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By Heather Stauffer, September 21, 2008

Last updated: Saturday, September 20, 2008 11:55 PM EDT

First, Matthew Claeys said, he puts his hands in his pockets.

Then he walks through the scene of the crash, observing carefully and making sure he doesn’t kick any pieces as he starts forming a hypothesis about what happened.

Then Claeys, a Lower Allen Township police officer and certified crash reconstructionist, starts the much longer and more tangible process of gathering data that will prove or disprove that hypothesis.

“It’s not an exact science. It never will be,” said Claeys.

For instance, he said, even after he and the other members of Cumberland County’s crash reconstruction team have finished the process, he can’t say precisely what speed a vehicle was traveling before a crash. But they can get close.

Details, details

After his initial walkthrough, Claeys said, he sketches a rough diagram of the scene. At that point he doesn’t want to know what witnesses say, he said.

“I try not to let that get into my head before I look at the physical evidence,” Claeys said. The thing about human witnesses, he said, is that they’re talking about something that happens in a fraction of a second, and different people will always see different things.

“The physical evidence is by far more reliable,” Claeys said. But some of that — such as skid marks — disappears quickly, he said, so the team has to make sure it gets it the first time and gets it right.

So they flag dozens of points of interest, and an evidence technician takes digital photographs. It’s not unusual, Claeys said, for a small scene to require more than 100 photographs, Claeys said, and a large one many more.

That still leaves a lot of data to gather, Claeys said, some of which would not have been available 10 years ago. There’s the crash data recorder, a computer inside some newer cars that provides information from before the crash, such as whether the occupants wore seat belts and what the engine’s RPM was.

Such information is valuable, Claeys said, but the triggers tend to be tied to the air bags, so if the air bags didn’t inflate, it’s not always available.

Then there’s the Total Station, a precision measuring instrument Claeys said is similar to what surveyors use, although reconstructionists don’t like using what he grinningly called “the S word.” Two people work that, getting points to enter into a mapping system.

Time-consuming

A reconstruction team typically includes at least four people, Claeys said, and it is not uncommon to spend several hours doing the initial data-gathering at the scene. Then it’s back to the office to crunch numbers, which is a time-consuming process.

If he were doing absolutely nothing else, Claeys said, finishing a reconstruction might take a week. But because he also has regular policing duties, it can take longer than that.

Daunting as that routine may sound, Claeys said, it pales compared to what the local state police reconstructionist does.

“We get about 10 call-outs a year,” Claeys estimated. “He can get 10 call-outs a month.”

Right now, Claeys said, he is the only certified crash reconstructionist on the Cumberland County team.

But, he said, there are a total of 12 people on the team from eight departments -- Lower Allen Township, Hampden Township, East Pennsboro Township, Silver Spring Township, Camp Hill and Carlisle police and the county coroner’s and district attorney’s offices -- and several of the other members are on their way to becoming reconstructionists.

So far, Claeys said, he has taken eight weeks of crash reconstruction training, and there’s always more to learn. There are just over a thousand certified reconstructionists in the country, Claeys said, and about 73 in Pennsylvania.

“The whole thing is based on science and math,” said Claeys. The math hasn’t changed, he said, but there are continually advances in science. He likes both math and science, he said, and the combination mixed with vehicles is what initially attracted him to the field.

“It’s a great job,” said Claeys. “I love doing it.” There is a real sense of satisfaction when everything fits together and he has puzzled out what happened. And, he said, “Somebody has to do it.”

Teamwork

Claeys emphasizes that the county crash reconstruction team is just that -- a team. And he’s not the only one.

“With so many police departments in Cumberland County, and none of them exceptionally large, we can’t all offer every service,” Lower Allen Police Chief Frank Williamson Jr. said.

With support and organization from the coroner and district attorney’s offices, Williamson said, not only do the municipal departments appreciate having that talent pool when they have a big crash, but, “We can pull that team together at a very easy, or reasonable, cost to our taxpayers.”

Technology is getting better and coming down in price, Williamson said, but even so, it’s pricey -- which makes the county’s help welcome.

Eric Radnovich, who serves as director of justice services for the district attorney’s office, oversees the crash reconstruction program. The system has officially been in place for about two years now, he said, and one of the things the team appreciates the most is the 1986 Ford F-350 truck that has been equipped for crash reconstruction.

“You go out to these things at 4 in the morning, it’s drizzling out, the conditions are miserable, the roadway’s wet,” Radnovich said. Being able to base off a truck that has everything they need — including two generators, according to Claeys — makes a big difference, Radnovich said.

The system works, Radnovich said, because of the spirit of communication and cooperation between the county and all the municipal departments involved. And, he said, the benefit works both ways.

For instance, he said of Claeys, “We can help make him better with training that Lower Allen may not be able to send him to.”

Coroner Mike Norris also noted that members of the district attorney’s office also show up at the scenes of big crashes.

“They’re not bashful at all at coming out to take a look,” Norris said. “We routinely, from the coroner’s office, contact someone from the DA’s office whenever there is a question.”

“We have probably one of the best systems available in this county that there is anywhere,” Norris said. “We often hear the comment, ‘We wish we had that in our counties.’”

Change in approach

Not every crash, or even every fatal crash, warrants a reconstruction, officials say. But Norris points out that the years have brought many changes to the way crashes are handled, regardless of severity.

“Going back many years, accidents were reported, not investigated,” Norris said. “Operator A said this, Operator B said this, and that’s the report.”

But police officers are trained differently now, he said, and in the course of investigation, they now take a look at whether what the people say makes sense when compared to the marks on the highway.

Even if a full-blown reconstruction is not called for, individuals familiar with its tenets bring more expertise to the investigation.

“It is a continuing, evolving thing,” Norris said. “Now the reconstruction team can basically tell you which way the vehicle spun, when it spun, to what speed it was traveling to a fairly close estimate, how many times it rolled, what direction it rolled.”

Information derived from an investigation or reconstruction is valuable in many ways, Norris said. Enforcement is one, he said, but so is the potential knowledge for someone who was involved in the crash and worried that he did something wrong.

“Traffic is one of our biggest complaints,” Williamson said. If officials know approximately what caused a crash, he said, sometimes they can work to correct a sight problem on the road or target enforcement to keep it from happening again.