro sleep can be pretty devastating this effect tends to be greater with novice drivers than experienced drivers but both types have this lasting after effect a fog a haze if you will that may last for a little while micro sleep is not a small problem it could be a really big problem but after several days examining holiday's driving routine and service records investigators come up with nothing that suggest he was suffering from fatigue he was in fact fully rested and had just begun his shift when disaster struck investigators are struggling to find a reason why an experienced driver would suddenly lose control of his trailer turning again to the driver's version of events they begin a search for the source of the big bang that bill Halliday says immediately preceded the disaster they have no choice but to examine the entire truck piece by piece well we had Chris fos our forensic mechanic look at the truck it was logical to bring him into the investigation to try to look at the truck and see if he could find what caused the bang or may have contributed to or cause this crash so he really has a good idea what separates mechanical wear or wearing out Parts versus something abnormal from a breakage or metal fatigue or some other kind of failure or flaw in the manufacturer of that part yeah we're going to start with the front cuz that's what controls the basically the whole steering of the whole unit uh is done with the two front tires and the whole assembly at the front so um we're going to come up front and kind of rule this out it's going to be a major part of the investigation it's going to be the front end so we want to make sure everything's intact and everything's working properly and so we start here at the spring assembly Sha the U bolts um make sure everything's intact and tight Chris fold's expertise allows him to quickly narrow in on a fractured piece of metal connected to the truck steering mechanism he determines that the fracture was not the result of the crash but actually occurred without warning just seconds before the driver lost control Chris did a lot of work combing through the whole front of that vehicle and ultimately at the end of his investigation and his examination of the parts the determination was that this piece of the steering the the drag link had broken at the steering box and when that happens the the driver essentially has a steering wheel in his hands that's useless it doesn't afford him any marginal control it gives them nothing the front wheels are subject to steering any direction that they want to go it uh wouldn't be caught by the the driver on his Circle check or mechanic on an annual basically where this is failed is the inside of the output shaft but unfortunately it's covered by the arm so by a close examination you wouldn't be able to see it it starts as a hairline crack and and eventually gets moisture behind it and rusts and leads to a failure it's not something that can be seen and it is a very rare type of failure accident investigators use their expertise and resources to find the root causes of violent collisions so that injuries and deaths can be avoided in the future when a mechanical failure is found to be the culprit that routinely alert agencies that can order inspections or issue recalls however the failure in this case is so unique that it is unlikely to ever be seen again for Brad mure this is the closest thing he has seen to a true accident where no one is at fault there are very very few crashes I've ever investigated that fit the definition of accident and and I suppose this is one that's probably the closest to that because you have a driver driving a truck that you know appears to have been well maintained uh conscientious driver in his inspections and we have this crash and and it really seemed to be one of that would come as close as you can to an accident with the inspection of the truck complete investigators are now able to say exactly how this crash unfolded Bill holiday's tractor trailer is southbound in the curb Lane while an SUV rides just off his rear wheels suddenly the trailer starts to fishtail eventually lifting its rear wheels off the ground the wheels hit the SUV as the truck begins to cross into oncoming traffic the truck plows into the first Northbound car instantly killing the driver the driver in the second Northbound car no doubt sees the catastrophe unfolding and Slams on the brakes but it fails to stop in time and he is pushed off the road neither of these drivers stood a chance against 880,000 lb of metal Brad was able to show that the SUV was initially struck by the truck and was dragged into oncoming traffic the couple in the SUV miraculously survived which left the driver of the truck facing blame but in the end his impeccable driving record Remains unblemished the crash was triggered by a mechanical fluke that was not the result of a manufacturer error or maintenance oversight there are two types of things going on out there crashes and accidents accidents can't be avoided they're unintentional events no matter how many times you inspect the truck you do the maintenance do all the things you're supposed to do on that truck sometimes something happens to you just can't anticipate so how do we avoid crashes we give those drivers some room we give them space to stop we don't cut them off they're 880,000 lb running down the road you're about 2 3,000 lb who's going to win that battle give them some space give them time to react we'll all go home safely [Music] is anyone here police find the body of a man lying in a ditch 60 ft from the wreckage of his car had a few pieces of plastic tell investigators what happened I've got a fail to remain here and I need to investigate this further then in Maryland the driver of a pickup truck turns a holiday celebration into tragedy for a grieving family surviving the wreck he seems to Simply vanish Into Thin Air still has some potential to kill again and in New Jersey a young girl is killed crossing the street can her remains tell investigators who dealt the Fatal blow every year violent collisions kill 40,000 Americans and injure another 3 million but there is no such thing as an accident every Collision has a story as unique as the people involved Rusty hate is a leading Authority on accident construction he trains investigators around the world to read the clues and solve the Mysteries accident investigation is one of the more challenging assignments in police work there's not a lot of folks that'll stay with it for very long and there's a good reason for that these dedicated professionals can be in the middle of a family celebration a holiday gathering a a birthday party and the next thing you know they're called out to handle a really messy situation on the highway while the rest of us can stay with friends and family these are the folks that have to go out there and pick up the pieces of a tragedy on the drive home Michael Richards and his wife Sandy are still reeving in the glow of a lavish company party thrown to celebrate the holidays and ring in the New Year leaving the party late they've left themselves only a few hours to prepare for the arrival of their daughter and two grandchilden early the next morning but as they wind around a bend in the road their attention shifts to a pair of headlights that blind their view there is no time to react and in a heartbeat it's over rescue workers arriving just minutes later work frantically to free the couple from their car knowing their lives hang in the [Music] balance barely clinging to life Sandy and Michael are rushed to a nearby hospital Rescuers then turn the scene over to Gary Lewis and experienced investigator with one of Maryland's top Collision reconstruction units his job is to find out EX exactly what would cause such a devastating wreck on a road with a posted speed limit of just 30 mph when I arrived at the scene of this wreck I found a pickup truck that was partially off the roadway the front end was off into the woods the back of the truck was still sitting in the westbound Lane of the roadway it was evident that the front bumper of the truck had what we call overridden the front bumper of the car in other words it wasn't a bumper to bumper hit but the bumper of the truck went over top of the the bumper of the car therefore a lot more damage was caused on the car both occupant had been transported from the scene and the driver of the truck was nowhere to be found an empty car at a crash scene fills investigators with Dread virtually any impact of victim experiences when thrown from the vehicle can produce a fatal head or spinal injury the way the rack happened theoretically somebody could have been ejected from that vehicle so members of fire rescue Personnel that arrived on the scene and police Department Personnel checked the surrounding area for several yards back into the woods to see if anybody had been ejected and they came up with nothing Gary Lewis can only assume that the driver of the pickup was able to walk away from the scene but he is certain that the driver is injured most likely suffering from shock so when someone goes into a State of Shock their vital organs are starved of oxygen they confused disoriented they can wander off in a worst case scenario should they collapse if Aid isn't brought to them soon enough they can die because they fail to get enough blood supply to all the internal organs of their [Applause] body working crashes almost always means working under the worst conditions nighttime damp wet snow rain you name it these guys are out doing it at night tonight it's it's a little cold it's a little bit wet there's crashes spread out all over the road and into the forest um we're out here in the middle of nowhere and we got a missing driver this guy could have walked off to get help could have walked off disoriented and in some injuries set in later and he may not make it out of the [Music] forest trying to recreate a crash from bits of debris and wreckage is always a Monumental challenge despite that fact Lewis needs to use what evidence remains to find out exactly what happened given the extent of their injuries Lewis knows he may never get the chance to ask the Richards what they saw the wrecks already happen when we get there so we have to deal with from Crash to final rest so we have the post crash energy and we need to to use that into some type of formula that's going to tell us what came into that wreck the car had been traveling westbound was hit and redirected back Eastbound and then knowing the weights you can calculate what kind of energy it would take to redirect that car back in the other direction a certain distance based on that I obtained an impact speed of the truck at a minimum of 46 mph using detailed measurements and a survey of the damage LS determines that the pickup truck was well over the speed limit of 30 mph at impact but evidence ripped into the ashal has more to tell about the pickups roll in the crash Gary you got night the weather against you what do you got in this one this pickup truck was traveling down this direction apparently lost it on the curve it came across the center of