The driver pulled over to the shoulder of the road. We called the police and exchanged information. He was given a traffic violation.

The other driver and his passenger was not injured. My back was injured and I had to receive treatment.

You are so correct about emotions that surface at such a time. I remember being so upset. The “what ifs” ran through my mind. What if, someone had been seriously injured or killed? What if, the other driver has not slowed at all and plowed into me?

My emotional state immediately after the accident surprised me. It surprises me, even today. I am a reconstruction engineer and I reconstruction traffic accident all the time. I see evident of horrible accidents and know that drivers and passengers in those vehicles were injured and killed. I would have thought I would have been mentally prepared for an accident.

Not so.

If my accident had been a hit-and-run, I think I would have been even more upset. The driver that hit me did the right thing. He stopped and shared his information with me.

In my work I get to hear the drivers’ stories about their speed. I reconstruct the accident and determine the true speed they were traveling at the time of the collision. Black Boxes (Event Data Recorders) are installed in vehicles and provide valuable information for reconstruction of vehicle accidents.

They record five seconds of data prior to a collision such as speed, braking, seat belt use and throttle positions.

This information is great for drivers that are within the speed limit but bad for the driver traveling above the speed limit.

The insurance companies I work for want to know the facts. The event data recorder helps provide facts about a vehicle collision.