The Traffic Accident Reconstruction Origin -ARnews-

Re: Our Responsibility

rod macdonald (frmrmtr@aol.com)
Thu, 4 Sep 1997 06:12:53 -0400 (EDT)

As a "reconstructionist" my responsibility is to reconstruct a collision - determine based on all the evidence available to me what happened, how it happened, and why it happened to the best of my ability, and do it impartially.

As a police officer my responsiblity is to determine how the laws of my state apply to what I've learned and who they should apply to, then forward the whole mess to the District Attorney with MY recommendations concerning what he should do and who he should do it to. And from there it has to potential to go through judges and juries, civil and criminal, ad nauseum, ad in finitum, until a thousand lawyers and hired guns and other experts with a hell of a lot more experience than me which ain't hard and retired little old ladies off the street who couldn't get out of jury duty have sifted though it and turned it all inside out and upside down....

and it terrifies me so to think of my work going through that process at this early stage in my career that I can't imagine ever if I'm lucky enough to do this for a hundred years, expressing a final opinion about a case, as either a reconstructionist or a police officer, without knowing I've based that opinon on see paragraph 1 above: "responsibility of a reconstructionist...."

now as an average guy on the couch sippin a beer an watchin the tube - I agree the guys are out of hand - obvious... now can we send this all off the the editorials page and somebody find me stiffness coefficients for a Mercedes 600 sedan....

rod macdonald
frmrmtr@aol.com

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