Brach Matthew - Vehicle Accident Analysis and Reconstruction Methods, Second Edition.

Vehicle accident reconstruction is a discipline which has developed and grown enormously over the (nearly) forty years that it has been my good fortune to be involved in it. In the early 1970s the methods were crude, being largely confined to simple calculations on skidding and stopping distances and on how far this vehicle or that person would move in a given time. It was as well that the calculations were simple, since slide rules were the only practicable portable calculator, and personal computers were an improbable dream. In those days the ordinary practitioner knew very little about such things as tire dynamics, road surface properties, vehicle crush behavior, or what happens when a pedestrian is hit by a car. But gradually accident reconstructionists picked up knowledge on these matters from various fields of learningvehicle and highway engineering, safety research, driver psychology, trauma medicineand at the same time the means of handling it, in the shape of calculators, computers, and eventually the internet came into being. A good example is the CRASH program, developed for NHTSA as a road safety research tool. Although by around 1980 it was being recognised as something that reconstructionists could use, it required a mainframe computer, and even then there were no graphics, so the scope for misusing it was considerable. Yet by 1990 a number of versions of it, complete with graphics and much greater flexibility than the original, were available for use in portable personal computers.

But a problem throughout this period was how to get a deep but practical knowledge of what was an ever-widening field of study. The admirable manuals published by Northwestern University both then and now covered a great deal of the field at a practical but relatively shallow level, being primarily directed at police officers rather than engineers. Anyone wishing to delve deeper was confronted by daunting volumes on the rigorous analysis of tire and vehicle dynamics, or the construction of highways, or the medical details of occupant and pedestrian trauma. One response was the advent of accident reconstruction societies and conferences for the dissemination of information and pieces of research: as far as I can ascertain, the first society with a wide reach was IAARS, founded in 1980, while notable among conferences has been the annual Accident Reconstruction Session at the SAE World Congress, which began in 1987. But despite all this, there was still the lack of a scholarly and mathematically rigorous text for the reconstructionists. This is where Ray and Matt Brach come in.

I first met Ray Brach in the late 1980s, when he visited me in London. I immediately recognised him as a practical as well as academic engineer, with a deep interest in solving everyday problems, notably vehicle collisions. I am pleased to say that the acquaintance has grown over the years, with getting to know his son Matt as well, and more recently through their management of the SAE Congress sessions. A book by them was therefore something to look forward to, and the first edition, published in 2005, did not disappoint. But a considerable bonus with the book was a training course, and I had the pleasure of hosting Ray and Matt when they presented it to a group of investigators (myself included) from TRL in 2006.