Crash detector for accident reconstruction and whiplash claim management

Claims for personal injuries from road traffic accidents in the UK are at an all-time high in a
period where accidents are falling. In 2010, there were more than 500,000 whiplash claims,
resulting in approximately £2 billion being paid out by insurers and according to the Insurance
Fraud Bureau (IFB) the severity of the ‘Cash for Cash’ fraud epidemic is costing UK
motorists nearly £400m per year which is the equivalent of £90 on each individuals
premiums. The absence of a reliable source of objective evidence means that the current
methods of verifying a personal injury claim such as whiplash are based on the claimant’s
description of the event and nature of the pain often diagnosed by a doctor after the injury has
healed.
This project will develop a novel telematics Event Data Recorder (EDR) that will accurately
determine the precise shock forces experienced in the vehicle during an accident and using
this information show the likelihood that a personal injury would have occurred. The
information captured by the EDR will be independently calibrated such that the data can be
relied upon in a court of law.
The first aim will be to determine the level of shock and sampling rates that need to be
measured in terms of accurately representing the severity of an accident. This will be
accomplished through extensive testing at the Transport Research Laboratory by re-processing
crash test data from a wide range of collision types at progressively lower shock and sampling
rates until the difference in shock is unacceptable. Secondly an EDR will be designed and a
basic prototype manufactured that can survive the impacts while accurately measuring and
recording the required level of data. The EDR will then be tested in full scale crash tests to
validate the data against the laboratory equipment.