the road two vehicles impacted back here we have gouge marks in the road some straight marks coming out to where this car ended up and then the pickup truck rotates through the crash and ends up leaving these scrape marks to its position of final rest back here came over the wrong side of the road on the curb it looks like we got some to work with good luck to you gouges and scrape marks have clearly put the pickup truck in the wrong lane at the moment of impact but that's only one factor in the crash to determine if this was a criminal act Lewis needs to know what would cause the driver to lose control why was there so much damage done to the Richard's car and how was anyone able to walk away from a scene of such destruction a holiday celebration suddenly turns tragic for a middle-aged couple despite the heroic efforts of rescue workers to free them from their car and get them to the hospital their work was in vain Michael Richard is pronounced Dead on Arrival his wife Sandy remains in critical condition inspector Gary Lewis has determined that their car actually went from traveling forward at 30 mph to moving backwards in a fraction of a second unlike the driver of the pickup truck the Richard experienced an almost instant change of direction that produced massive internal injuries it's what police call a fatal Delta V all right Delta V the change of velocity for a given crash is really a way of rating the severity of any car crash we know it takes place over a certain fixed period of time what we're defining with the term Delta V or change of speed is how bad the magnitude of that change over that little period of time and that really leads us to an understanding of injury uh for example a car that's moving forward at some speed and is stopped in the collision and driven backwards has not only an increase change of speed compared to one that simply stops it a crash but also exposes the occupants to a greater potential for injury um as the change of speed increases over a short period of time folks get hurt more worse and worse in other words it's not direct impact with metal or glass that does so much damage to the Richard's bodies but rather an instantaneous change in Direction This sudden shift puts catastrophic force on the heart and other organs massive internal bleeding usually follows and this this leads directly to Michael Richard's death but the driver of the pickup is not nearly as vulnerable his higher mass and greater speed at the time of collision keep his truck moving forward still a collision at that speed is almost certain to cause multiple injuries and shock the driver's life is also in grave danger with a search on in Earnest Lewis gets two crucial pieces of information a witness reports seeing the driver flee from the scene just moments after the Collision another call to police reports a confrontation with the driver himself hey I'm almost Mo what happened what's wrong what happened look look I I got in a wreck and I I might have killed someone look look I got to go get off me his name is Reggie Dow and he's not in good shape the co-owner of the truck made a phone call to the police and reported that her boyfriend had come to her house taken her car pretty much by force he threatened her I don't know he was limping though I don't know he just came in here he was limping he said he might have killed someone he took my keys and then he left no she also told the police that he was drunk had been drinking and that he was high and said he smoked crack cocaine what we have is a person who's already been involved wck in one wreck and killed somebody with a vehicle now he has another vehicle and he's back out on the road again it's like a murderer walking away with a murder weapon he still has the weapon he's still in the the same condition he was and he still has the potential to kill again in a situation like this it would really help to know the extent of the driver's injuries does he need medical attention will he be looking for painkillers can he mask his injuries when he goes to see a doctor let's see if we can't help out thanks to the girlfriend we know the driver's hurt the question is how bad well we have ways of sorting that out a dummy with a little paint reveals what typically happens to someone in a head- on Crash the seat belts and airbags are going to work together to protect the head and upper torso but they do that at the expense of the lower extremities knees and ankles are still going to be Tangled Up in the underside of the dash and the steering column look at that ankle an injury like that when you make contact with the floorboard or the brake pedal it's going to hurt if this dummy could t he'd probably be asking for more than aspirin as police continue to search for the injured Reggie Dow Gary Lewis returns to his office to examine each vehicle's SDM [Music] module a vehicle's Black Box it tells investigators how a car was driven up to 5 seconds before impact from his analysis at the scene Gary knows the pickup was speeding at the time of the crash he hopes the SDM will explain how it ended up in the wrong lane taking the life of Michael Richards we see that this vehicle was operated at 50 at impact but 5 Seconds prior to that was going 71 mph and the driver was actually on the brakes for the entire 5 Seconds prior to the crash occurring the visibility wasn't 5 Seconds down the road on this particular stretch of road it happened around the curve so he wasn't reacting to the other car he was hitting the brakes to save [Music] himself this driver is operating recklessly without any regard for anybody else's safety or his own when he's at far the speed limit on that type of roadway this is a critical finding for Gary it concludes that the driver's actions were criminal and the data can be used as evidence in court the local hospital on the lookout for suspicious leg injuries notifies police that Reggie Dow has shown up in the emergency room unable to endure the Searing pain in his ankle he finally comes out of hiding to seek some relief we had information he was going to show up at the hospital and I met him there his left leg was extremely swollen the ankle and the knee were were really swollen from injuries he got in this wreck over here please help up on the bed could you re your shoe please his moods were just completely all over the board he'd go from sad to almost crying to angry ready to fight Reggie you remember what happened he said that he'd been involved in the wreck said he was driving his truck but knew nothing else about it didn't remember anything else about this wreck but admitted driving and then decided he didn't want to say anything and then the move would go back to angry again he he didn't want to talk at all then he would almost say that he was sorry and you'd see the tears about to start but they never came [Music] Gary's in a tough spot here he's got good physical evidence to work from he has information from Reggie's girlfriend that suggests Reggie's conditions impaired but she doesn't see him driving at the time of the crash he's got injuries on Reggie Reggie's injuries are consistent with the with the crash itself and the Crash Dynamics but they needs something more so we have driving Dynamics we have uh the data from the Reconstruction and the data recorder and that tells us more about the crash can relate that to the injuries but he's looking for that one last bit of evidence to tie Reggie back to this car in this crash suspicion is not enough he's going to need something more one of the first things I thought was fingerprints and then I realized well if it is his car his fingerprints are everywhere and I thought DNA because it's the latest greatest thing even more definitive than fingerprints so I thought perfect I I'll get DNA and then I realized well again being his car his DNA is everywhere and then it hit me except for one thing or one place and that is something that only comes out and only expect exposes itself in a violent wreck the airbags of the vehicle that airbag explodes right in front of your face your DNA is going to be deposited on it when you hit it whether you want it to or not yours and nobody else's unless there's two people in the car and they both happen to hit that bag that was my best shot I got a search Warn and seize that airbag and eventually got a match with the suspect's DNA with all of the information finally in hand Gary can now give a full account of what happened on a dark December night in rural Maryland Reggie Dow was driving his pickup truck at over 60 M an hour on a rain slicked Country Road losing control on a corner he applies his brakes and drifts into oncoming traffic colliding with a car being driven by Sandy Richards she and her husband suffer massive internal injuries when their car is instantly stopped by the impact and then hurdled backwards Michael Richards is pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital but his wife Sandy miraculously survives and eventually makes a full recovery despite Reggie Dow's efforts to flee the scene and deny any involvement in the wreck Gary Lewis was able to establish that Dow was speeding at the time of impact that he was in the wrong lane and that he was ultimately the cause of the crash Dow eludes charges of driving while intoxicated but indisputable DNA evidence leaves him little choice but to plead guilty to manslaughter by automobile and hidden run for Gary this all came together as an application of Technology he used his at scene work to figure out how fast the cars were going and how the people inside the cars move then he used more technology he used the DNA to figure out who was actually behind the wheel and lastly to get a picture of how this all this crash all came together he used some information from the airbag control module that captured some pre- crash information all of those together gave him an incredibly complete picture of this particular crash and led to 12 years for the driver coming up a morning commute ends in tragedy for a father of Three Investigators on the scene struggle to explain what suddenly said his car spinning out of control and next after a young girl is struck and killed while crossing the street two drivers deny any responsibility can her remains offer clues that tell investigators what happened [Music] for a driver seeing a pedestrian or seeing something in the road is not about visibility it's about what's called conspicuity something has to stand out against the background in front of you a lot of times what that is is movement you don't necessarily see The Pedestrian at first what you see is movement ahead of you when you see movement you can react to it you know there's a lot of complic a at night one of those complications is oncoming headlights it's amazing how much they can actually block accountant Benjamin Davis is coming back from an office happy hour he's worried because the gossip was all about company downsizing it's a real distraction and these SUV headlights coming at them don't help half a mile down the road on the side of the street Miranda Smith is in a hurry to get back home after a tough 10-hour shift at work she's