The Traffic Accident Reconstruction Origin -Approach Angles Problem-

An Errant Piece of Evidence

This case involves a 1988 Honda Civic. The Honda drove off the road and hit a tree. The "tree print" in the front of the car is obvious and matches well with the height, width, and radius of the nearby scared tree. In fact tree bark is obvious in the contact to the front of the Honda. Intrusion into the front of the car measures nearly 2.0 feet. This damage was modeled as a "pole impact". It was computed as crush damage. Speed change was estimated to be in the 30 mph to 40 mph range for the vehicle. Both front seat occupants received serious injury, but survived the collision. It all seems to be a pretty simple collision- car runs off road and hits tree.

The question remaining is explaining other damage that occurred away from the exterior contact with the tree. Both B Pillar covers, on the interior of the car are damaged. This vehicle is equipped with a type 2 continuous loop seat belt. It comes up from the anchor into the return loop with the latch plate in between. From the return loop it goes down into broken plastic sleeve that is mostly cosmetic and runs vertically with the 'B' pillar.

This is the passenger restraint, nearly all the webbing is seen to be outside the sleeve and the sleeve is fractured open vertically.
This view shows the drivers restraint from the rear with lesser amounts of fracture, but the top of the sleeve is clearly broken out and the webbing has spooled up inside the sleeve at the retractor.

The questions are:

• Did this damage occur in this collision?
• If so, what caused this damage to the interior of the car?

A solution by Ed Phillips.

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