A pedestrian struck by a vehicle leaves a trail of physical evidence — throw distance, contact damage, and injury pattern — that reconstructs what the driver could see, and when.
Start a conversation with our AI Research Concierge, already scoped to pedestrian incidents. Pick a starting point, or describe your situation directly.
A vehicle-pedestrian impact is a low-mass object struck by a high-mass one, and that mismatch is what makes it reconstructible: pedestrian trajectory after impact — forward projection, wrap, or vault — follows momentum and projectile physics closely enough to back out an impact speed range from where the body came to rest. The contact damage on the vehicle front end and the injury pattern on the pedestrian body are two independent records of the same event, and where they agree, the reconstruction is strong. Separately, and often more consequentially, the case turns on what the driver could actually see: sightline obstructions, lighting, pedestrian conspicuity, and perception-reaction time before any braking evidence exists at all.
Each pedestrian case combines an impact-dynamics question with a visibility question, and the two are analyzed separately before being reconciled.
Pedestrian trajectory after contact — forward projection, wrap, fender vault, or roof vault — governed by impact speed, pedestrian stance, and the vehicle's front-end geometry.
Bumper and hood-edge contact injuries mapped against vehicle geometry to establish impact point, orientation, and consistency with the claimed sequence.
Obstruction analysis — A-pillars, parked vehicles, signage, foliage — combined with lighting conditions and pedestrian conspicuity at the time of the event.
Time-distance analysis of when the pedestrian became detectable versus when braking or evasive steering actually began.
Signal-phase timing, crosswalk markings, and right-of-way reconstruction from controller logs, video, or witness timing.
Low-speed backing events where the vehicle's blind zone, mirror coverage, and any backup camera or sensor — not vehicle speed — are the determining factors.
Pedestrian cases draw on physical trajectory evidence, recovered vehicle data, and visibility modelling in parallel, then test whether they agree.
Pedestrian incidents routinely raise several of these at once:
Skid marks fade, debris gets swept, and vehicles get repaired. Scene evidence and the striking vehicle's front-end damage need to be documented within days, not weeks.
It provides a defensible speed range, not a single precise number, and its accuracy depends heavily on knowing the pedestrian's pre-impact position and the road surface friction. Throw-distance formulas are validated against decades of full-scale testing and are widely accepted in accident reconstruction, but they are strongest when paired with independent evidence — EDR data, contact damage location, or video — rather than used alone.
Usually yes, by combining the sight-distance analysis — when the pedestrian first became visible given obstructions and lighting — with standard perception-reaction time ranges and the vehicle's actual speed and braking capability. The result is a time-distance comparison: was there enough distance, at the speed the vehicle was traveling, for an attentive driver to perceive the hazard, react, and stop or avoid it before impact.
The reconstruction stays neutral on fault and instead establishes the facts each side needs: where the pedestrian was and how visible they were, what evasive action the driver did or did not take, and whether right-of-way rules were followed. Comparative-negligence determinations are then made against those established facts, often incident-by-incident rather than by any general rule.
A significant one in nighttime cases. Conspicuity — how detectable a pedestrian is against the background at a given distance and closing speed — depends on clothing reflectivity, ambient and headlight illumination, and contrast with the roadway. Visibility studies can model detection distance under the actual conditions and are often decisive in cases where the central dispute is what the driver could reasonably have seen.
The scene as it existed immediately after — skid or scuff marks, debris field, and final rest positions — the striking vehicle's front-end damage before repair, any available surveillance or dash-camera video, and the vehicle's EDR data before further driving overwrites it. Signal-timing and traffic-camera data, where applicable, should be requested promptly since retention periods are often short.
Technical briefings from our work in this area.
Scene marks, front-end damage geometry, recorder data, driver-assistance logs and surveillance video all have short lives. What each one answers, what destroys it, and the order preservation should follow.
readThe nighttime pedestrian case turns on detection distance. Contrast against the background, delivered headlamp illumination, lighting uniformity and sightline geometry are all measurable inputs.
readThrow-distance analysis produces a defensible speed range, not a number. The trajectory family, the friction path and the inferred impact point each move the answer, and each has to be stated.
readTell us what occurred. We will triage it and connect you with the right expert — usually within one business day.