almost there she just has to cross the street and the vacant lot behind it but Fate has other deadlier plans oh [Music] my when detective Andy Rich arrives at the crash site Miranda's body is in the middle of the road she's pronounced dead at the scene there's only one thing he can do for her now and that's to discover the exact circumstances that end her life at just 18 my main focus as a detective for the prosecutor's office is to determine if a crime has occurred first thing I did was go to the police officers who were already on the scene just to get a basic feeling for what was going on what happened the police officers tell him that it may be a hit and run the victim certainly seems to have been struck by more than one vehicle three Witnesses claim the first vehicle to hit Miranda Smith was a van which then took off in a hurry the driver of the SUV following the van claims the body came out of nowhere and fell onto his front hood after being struck and there's another driver in the mix who says he had to steer his car around the body when it ended up in the opposing lanane both drivers stopped while the van fled there are a few versions of what happened but there's only ever one version of the truth acent investigators run into some complex and interesting cases and this is one of them so Andy's going to have to look at the physical evidence from the roadway from the vehicle from the bodies and sort out what really happened using the objective information that doesn't have an interest in the case moreover if it's a hit and run time's working against him and he's got to work fast it was described as a van you guys put an alert on it yes we did we already have an alert put out on this the search is on for the missing van but at the scene Andy rich is concentrating on what the evidence can tell him for all accident investigators there is a simple rule of thumb anytime two objects come in contact with each other there's going to be a transfer of evidence however not in all cases are we going to find that physical evidence in this case we were lucky there was a lot of physical evidence first Andy has to determine whether or not the woman was hit in the first place and if so by which car and in what order my next step was would be to go see the body and determine what type of injuries at least on the outside that I could see see if they're consistent with Motor Vehicles if this woman was hit by a car how many different types of injuries am I going to see for example sliding along the ground head contacts from windshields and this way I can match up for example if I see glass in the in her hair I want to see which vehicle has a fractured windshield over the years crash tests like this one help us better understand what happens when a pedestrian is hit by a car applying crash test data is the job of biomechanics experts like Jud Welter so Jud what kind of injuries would you expect to see from a pedestrian hit by a car as you can see by the alignment of the bumper to your knee the most common area of injury is down into the lower extremities with the lower leg you see damage to the knee structures and as you get up to higher bumpers or shorter individual damage into the thigh the femur area as the severity increases the body will begin to hit further up onto the vehicle you begin to get head contacts up into the hood structures and get severe injuries as you get further up into the windshield area Andy Rich sees signs of injuries just like those but he doesn't yet know which vehicle hit her or how many times she was struck his findings here will be critical as they could lead to jail time for one or both of these drivers and's first move is to talk to the driver of the car so you want to go back to your car meet the officer over Benjamin Davis says he didn't see the teenager getting hit by any other vehicle come with me he says the body just appeared in the middle of his Lane and he barely missed it by swerving hard I swear I mean she like jumped out at me I barely missed her I I was just going I I was listening the driver the car told that it didn't hit the woman at all Rich needs to check out Davis's story first he takes another look at the body to see if it can offer up additional Clues and it does he finds a colored smudge on the woman's sneaker that looks very similar to the color of Davis's car his next stop is the car's rear end when I looked at the car I found what I believed to be blood stains in front of the rear wheel I also found bloody Tire prints four of them LED from the body to where the car parked it appeared just on on its face that this vehicle had contact with the body but just to make sure I measured the distance between each tire print and calculated what the radius of the tire would be that left it looked like that tire from the car made those four prints also the tire Treads that the pattern appeared to be consistent with what we saw on the roadway a good accident investigator has to cover all the bases even though some red substance may look like blood and he's got to be sure so he's going to run what's called a castle Meer test on the roadway and the bumper of the car to do a castle Meer test you have to mix together two basic chemicals pheny saline and hydrogen peroxide you get a wet swab you get it wet with distilled water and rub it over your suspect effect stain put the chemicals in contact with that swab and if it turns pink you have a positive test meaning that it's actually blood the test proves positive it is blood it's clear now that Benjamin Davis did not tell the truth I just tested your uh car it's got her blood on it you have something you want to tell me I pretty much just approached him and told him I know you're lying that we had Tire Prince leading from the body to his car and that we tested the surface of his car and it tested positive for blood so we knew that his vehicle came into contact with the body at which point the driver admitted that the body bounced into his car what happened what happened sir the body landed on my hood okay um while Davis is changing his story to Andy Rich the driver of the SUV is telling a police officer his version of what happened Happ body fill my hood the man hit her his story was he was just driving along going westbound when the body dropped in on him out of thin air and his story was that another car had hit him first projected the body up into the air and then it landed on his car any news about that vanent but there's still no sign of any missing van in fact there's no evidence at the scene that there ever was a van at all only the statements of witnesses who say they saw one we were unable to find any parts from another vehicle I started doubting then that there was actually another vehicle if it turns out there was no van it's either the car or the SUV that hit the teenager first Rich is still trying to figure that out but more than that he's working on the how and why she was hit in the first place the life of a bright 18-year-old named Miranda Smith has come to a tragic and sudden end on a busy roadway oh my God oh my God she was hit by at least two vehicles a car and an SUV each driver is pointing the finger of guilt at a mysterious van that fled the scene after hitting the girl accident investigator Andy rich is starting to piece this story together and he's pretty sure there was no van involved he knows the driver of the car is a proven liar now what he wants to do is figure out if the driver the SUV has a better grip on the truth Robert Johnson says he was simply driving home in his SUV after a visit to a friend's apartment he claims was behind a van when out of the blue a body landed on the hood of his SUV he stopped and saw the van Zoom away Rich turns to examine the SUV soon enough he finds a mark made by the young victim's clothes but it's not on the hood of the SUV it's somewhere much more telling and I found what fiber weave Impressions on the bumper is a pattern left on a car normally in the surface of the paint and there's no mistaking it for coming being produced by a set of blue jeans and we look at the angle that the fabric weave Impressions were and it was consistent with somebody standing that means for the van to have hit Miranda Smith first she would have had to land on her feet in front of the SUV before getting hit again an almost impossible scenario after 5 hours of Investigation rich is now almost certain there was never a van and that the SUV hit the young woman first but he needs more proof the next maj major piece of the puzzle will come with the results of Miranda Smith's autopsy so Andy wastes no time getting down to the morg for a consultation with medical examiner Dr Maryanne Clayton hi doc hi Andy I need to figure out whether she was standing when she was hit well I would say so uh she's got the typical upright pedestrian group of injuries first off she's got a lethal head injury impact left forehead pretty extensive skull fracture pattern under that and she's got your classic bumper fracture the left lower leg how high is that fracture uh 17 in okay it's exactly the height of the guy's bumper great good correlation thank you [Music] mhmc results Dr Clayton's report confirms Andy's working Theory the lethal head wound is consistent with a windshield strike to a standing pedestrian likewise the broken fibula bone shows that Miranda's legs were virtually cut out from under her by a fast moving vehicle exactly the same height as Robert Johnson's SUV after his visit to the medical examiner's office Andy had the SUV towed to this garage he wants to eliminate the hit-and Run scenario once and for all evidence from the fiber weave on the bumper and injuries to her body show that Miranda Smith was hit by the SUV while she was standing now he'll examine the blood spatter on the SUV that may turn out to be the most revealing evidence of all if we look up in here at these blood stains you see that they all have uh directionality it's a blood drop that has a tail to it and if we look at all of these tails and we trace the directionality of each of these blood stains we'll see that they all converge at this windshield wiper spindle here and you can see where the hair is deposited this tells me that the woman's head come into contact with this windshield White hyers spindle and then the blood the blood sprayed up in this direction causing these stains what we don't see is any indications that the body could have just dropped in from the sky for example getting hit by a vehicle first and then falling in if that were the case we would see a nice circular drop of blood without any of the Tails since that's not here uh we could pretty much eliminate that this body Just Dropped In the witnesses say there was a van but the physical evidence proves without a doubt that this was simply not the case in a serious accent like this the witness is first getting very much bombarded with emotions their emotions are heightening as a byproduct of that their perceptions are decreasing because it is a different part of your brain that incorporates emotions than what incorporates thought processes so as your emotions heighten your thought process