Accident Reconstruction
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Investigations
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Expert Reports
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Expert Testimony
What we Investigate
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Passenger Vehicles​
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Commercial Vehicles
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Busses
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Trains
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Construction Equipment
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Cranes
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Fork Lifts
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Motorcycles
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ATVs
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Pedestrians
Exclusive Services
Vehicular crash reconstructions are a core specialty of JEA. Our Forensic Engineers provide an investigation into the factors involved in the crash and determine the crash and injury causations. The investigation and analysis include documentation and analysis of evidence from the scene, vehicles, and eyewitnesses’ statements. Our Forensic Engineers evaluate the vehicle components that may have contributed to the crash.
Event Data Recorder
The vehicles crash data is an essential piece of evidence to be collected and evaluated as a part of the vehicle crash investigation. The crash data can provide a better understanding of critical data elements associated with the crash. The parameters that could possibly be displayed from the vehicle crash data download includes vehicle speeds, seat belt use, steering input, and delta-V. Our certified engineers have the knowledge and capability of acquiring this data, interpenetrating and analyzing data and present them it in an easily readable format.
Passenger Vehicles
Evaluate the availability of crash data from airbag, ABS, and other modules
Heavy-Duty Trucks
Evaluate the availability of crash data from heavy-duty truck ECMs
Motorcycles
Evaluate the availability of crash data from motorcycle modules
Vehicle Product Liability
JEA provides specialized forensic investigation and analysis in vehicle product liability cases, where defects in design, manufacturing, materials, or warnings contribute to crashes, failures, or enhanced injuries. Our expertise helps determine whether a vehicle component or system played a role in causing or worsening an accident—shifting focus from driver error alone to potential manufacturer or supplier responsibility.
Common vehicle defects we investigate include:
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Braking systems — Faulty pads, rotors, hydraulic lines, ABS malfunctions, or electronic controls leading to reduced stopping power or complete failure.
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Steering and suspension — Defects in power steering, control arms, tie rods, or electronic systems causing sudden loss of control.
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Airbags and restraint systems — Failures to deploy, unexpected deployment, excessive force, or improper timing (e.g., historical issues like the Takata inflator recalls).
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Electronic systems — Malfunctions in throttle control, ignition switches, stability control, or software glitches resulting in unintended acceleration, power loss, or disabled safety features.
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Other critical components — Tire blowouts from manufacturing flaws, seatbelt latch failures, roof crush in rollovers, or fuel system issues.
Simulations
JEA specializes in cutting-edge 2D and 3D accident simulations to reveal the full picture of crash dynamics—including vehicle motion, impact forces, and the resulting movements and forces on occupants inside the vehicle.
We leverage two of the most respected tools in forensic engineering:
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Virtual CRASH: A powerful platform for rapid, physics-based simulations using rigid-body dynamics and impulse-momentum models. It excels at modeling complex multi-vehicle collisions, pedestrian/bicycle interactions, and creating stunning HD simulations from real-world data.
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HVE (Human-Vehicle-Environment): A comprehensive environment that integrates detailed human factors, vehicle handling (including suspension, tires, and brakes), and environmental variables like terrain, friction, and superelevation. This allows for in-depth study of occupant kinematics, potential injury sources, and real-world crash sequences.
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One of our core strengths is the ability to reconstruct vehicle actions and determine impact forces without relying on electronic vehicle data downloads (e.g., from event data recorders). Using traditional and advanced accident reconstruction methods—incorporating scene evidence, vehicle damage profiles, tire marks, and physics-based calculations—our team builds and validates simulations that accurately depict pre-impact speeds, collision sequences, and post-impact trajectories.
This methodology ensures objective, scientifically defensible insights that strengthen liability assessments, insurance claims, and courtroom presentations.
Video Camera Breakdown
Video cameras are increasingly common in surveillance systems and vehicles—including heavy trucks and modern passenger cars with built-in dashcams. These recordings often play a critical role in determining the facts of a case.
In digital forensics, verifying the authenticity and integrity of video evidence is essential. Our expert team extracts and analyzes video metadata to uncover key details such as timestamps, GPS coordinates, speed, acceleration, and more. This thorough breakdown allows us to reconstruct events step-by-step, working backward from the data to build a clear, reliable timeline of what occurred.
Light Sequence Analysis
JEA excels in forensic light sequence analysis for traffic signals, a critical service in intersection-related crashes where determining the right-of-way—who had the green, yellow, or red light—is often central to establishing liability.
Our team combines multiple sources of evidence to reconstruct the precise sequence of traffic light phases at the time of the incident, even when direct controller logs are unavailable or disputed. This includes:
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Video Evidence Breakdown — Analyzing dashcam footage, surveillance cameras, red-light cameras, or bystander videos to time-stamp light changes. By counting frames during visible yellow phases (accounting for frame rates, e.g., 15–30 fps), we calculate exact durations and correlate them to vehicle positions and movements.
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Signal Timing Records & On-Site Verification — Reviewing historical or programmed signal timing plans from traffic engineering departments, including phase durations, cycle lengths, and any adaptive changes (e.g., based on time-of-day or traffic volume). We cross-reference these with scene evidence, witness statements, and on-site timing studies to confirm what the signals were displaying.