On October 1, 1980 I conducted my first investigation of a fatal collision. That was also my first day of employment with the University of Western Ontario Multi-disciplinary Accident Research Team.
At that time the “Research Team” had completed contracts issued with Transport Canada which involved them in the Multi-disciplinary Accident Investigation program. A new contract was going to involve the Team with a new Light Truck and Van (LTV) Study. The LTV study eventually continued for a period of 3 1/2 years. While the LTV study was being set up in the fall of 1980 the person who used to run its day-to-day operations, Len Thomas, had left the team and was replaced by Dr. Alan German. The overseer of the team throughout its inception continued to be Professor Edwin Nowak. Throughout my ten year involvement with the Team, Dr. Robert Green remained its medical consultant.
One might recall that in 1966 the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was formed and this coincided with the creation of Transport Canada’s Road Safety Branch. Jim Bancroft led Transport Canada’s Collision Investigation Division while Paul Marriner directed the Defects Investigation Division. The UWO team was to support the programs of both the Accident Investigation and the Defect Investigations divisions of Transport Canada. The UWO Accident Research Team was one of 10 similar teams based throughout Canada, essentially one team per province. In the U.S. NHTSA formed 50 similar teams, one in each state.
In 1980 Alan German and myself became the primary, full-time field investigators with the Team. We also had a full-time secretary. A part-time person handled some portions of the field work and conducted interviews of collision-involved persons. There also were periodic hiring of students from the Engineering Department primarily during the summers. There was also the involvement of “Fourth-Year” Engineering students who would be conducting various road safety studies incompliance with their final-year course obligations.
I recall on October 1, 1980 we obtained notification, possibly from investigating police or through Dr. Green, of the fatality of a young female driver of a Toyota Corolla. This had been a major frontal impact but there was an unusual injury to the back of her head which was perplexing given that there was no other impact and there was apparently nothing loose in the vehicle interior that could have struck her. I recall Alan and I drove out to the Oxford Truck towing facility on Highway 2 just to the east of London to conduct an examination of the Toyota. Alan had previously being involved with the Team’s MDAI program and he had also been involved in a seat-belt effectiveness study so he already had some experience with vehicle examinations. However this was my first examination of a serious collision-involved vehicle. While we examined the interior including its seat-belt we puzzled over how the severe head injury could have occurred. Dr. Robert Green had mentioned a “contrecoup” injury mechanism whereby a severe deceleration of head could cause the brain to pulled forward inside the skull such that the brain would be “torn” away from the back of the skull and gave the appearance of a blow to the back of a head. However, in Dr. Green’s view, this was not such a mechanism. After much deliberation we never came to resolve how this injury occurred. For many years, while discussing various matters, Alan and I would sometimes come back to that mysterious injury, sometimes thinking of new possibilities, especially as our experience in injury mechanisms grew. It was for many years after I left the Team that I would go back to thoughts about that initial investigation and what could have been the source of that head injury.
On one particular occasion, many years later, I happened to be watching the results of a typical crash test into a rigid barrier that was often conducted by NHTSA, Transport Canada, and others. The instrumented dummy moved forward in the vehicle interior and then sprung back and the back of the dummy’s head struck the interior of the left B-pillar near the seat-belt D-ring. The accelerometer data showed that this was not a minor impact to the back of the head and this was the eye-opening moment when I thought that I finally discovered how that young female sustained her fatal head injury so many years previous. That D-ring area in not protected and is stiff, perhaps because designers did not think this could be the source of a serious head injury. It just so happened that the investigation of my first fatal collision proved to be the one that was most difficult to unravel, more than the thousands of collisions I investigated since.
It goes to show that when are perplexed by some investigative mystery it might take a long time to finally solve it. But there are also those times when those mysteries are never solved.