actually become disorganized the circumstances surrounding Amanda Smith's death are now clear to Andy Rich first she was struck by Robert Johnson's SUV a collision that whipped Miranda's legs out from under her and flung her head first into the windshield the body was then thrown into the opposite lane where it was hit by Benjamin Davis's car but there is still something bothering Andy he needs to know why Robert Johnson didn't see the woman after all she was in the middle of the road and there's no indication of swerving or breaking this is a key question because it could determine whether Johnson's actions were Reckless and if criminal charges should be filed my main focus as a detective for the prosecutor's office is to determine if a crime has occurred I asked him if he had his headlights on if they were working and he said they were on and working but that's not enough we need to go to the physical evidence to see what the real truth is hey Andy what you got I'm looking at these light bulbs here I want to see if this guy had his headlights on or not at the time uh the crash so this is the marker light there a light on the side of the car and I'm looking at the filament here it looks like we got some hot shock this one is stretched out so this is telling me that this light was on at the time of the Collision but let's go a step further and look at the headlight okay this is unexpected here we're looking at some cold break here so i' suggest this one was off right this light this headlight was off but yet we had a marker light on normally you're both going to have them both on or off so we've got one light on and one light off right even though the driver told Rich that the SUV's headlights were fully on the evidence says otherwise next the investigator needs to determine if it was a case of driver error or if there was a problem with the electrical circuit this van had in the automotive industry what they call a multi-function switch now when you rotate this switch one click it turns the parking lights on when you rotate it a second click it puts on the headlights so what must have happened in this case since the circuits were working properly is the driver only put the parking lots on he only turned that multi-function switch one click after 7 hours hours Andy Rich has established exactly how Miranda Smith was HD and killed Andy Rich concludes that Robert Johnson didn't see the young woman until it was too late for two specific reasons one the headlights of his SUV were not on two he was blinded by the oncoming headlights of Benjamin Davis's car oh my God in the end no criminal charges were actually filed both drivers tried to get themselves out of any potential blame by making up parts of their stories well that may not be a crime it's not exactly honest either and it made Andy Rich's job a lot more difficult there are a number of reasons for pedestrian crashes on The Pedestrian side wearing dark clothing and entering where there's not enough light or where a driver wouldn't expect you is not a good idea on the driver's side there's distractions there's oncoming headlights a number of different reasons a driver may not readily see The Pedestrian entering the road one last thing that driver can do though is make sure the lights are turned on all the way but for the turn of a switch this pedestrian would still be [Music] alive next investigators trying to solve a single vehicle crash that killed a farther of three make a startling Discovery at the scene one that dramatically Alters the course of their investigation [Applause] [Music] the sharp steering maneuver right and left at low speed not a big deal you can recover from it at high speeds with a buildup of lateral friction that might be a little tougher to deal with in Toronto we have a single vehicle rollover that looks like it came from such a maneuver some sort of steering input investigators there trying to figure out why [Music] is anyone here anyone in a vehicle a 911 call leads police to an overturned car on a busy Ontario freeway the first officer on the scene confirms the worst the driver has been ejected his body crushed after being torn from the vehicle during the crash Lies over 60 ft away from what remains of his car the police soon confirm the identity of the victim his name is Paul Taylor a local father of three who left home early this morning hoping to avoid any heavy traffic heading into the city Brad mu is a senior Reconstructionist with the Ontario Provincial Police he leads a team of investigators who respond to fatal crashes on some of the area's most heavily traveled expressways their job is to solve a mystery why did this car suddenly roll over and who or what was at fault a single vehicle crash is the most difficult scenario they face they offer few Clues to help investigators determine what went wrong oh I first came on scene I was confronted with this vehicle that was rolled over on its roof partly on the roadway partly on the shoulder and it was obvious to me that he had rolled over and you know I I saw that because as I was walking down the ashalt there was a an area of scraping where the vehicle was on its roof and some paint transferred onto the road broken glass from one of the windows that that shattered upon impact when he rolled over and you know I had to look at this vehicle and there's no obvious cause on the roadway of why this vehicle rolled over um I had to you know get down and have a closer look at the vehicle for any damage or something that might have caused him to wind up where he did Brad and his team have just showed up on a rollover crash you've got somebody ejected they're dead and the problem with that is you can survive rollover crashes with a simple fix that would be seat belts seat belts keep you in the car the car protection the rollover that's an easy fix unfortunately folks don't take advantage of that and then rollovers they get killed [Music] now these guys have got an interesting crash they've got a very limited amount of evidence to work with one vehicle on scene we don't know if the guy was asleep at the wheel was run off the road what what happened they're going to have to sort out and they'll do it with what little they have to work with right now rollovers are extremely violent events if this one was caused by a mechanical failure it would be an easy thing to spot but nothing stands out instead it appears as if this car just suddenly became Airborne at 50 mph and began tumbling down the road a survey of the wreck offers little to investigators until Brad mu discovers an odd stain on the back bumper well looking at the back bumper of the vehicle I I noticed there was a paint transferring some paint chips on the back of the bumper now you know a vehicle of that age and of course in a city it's not always the Smoking Gun um you know there's a lot of cars just walking through any parking lot you'll see scuffs and scrapes on their bumpers it's a matter of trying if you can to isolate what would constitute fresh damage or fresh transfer versus something that's been there for a while it can be very difficult sometimes depending on the age of the vehicle fresh damage would suggest that another car was involved in this crash paint can be transferred from one car to another on impact but only further tests back at the lab can confirm this suspicion given the extent of the damage Brad concludes that the vehicle was moving at High speed and therefore it took several seconds to come to a stop whatever caused the driver to lose control took place at least 1,000 ft up the road so you got a pretty good crash scene here what have you got well I worked about 1,000 ft back up the road and I have a lot of nothing at the moment just some evidence from this car uh where it rolled over and some scrapings off the back bumper everything else is pretty much gathered in this scene here and that's all from this car so far in here it's all from this car I have nothing that indicates to me another vehicle was involved after an exhaustive survey of the crash scene beer opts to search for more evidence further down the road beyond the original point of impact and what he discovers dramatically Alters the course of the investigation when I walk down the road and I start to see you know a puddle of of antifreezer engine cooling on the roadway you know that could just be a rat hose letting go but then when you couple that with some some broken car parts in the same area right adjac to it it's it's not any one of those things by itself but when you couple all those three things together you know now I'm on the right Trail now I'm I'm pretty much I've got a fail to remain here and I need to investigate this further and see if I can identify that other vehicle that's no longer in my scene Brad mu's team has solved one mystery but are now faced with another evidence gathered at the scene tells them a car that rolled over and ejected its driver was actually struck by another car investigators now realize they are in a Race Against Time to find a driver who has caused one fatality and may still be behind the wheel they may only have a matter of hours before this driver disappears into a sea of commuters and is lost to them forever yeah no I'm on my way there now Paul Taylor a 36y old advertising writer was cruising along in the early morning hours hoping to avoid rush hour traffic into the city instead the father of three finds himself in a terrifying rollover that starts when he is bumped by another car evidence found at the roadside tells police the other car may have stopped briefly before fleeing the scene 20% of all accidents are hit in runs and it usually means a driver has been in trouble before but the shock and stress of being involved in a crash can have profound effects on even the most responsible driver is it possible to make Po judgment during a panic attack is the question is a good one because research shows us that when we're in Panic or in a heightened state of anxiety our emotional response bypasses our thinking brain we have a very old and primitive part of our brain called the lyic system that responds to fear and that part of your brain is designed for survival it's not designed to make good decisions or do any problem solving in difficult situations which is why people often say they can't think clearly when they're in a panic situation basically at that moment it's as if your mind is saying into your body you're in Danger get out of here and get out of here [Music] quick Brad mure returns to his office with a few specs of black paint a few drops of antifreeze and some pieces of plastic it might not sound like much but to an investigator it's almost as good as a footprint [Music] well I've got a gray piece of of a headlight that's the backing to a reflector lens for a headlight and it's got what appears to be a part number for a General Motors vehicle it's got the prefix GM which indicates to be General Motors R for right so I know it's a right hand headlight and it's got U what looks to be an eight-digit part number on here which I should be able to mail down to a a particular line of General Motors Vehicles it's a lucky break and within a few minutes Brad mure knows exactly what type of GM car initiated the deadly rollover crash that killed Paul Taylor if you think about what Brad and his team have been able to accomplish in such a short period of time it's pretty amazing that's what good accident investigators do they've taken the evidence from the scene and from that been able to sort out not only the make and model of the car but also its color now they're going to turn to us for help Brad's given the details of the investigation to the media they're going to flood the airwaves with this information and by the end of the afternoon instead of just a couple hundred police car is looking for the driver we'll have a couple million pairs of eyes peeled taking no chances that this car might slip off the radar investigators also put the word out to repair shops and dealerships in the area to report any driver seeking repairs to a damaged radiator at a right front headlight check check underneath there's some some sort of green stuff leaking yeah that shouldn't be a problem great here you go thanks less than 24 hours after arriving on the scene of a fatal rollover Brad mu was called to a garage that suspects they may have the car that initiated the crash Margaret door's vehicle undergos a quick inspection in the garage the telltale signs of damage M had anticipated are enough to secure a warrant to seize the car and to examine its SDM module or blackbox recorder I downloaded the airbag control module known as the SDM or sensing diag agnostic module for this vehicle it had a a bit of an event data recorder portion where it recorded some information for the bullet car or the Striking vehicle and that really helped me because it showed that the driver of that car or that car underwent a change of speed of about 7 m hour over about a tenth of a second 7 mph doesn't sound like a lot but over that little time period it was certainly a significant impact for the driver of that vehicle and and it really settled in my mind that she had know that she had hit H somebody because you know 7 mph in a tenth of a second that's a significant bump for her with the final piece of the puzzle in place Rusty and Brad can now replay the Fatal chain of events for Paul Taylor it should have been another routine commute into the city arriving early into work allowed him free time in the afternoons to help coach his eldest son's soccer team but shortly after he enters the freeway a car driven by Margaret door comes up from behind fast it makes contact with Taylor's rear bumper while attempting to pass the impact immediately causes his rear wheels to lose contact with the ground sending him spinning to the right when his wheels touch back down they dig into the ashphalt and hurdle the car onto its side sending it rolling thousands of feet past the point of impact unfortunately Paul Taylor is not wearing a seat belt in an instant he is launched out through the driver side window and into the ditch he dies from severe trauma to the head and massive internal bleeding Margaret door on the way into the city to take her final College exams fleases the scene but Brad mu discovers crucial roadway evidence and builds a drag net that eventually lands her in court Margaret door's clean driving record helps convince a judge that her poor judgment was not malicious instead of the 5-year maximum penalty she is handed a 90-day sentence and her license is suspended for one year the fact that investigators were forced to track her down after the crash still baffles Brad mure for some reason she just decided to fail to remain and and took off and essentially turn What Might Have Been A A minor infraction highway traffic act regulatory violation into this criminal fail to remain I I I just um I struggle at times trying to understand the human nature side of what motivates people to to just take off and leave somebody else in the ditch like that there are a couple of things we take away from this crash first it has to do with closing speed a car overtaking another one in a parking lot at a low speed let's say 10 mph doesn't leave much of a POS impact scene the crush scene's relatively compact now change that out into the highway where you have 60 overtaking 50 and you have to bring those cars to a stop at some point have a lot bigger crash scene after the actual CA car impact and a lot of times that can have disastrous results the other thing we take away from this crash has to do with good investigative technique and a little bit of forensic evidence here Brad did a great job taking little bit bits and pieces from the cars and brought it all together to solve a hit and run in a relatively short period of [Music] [Music] time every year violent collisions kill 3,000 Canadians and injure another 200,000 but there is no such thing as an accident every Collision has a story as unique as the people involved D Rusty ha is a leading Authority on accident reconstruction he trains investigators around the world to read the clues and solve the Mysteries accident investigators have to rely on physical evidence when they analyze a crash sometimes they're no eyewitnesses and even when there are they may not be a reliable source of objective information they're people and whether they're drivers or some independent witness they may have a distorted perspective on the crash they may not have seen the whole thing they may even be in shock they may also be trying to hide something and that's what Joe Hancock's going to have to figure out in this complicated case it's a warm summer evening on a quiet Country Road and 28-year-old Jan Taylor is slowly regaining Consciousness surveying the scene it's clear he's been in an accident but the details are still fuzzy as he gets out of his car he remembers that he was not alone in the vehicle his friend Carl Weinberger was in the passenger seat but suddenly he's dis disappeared searching the Tall Weeds along the roadside he eventually stumbles upon the still body of his longtime friend lying in a shadow ditch several meters into the brush Accident Reconstructionist Joe Hancock is immediately called in to head up the investigation Joe quickly learns that he's got one dead passenger on his hands and an injured driver it's clear that Carl Weinberger was ejected through the passenger window and most likely died on impact okay the driver Jan Taylor suffered only minor injuries but is sent to the hospital for overnight observation when I get a call for a single vehicle crash based on my experience I'm expecting to see one car into either a tree a wall a guard rail with one set of skid marks left side and right side that don't cross each other and looking at the roadway there are numerous Tower marks scuff marks curve marks change direction marks and debris in the roadway as Joe inspect the car he is immediately able to rule out a single vehicle accident behind the rear wheel on the driver's side is a long rip the metal has been peeled back and the rear bumper has been partially ripped off this vehicle I noticed severe damage along the driver's side of the car basically starting from the B pillar the pillar right behind the driver's door and going back towards the rear bumper I also noticed that the rear bumper was bent backwards towards the rear of the vehicle and looking at the car uh I saw saw that there was a paint transfer on the car there was some red paint transfer and also looking at the damage I noticed that the damage was from a movement going front to rear now Joe is certain he's looking for a second vehicle this is a clear case of hit and run in a hit and run every Mark every piece of roadway debris becomes a potential clue he knows right away that he's looking for a red car and because of the extent of the damage it must have been in a larger vehicle surveying the site for more clues he finds another piece of the puzzle one that confirms his theory about the second vehicle I noticed a large pool of fluid on the ground and looking at the fluid it uh appeared to be diesel uh fuel I noticed that it then from the pool LED off in a trail and it led down the road this fuel leak is a tremendous Stroke of Luck and Joe immediately orders a trooper to follow the diesel Trail at the Trail's End he finds a truck parked behind a gas station about 30 km away from the crash site he calls in the plate number and is told that the truck is registered to James Higgins they found out that the vehicle belonged to Mr Higgins and his address was very close by to that location James Higgins is at home when the officers arrive he doesn't deny being in a crash in fact he admits to panicking and fleeing the scene but he's not able ble to recall any details of the crash he just remembers hitting something on first blush the case looks like a cut and dry case of a DWI hit and run and James Higgins could be facing serious criminal charges they told me that Mr Higgins had admitted being in the crash but that he had panicked at the crash and went home and when he got home he was so upset that he had started to consume alcohol to calm his nerves uh the officers of course were suspicious and then brought him into the station but then a brief update from the hospital suddenly turns Joe's case upside down the officer who accompanied Jan Taylor to the hospital calls in with a different statement Jan is claiming that he was hit from behind and spun out but this doesn't make any sense to Joe the damage to Jan's car indicates that he was struck by a vehicle coming from the opposite direction certainly not from behind I would expect to see uh damage to the rear of the vehicle going rear to front and into the trunk compartment itself I didn't see that on this car what I saw on his car was a sideswipe type of impact from the front to the rear already I'm starting to think well the damage doesn't match up that closely but why would Jan Taylor say differently he has been just through a very traumatic experience he has lost a friend he could be confused he could be disoriented or he could be lying ding in his statement Jan Taylor claims that his car spun around and his friend was thrown out Joe knows this much to be true the body of of Carl Weinberger was found only a few meters from the impact marks but Joe has a feeling that Jan's not telling the whole story whenever a driver's statement conflicts with the evidence the crash scene takes priority Joe turns his attention back to the roadway and that's when he notices the Collision scuff marks there was a scuff mark indicating that a vehicle had slid sideways and rotated before the impact the roadway evidence clearly shows the car suddenly veering to the left and skidding to a complete stop across both lanes then there's a major impact probably with the truck the arc marks show that he then spins out again and back towards his Lane at which point his passenger Carl Weinberger is thrown from the vehicle this is a critical finding because it says to Joe that the car was out of control before the Collision but Jan Taylor is saying something elsewhere some of the considerations that are still on the table is that this is a crash that involves being struck from the rear right now the physical evidence is not leaning that way but I have not observed everything and I haven't done all the analysis necessary to come to that conclusion and speaking with Mr Taylor I'm really hoping to get more information about this crash to help me with my investigation Joe heads over to the hospital to interview Jan Taylor he first examines weinberger's medical report it's a tragic scenario that Joe has seen all too often the passenger Carl Weinberger had died of massive head injuries these head injuries are as a result of bouncing into the grass the passenger was not seat belted the lateral gravitational forces of the spin caused him to go out the passenger window and fall on the ground that's what killed him typically the patients that we see that are ejected from cars are among the most severely injured patients that we have most of them have severe head injuries and C those are coupled with severe typically Orthopedic injuries broken bones broken and legs and that is also coupled by blunt injuries to your liver and your spleen so those patients are the ones that we worry about the most the ones that we don't worry about are the ones that are in the car who have their seat bels on those patients are much less severely injured when Joe finds Jan Taylor he's still recovering from shock and has a nasty bruise on his chest the bruise explains why he'd survived the accident he'd been wearing his seat belt it's unfortunate that he hadn't convinced his friend Carl Weinberger to do the same Jo asks Jan to go over the crash for him one more time I did notice uh when I started talking with him that he told me the same story that I had heard over the phone I'm a crash Reconstructionist I wanted to make sure that he did understand that this crash did involve a fatality and he did know that his friend had passed away and speaking with him I noticed a couple things one his speech was slightly slurred but this could be due to injury but I wanted to make sure but I also noticed uh his eyes were a little glassy and that also there was a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage on his breath If a driver is involved in a crash that results in a fatality that driver must submit to a blood alcohol test Joe decides to wait for the results of the blood test before speaking to Jan any further although he suspects that Jan Taylor is hiding something he doesn't know what or why to find out more about the crash and Jan's statements Joe heads over to the impound to begin his inspection of the truck Jan Taylor's car is involved in a Ric hit and run police trace the missing vehicle and the driver James Higgins to his home Higgins admits he left the scene of the crash and immediately started drinking but he doesn't remember much beyond that Jan Taylor claims that higgins's truck hit him from behind but the evidence shows accident investigator Joe Hancock that Taylor's car got sideswiped and a set of skid marks suggest that the car was already out of control at the moment of the impact as the next step Joe heads over to the garage to inspect the impounded truck there was very little or any indication of impact at all to the front bumper there were still bugs on the front bumper if nothing else the impact would have wiped away the dirt and the bugs off the front bumper I then walked around the truck trying to look for any other damage and on the driver's side I did find a very long scrape and a series of scrapes down the side of the truck the scrapes had uh paint transfer from a greenish type vehicle also looking at the scrape I noticed that in the middle of the scrape there was actually a perforation of the side of the truck and looking at that and looking underneath the truck I saw that that it actually punctured the fuel tank this truck does use diesel fuel it is starting to match up step by step by step item by item meanwhile James Higgins is being interrogated by a detective despite his spotty memory about the actual crash he may hold the key to some unanswered questions Mr Higgins told us that he was driving down the road and that this vehicle now Cuts him off he has to steer to the right there's an impact and yes he does leave the scene hegen story SNS up with Joe's opinion that the accident could not have been the result of a strike from behind and he adds one important fact he now admits that he was under the influence of alcohol when the crash occurred yes he is consuming alcohol and that could affect his men but the physical evidence is supporting what he told me given all the evidence and testimony so far Joe believes the scenario could have only played out one way Jen Taylor lost control of his car he then steered to the right but overreacted trying to regain control and spun out counterclockwise into the path of the oncoming truck as each step of this investigation revealed what really happened each time it convinced me that Mr Taylor's version of this crash was inaccurate if Joe's knew theory is correct it would be a critical turning point for the investigation as it suggests that Jan Taylor rather than Higgins could be held responsible for the accident next dispatch informs Joe that Taylor has been discharged from the hospital but that his blood test revealed he was over the legal alcohol limit with this new information Joe heads to Jan Taylor's house to question him once again problem how you feel meeting Mr Taylor at his house I then asked him a series of questions and also I let him know that I knew the results of the blood test and I knew that he had been drinking and speaking with him I wanted to know how much alcohol he had to drink and maybe try to convince him that I knew that alcohol was a factor in his case and talking with him at his house he then admitted that he had been drinking and that he had been drinking a couple glasses of beer and that he also might have had a shot of hard liquor after 20 days of investigative work officer Joe Hancock now feels he has a clear picture of what really happened the day of this tragic Collision appreciate it okay Jan Taylor and Carl Weinberger are on their way home from a bar when Jan suddenly loses control of his vehicle in spins out James Higgins is also driving Under the Influence he sees Jan Taylor's car and steers to avoid it but manages to catch the side rear end of the car sending it spinning like a top the impact causes Carl Weinberger who was not wearing his seat belt to go flying out through the passenger window he then lands hard in a ditch next to the roadway and succumbs almost instantly to head drama and massive internal injuries James Higgins in a panic takes off but leaves a trail of leaking diesel fuel from a rip in his gas tank the state attorney's office looks at the case and agrees that James Higgins is not responsible for the incident he's charged only with fleeing the scene of a crash the state attorney suspects that Jan Taylor had been drinking lost control and spun out into oncoming traffic Taylor is charged with manslaughter by automobile and homicide by motor vehicle while intoxicated however the jury finds Jan Taylor not guilty and acquits him on all charges what helped me in this case is that I talk with the family of Carl Weinberger I talk with the prosecutors and yes we answer their questions while the investigators were a B to paint a detailed picture of the accident the prosecution's case against Taylor was unsuccessful app sometimes accident investigators come to a realization that a case they're working on may never be resolved that's frustrating for the investigator moreover how do you explain to a grieving mother you may never be able to tell her all about the death of her child that's the kind of situation our investigator Robert Jones is dealing with here Moren Weller is in a fantastic mood she she's just finished her first week on the job as a house painter and this morning she's learned that she's been accepted into her Top Choice of colleges the money she earns on this summer job will help pay for the tuition in the fall as she packs away her tools for the day A co-worker asks Moren if she wants to stay for a drink come have a beer come on have a beer she joins them on the balcony for a few swigs of cold beer SP so yes but moren's been feeling tired all week and is eager to celebrate with her parents before she crashes for the night she takes one last Sip and heads out go 20 minutes later police get a call about a car lodged up against a tree in the middle of a field but the responding officer could never be prepared for the bizarre and shocking scene that awaits him Moren is unconscious and has been impaled by a branch she's still alive but her pulse is very faint and Johnson Mayfair and Johnson EMS requested stat accident investigator Robert Jones is immediately called to the scene the police department advised me that a branch had gone to the windshield of the car and the firefighter had to cut the branch uh away from the girl's neck the Medics are not optimistic they think the branch may have severed one of Marin's arm arteries and she's lost a tremendous amount of blood Robert's job is to figure out exactly how and why this freakish accident occurred his first step is to carefully examine moren's car I walked around to the front of the car to examine the front of the car it was lodged up against a tree there was some minor impact damage to the front of the car but it it didn't lead to any kind of significant speed or anything of that nature moren's car has left a clear imprint of its final moments Robert can see where she left the road traveled into the field and made contact with two separate trees but what puzzles him most is that there doesn't appear to be any signs of breaking or skidding the thing going through my mind at this point is what caused this girl to run off the road I didn't know at this point whether she had been drinking using drugs if she fell asleep it was extremely hot to state was 102° the extreme heat outside can clearly make someone tired but it's 6: p.m. it seems unlikely that sleep or alcohol would affect a driver so early in the evening Robert needs to find more clues to form a theory about what could have happened he now looks at the larger picture of the crash site he walks back along the road looking for anything that might help explain why Moren lost control of her vehicle but the road gives nothing away there's no indication of roadway debris or that another vehicle was involved in the crash there was no evidence on this vehicle whatsoever that she had been impacted or sideswiped by another vehicle Robert starts to get a sinking feeling that finding out why moren's car left the road will be a serious challenge so far he has absolutely no clues I had nothing to go on at this point this girl just ran off the road for no reason Robert asks for the car to be impounded he want to check for any mechanical failure that could explain the crash then just as he is finishing up with the crash scene Robert receives a call from the hospital he isn't surprised to hear the news I received a phone call from the hospital advising me that Moren had died from the injuries to her neck caused by the branch severing her neck since there are no forensic Clues Robert requests a blood test and a full toxicology report on Morin's body he needs to determine whether she was under the influence of alcohol or drugs prior to the accident then he's faced with the tragic task of informing Mrs Weller that her daughter is dead this is the most difficult part of the job letting the relative know that their loved one has died I never know what to expect you know I don't know if they're going to be angry or just not even not even believe as soon as Morin's mother opens the door she knows that something is wrong this is not the first time she's had a policeman come knocking at her door with terrible news yes I am Morin's mother was devastated by the tragic news and when I tried to explain to her a little bit about what happened in the accident For What Little that I knew at that time Morin's mother informed me that she had lost a son about 3 years ago in an auto accident no that was very difficult to deal with Mrs Weller is grief stricken and and unable to provide Robert with much more information than he already knows Moren was simply on her way home from work I'll call you in a few days and unfortunately Robert is in a similar predicament what made it even more difficult at DIS point was that I didn't have any answers for Mrs Weller after a full crash scene investigation Robert is no further ahead on this case than he'd been at the start what could have caused a young healthy woman to just drive her car off thead Road surely she saw the trees but why hadn't she tried to avoid them accident investigator Robert Jones is faced with a mysterious and strange crash site on the way home from work Moren Weller suddenly veered into a tree impaling her neck and severing a major artery unable to survive almost total blood loss she dies within the hour but why did Morin's car leave the road in the first place at this point I have no no answers in my investigation I'm still looking for any clue that could lead me to what happened here my next step is to go to the garage and conduct what I call a vehicle autopsy I will examine the vehicle from top to bottom look for any kind of mechanical failures anything that could give me some answers in this investigation but the only information that Robert can take away from the mechanical inspection is the approximate speed in the fact that Moren was not wearing her seat belt this opens up another possibility maybe the crash was deliberate anytime there's a single car accident such as this one and the driver is killed I always have to consider suicide Robert will need to meet again with Mrs Weller to see if he can gather more background information on her daughter this second meeting is calmer but still heartbreakingly sad Mrs Weller tells Robert that morine was a happy girl she had many friends had been accepted into the University of her choice and was excited to spend the summer working at the house painting job she had no medical problems and was certainly not suicidal she tells Robert that if Moren ever drank it was the occasional beer not only because she was underage it just wasn't who she was she informed me that Moren had just taken a job painting houses for a painting company so I'm going to find out what her condition was during the course of the day to see if there's anything they can tell me about this investigation Robert drives to the work site and moren's bosses are stunned by the news his first question is whether she had been drinking before she left for home thead they tell Robert that they ended their shift with a beer but insist that Moren only drank a few sips so now my investigation reveals that Moren wasn't depressed she wasn't taking any kind of drugs or medication uh there's there's that possibility that maybe she had a little alcohol but she wasn't a heavy drinker normally in an accident investigation there's physical evidence there there's everything you need to put the pieces back together and put the puzzle back together and everything usually fits you usually have all the answers within a few days but in this case I don't by now it's 5:00 p.m. in the afternoon about the same time that Moren left her job the day before Robert decides to head back out to the crash site as he examines the scene a second time Robert realizes that the son may have blinded Moren and could be a factor in this case I walked around and I started thinking wow the sun shining in the windshield of the car it's a possibility and it's it it's something I'm I'm considering at this point okay so you're driving down the road and the sun's really bright in your eyes what do you do well you can start with sunglasses sunglass is a good help but that's not enough the sun's really low how about the visor now that makes it so you can see could the Sun have played a role in this crash could it have blinded lady when she went into the tree it's possible Robert's going to have to consider that as one of his explanations in this crash the next morning Robert returns to the hospital for the toxicology report as he suspected there is no evidence to suggest that Marine was impaired there was no drugs no medication just a slightest bit of alcohol which would indicate that she only had a few sips of beer but there was something to CAU my attention on the report it was a EBV virus and it was puzzling to me I had to find out what that was I've seen bar virus is it's like a lot of diseases there's different ways it's expressed and um one of the common things that causes is mononucleosis and it's something that teenagers get a lot because you generally don't develop it unless you run down to begin with and you know it starts out with a sore throat you really can't stay awake it's something you could easily ignore until you really are very ill this is a stunning Revelation a person suffering from mononucleosis would have a much greater likelihood of falling asleep behind the wheel and not waking up once the car went off the road when I found out what EBV was mononucleosis which is a sleeping sickness finally the final piece of the puzzle fit together and the whole investigation has been concluded after a difficult 10-day investigation Robert can now paint a clear picture of the events leading up to moren's fatal and tragic crash probably a week or so before Moren Weller receives her College admission letter she contracts the EBV virus her new job painting houses is hard physical labor outside in the burning Sun and she puts down her increasing sense of fatigue to the long hours but on that final day the virus takes hold of her weary body completely on the drive home the sunshine acts as a powerful sedative for marine coupled with her long day and a few sips of beer after work she nods off at the wheel and quickly falls into such a deep sleep that even when her car rolls off the roadway she doesn't wake up she hits a tree and one of the branches severs her cored artery Moren Weller dies within an hour from almost total blood loss Mrs Weller remains devastated by the loss of her young daughter but she takes some comfort in finally putting to rest the question surrounding her untimely death once I found out about the mononucleosis I had the answer I was looking for I was able to go back to Mrs Weller and tell her what my findings were and what caused this Collision to occur a good accident investigator is kind of like a jack of all trades he needs to have good police investigative skills have some understanding of some of the basic Sciences like physics and mechanics but he's also got to understand a little bit about medicine because we know crashes can injure people but can work the other way around some sometimes the human factor and something about the body can lead to a crash on a hot summer morning Donald Morris takes the scenic route home from church his friend Valerie is following in her car behind him Donald has invited her over for lunch but decides to stop at a neighboring Farm first to buy some fresh corn just up the road Danny Carlton is helping his dad out for the summer here you go sir thank you very much you're welcome bye traffic is normally heavier on the weekend so Danny is expecting a busy day this afternoon but Danny could have never expected what would happen next accident investigator Frank Carson is on his way to the office when he gets the call about a pedestrian crash before he joined the police 9 years earlier Frank spent 8 years working as an EMS Personnel so he knows all too well how devastating this type of collision can be when a car hits a pedestrian you got uh 40,000 lb vehicle hitting 150 lb person and the winner is usually pretty clear when Frank arrives on the scene Danny Carlton has already been taken to the hospital the responding officer tells Frank that the victim has suffered some head injuries and serious trauma to his chest but as an accident investigator Frank knows that injury analysis is only one part of his job he will need to scrutinize every aspect of the crash in order to determine exactly what happened here what the officer told me was uh he had two witnesses uh one was walking down the street when the accident occurred and the other one was driving behind Mr Morris uh he told me that Mr Morris had carred running into the corn for saale stand and that's about all I had to start out with Frank soon realizes that the corn stand has been completely destroyed by Morris's car which now sits on top of the crushed table a few meters away Donald and Valerie are sitting on the lawn the officer tells Frank that the uninjured Morris has remained surprisingly calm since he got out of his car and has barely said a word people's reactions after they in a crash vary from person to person Donal but they're generally pretty easy to offer what happened in the crash do me favor Valerie could you go stand by your car when I interviewed Donald Morris he seemed a little bit out of it but it didn't strike me was being from alcohol or drugs he was confused he answered my questions but kind of had to pull the answers out of him by asking the appropriate questions the interview PLS along at a slow pace Donald tells Frank that he remembers seeing the corn sign but after that point he claims he doesn't recall anything until his friend started knocking on his car window do are you okay sure he was in shock from having been in a crash but his behavior just seemed a little bit different from what I'd seen in the past after you saw the sign then as part of his routine line of questioning Frank asks Donald whether he's taking any medication Mr Morris is very surprising and that he knew a lot about the medication he was taking and he knew the names he could describe him in detail when Frank recognizes the type of medication Morris has to take daily he immediately realizes that his investigation has taken a turn in an uncommon Direction when he questions Donald about his condition Morris calmly confirms to him that he is schizophrenic schizophrenic schizophrenia is one of a collection of conditions called psychotic disorders a psychosis is a condition where someone loses their ability to distinguish what's real from what is unreal and a person with schizophrenia generally has hallucinations uh that they hear voices there may be things that they see uh but any of the senses may be affected feeling pretty good yeah but like many other people living with his condition Morris holds a valid and unrestricted driver's license what's the last thing you remember for all this in most jurisdictions schizophrenics are considered to be safe drivers given of course that their condition is correctly medicated as an officer escorts Morris to a police car Frank turns his attention to the witnesses he starts with Valerie Barker Donald's friend Valerie told me that she had been following Mr moris and she said that he had been driving just fine for several miles and suddenly when they got towards the corn stand he just seemed to Veer off the road she didn't see any brake lights as soon as the crash occurred Valerie got out of her car and went over to see if she could help any bu and when she went to Mr morse's car he uh was wearing a seat belt he was slumped over in his seat seemed to be grogging just like he had just woken up and didn't know what was going on and what had happened to him listen Donald try to get out of the car okay where were you however the customer's account of the accident is a little different the man tells Frank that he heard Donald's car accelerate then saw him drive directly towards the corn stand the customer insists that Morris made no attempt to avoid the in fact he doesn't think the crash was an accident at all that was his impression of the crash that he did it on purpose she was concerned after this Revelation Frank is faced with one very odd possibility some possible explanations for the crash could include auditory hallucinations that tell the person to kill or hurt someone else could Donald Morris's condition have caused him to run over Danny Carlton deliberately Morris does not seem to be paranoid or aggressive at all he insists that he is very disciplined at taking his medication and that he has not experienced a psychotic episode in many years Mr Morris was was actually a very Cooperative um driver one of the more Cooperative ones I've dealt with with Witnesses offering conflicting versions of the crash Frank turns his attention to the roadway evidence the final resting point of Donald's car tells Frank that he was probably traveling well within the speed limit but the absence of tire marks on the asphalt confirms that Donald made no attempt to avoid the Collision usually when drivers lose control their vehicle or not paying attention to go off the road and either use their brakes or S because no one wants hit something while they're driving a car but he didn't exhibit that kind of behavior as he wraps up his investigation at the scene Frank receives an important pH call from the hospital I received a phone call from the hospital about an hour after I was on the scene the hospital Personnel told me Danny Carlton had in fact died from the injuries that he sustained in the crash how long ago when Donald's car violently collided with the corn standand the force was transmitted directly through the table and into Danny's chest resulting in massive internal injuries a few minutes after arriving at the hospital Danny Carlton dies from internal bleeding not that any crash isn't important to investigate but now someone's life has been lost and so that puts a little bit more pressure on you as an investigator to find out exactly how the crash happened why it happened first of all did Mr Morris do it on purpose the other possibility is he had a blackout maybe reaction from the medication he was taking maybe wasn't taking his medication properly because Mr Morris is uh being at fault for the collision at least at this point well he could be facing some pretty serious charges a boy who killed when a car leaves the road and crashes into the corn stand he's attending investigator Frank Carson learns that the driver is schizophrenic and suspects that the cause of the crash may have something to do with his condition when the first paramedics arrived on the scene Donald Morris refused medical assistance but now Frank notices a small laceration on his nose it didn't look like it was brand new it looked like it was about a day old so then I'm thinking that maybe he had some kind of trauma the day before when Frank questions him about his nose Donald explains that he had slipped the day before and hit his face on the kitchen counter and I asked him why he fell if he tripped over something he said no he just kind of felt dizzy and he fell and the next thing he remembered he was getting up off the floor so that leads me to think at this point that okay maybe he has an underlying medical condition that made him fall the day before and maybe he's having that same problem today in order to sort through the possible causes for the crash Frank convinces Donald to seek medical treatment and accompanies him to the closest ER at the hospital Donald Morris is admitted right away in seen by Dr Vanessa Brown the doctor quickly orders a blood test she wants to check for the presence of alcohol or drugs in the suspect's system but in order to rule out the other possible causes for the crash a number of other tests will have to be run one of the more important things I wanted to see from the blood tests was to check and see if Mr Morris's medication that he was supposed to be taking for his mental problems was at a nice therapeutic level meaning he was taking his medication the way he supposed to and they were doing what they were supposed to keep him keep him emotionally and psychologically level and able to function properly since he had fallen the day before in his kitchen Morris undergo a CT scan to rule out the possibility that any head injury may have caused his strange behavior in the meantime Frank meets with Dr Brown to discuss the results of the blood test that just came in well the test showed that the medication level in his bloodstream was appropriate and he hadn't been consuming any alcohol or any other drugs that might impair his driving those results rule out a psychotic episode and Frank is inclined to dismiss the deliberate hit Theory what's the side Dr Brown rules out the possibility that there was a complication with one of Donald's prescriptions none of the drugs he was on were known to cause blackouts anything that indicates the doctor was of the opinion that Mr Morris was just pretending that he didn't remember anything because he'd hit a pedestrian he had killed somebody and he just didn't want to accept responsibility for that I disagreed with that uh just based on my experience and dealing with people for the years I have I just had the impression there's something else going on this Mr Morris Frank goes to Donald Morris to ask whether he can remember anything else about the crash but the more Frank talks to him the more he's convinced that Morris is not lying about the blackout the doctors looked at that the doctor thought that uh he was just lying to me but when people lie their stories tend to change a little bit over time little details change but Mr Morris's story had been consistent every time I talked to him he told me the exact same story is did the witnesses which led me to believe that there's just got to be something else going on here what did your what did your test show anything there's Frank then tries to convince Dr Brown to refer Donald to a neurologist for more tests it's not an easy task Dr Brown informs him that Morris's CT scan revealed no abnormality and that she could find no medical grounds to explain the crash but Frank is persistent and pushes hard for the referral I explained to Dr Brown that this man is facing very serious charges motor vehicle manslaughter charges that can carry a very heavy penalty in jail time and it was my responsibility to do a thorough investigation and rule in or rule out the possibility of a medical problem can you run it okay okay we'll run finally the doctor agrees to schedule a full neurological exam for the next day and Donald Morris is admitted overnight Hi how are you doing the following morning Frank arrives at the hospital and meets again with Donald Morris I told Mr Morris that there maybe some other tests that he's going to go through to help tell whether or not he had a medical condition and what may have caused his blackout he claims he blacked out so can run some tests hopefully to see what caused that if indeed he did black out in one of the tests Donal is laid on a table as it is tilted up and down at timed angles to monitor his blood pressure and pulse the test is performed to detect a rare disorder that can have an effect over a person's blood pressure if Donald Morris has this condition this could confirm his version that he had suffered an unexpected blackout just before the crash Frank Waits anxiously outside the exam room when Dr Brown comes out with the results Frank breathes a sigh of relief his intuition and determination have paid off Donald Morris after the Tilt test get diagnosed with having a neuroc cardio Syncopy it's also known as neurogenic synop neurogenic synop is an extremely rare cardiovascular problem that has no relation whatsoever to Donald Morris's schizophrenia with a diagnosis in hand Frank can finally replay the events that led to Danny Carlton's tragic death on a hot summer morning Donald Morris is driving his car back from church while his friend Valerie follows closely behind suddenly due to a medical condition Donald wasn't aware of his brain sends a false message to his heart resulting in a sudden drop in his blood pressure as Donald passes out his car leaves the road and heads straight for the corn stand Danny Carlton suffers massive internal injuries and dies an hour later in the hospital Donald Donald are you okay unaware of what has just happened Donald slowly regains Consciousness with no memory of the accident this is a very interesting case a very special case first of all we have cases where people driving their cars drive off the road run into a tree and they're killed in the crash but we never know exactly what made them run off the road and run into that tree the interesting part about this is that we were able to find out exactly what caused Mr Morris's problem Mr Morris had an undiagnosed and unknown medical condition to him as a result of Frank's investigation no criminal charges were filed against Donald Morris and when Frank advised Danny Carlton's family of the cause of the crash they also decided not to pursue a lawsuit so he was not prosecuted and ultimately although it was a tragic case somebody did die uh I think that was probably the right decision to make for Mr Morris and for everybody involved when you're working a crash scene things aren't always the way they appear at first flush sometimes ACD investigators have to give that crash scene a second maybe a third look to get all the facts together and that's what Frank had to do in this case we can take that lesson to our own heart when we're driving pay attention to what's going on around you maybe you have to give something a second look drive safely [Music] [Music] [Music] a