Do pictures show enough to support likelihood of how this accident happened?

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Wishforanswers
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Do pictures show enough to support likelihood of how this accident happened?

Post by Wishforanswers »

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Hi - my son was involved in a low speed offset head on collision, driving a 95 Jeep Cherokee Country while taking a hard right turn on a country backroad with no witnesses and was hit by an uninsured motorist driving a 2011 Kia Forte, whose driver attempted to flee the scene (home was .6 miles away) but only make it around the curve uphill a couple of hundred feet away from the impact. She claimed to insurance that she left the scene because her brakes had ‘acted funny’.
The other driver’s car was auctioned off before any evaluations were done, and the only pictures provided of the Kia are mostly illegible. I’ve been told that without both vehicles, I can’t have a professional prove who was at fault, and my uninsured motorist policy denies proof of fault. We only had liability and uninsured motorist on the vehicle so no support from insurance. My son suffered a TBI with mild basilar invagination (where the C2 vertebrae touches the brain stem) and suffers severe PTSD and Post Concussion Syndrome (& autism), and I’ve been unable to get any resolution for him with this.
The police report shows him at fault as crossing her lane. When I asked him, he said it was because the debris and his tire was in her lane. However, he was turning into a hard right (you hug the curve doing this), and she was cutting across the left lane.
A complication: he had concussion symptoms for 6+ weeks w vomiting and bedridden daily, and didn’t remember anything between seeing her right before impact and hearing her accelerating and driving away until his concussion symptoms stopped, and he woke up that day and said ‘I remember! He said she’d hit him once in the curve, and he hit his head on the steering wheel (and I’ve been told this model Jeep has a history of the airbag sometimes not deploying in certain conditions) and then he said she backed up, accelerated, and hit him again (steering damage?) while he was slumped over recovering, and that that was when his airbag deployed, hitting him on his head. (Papers on basilar invagination say it typically occurs from higher speeds, which is unlikely in an almost 90 degree curve, or from being hit on the head.)
I believe the likelihood of this, especially since she was looking down at her phone, uninsured, and 0.6 miles from home in the woods.
So three possibilities: First scenario as charged: he oddly swung into her lane (I taught him how to drive on this road and I know how very unlikely that is) and hit her, and she somehow continued to roll uphill past him while he’s in her lane, around a corner out of sight after a head on collision. Second scenario: she did cross into his lane, hit him offset, and shoved his front left tire partly into her lane and his back right wheel off the side off the road. Third scenario: she hit him, the cars collided and it slung her backwards, and then after a moment, she accelerated, had steering trouble, and hit him again as she sped away.
Does anything in these pictures show enough support if one of these scenarios that would make it worth me to continue trying to find a specialist who could vouch for at the least, the most likely scenario?
I thank you for any advice, information or comments you have. I’ll post pictures. I also have videos of the scene from both directions but don’t know if I can successfully post those. I have lane pictures from both directions with markers but can’t figure out how to add additional pictures. Thank you!
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R.Botter
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Re: Do pictures show enough to support likelihood of how this accident happened?

Post by R.Botter »

Maybe, maybe not. There isn't a lot of detail in the pictures, you can add another set of pictures to another post but to really make sense of the crash someone would need detail, objective facts, and views of the area from multiple angles and probably the rest of the crash report. Using cherry picked photos and select information gets a cherry picked answer and it may not be the right one in the larger scheme of things.
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Wishforanswers
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Re: Do pictures show enough to support likelihood of how this accident happened?

Post by Wishforanswers »

Thank you for the reply. I did have trouble getting more pictures to load - will start another post to add more. Unfortunately there’s only 2 pictures of the Jeep taken at the scene with the car in place, but I can take more of it at home, and do have multiple pictures and videos and map of the scene as well. I’ll try to figure out how to make the files smaller. Not very tech savvy.

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Wishforanswers
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Additional pics from 4/1/24 Do pictures show enough to determine how an accident occured

Post by Wishforanswers »

Hi- I needed to add images to my previous post re an offset head on collision to determine if pictures can show the likelihood of how an accident actually occurred. (I hope I’m doing this right!) I’m trying to include maps of the area, pictures from each direction, especially those that show landmarks visible in the only 2 pictures I have from the scene (son was 16 yrs old with autism and failed to take enough pics at the scene, and insurance never provided pics that the other party took at the scene). If I need to take better pictures of the vehicle, I’ll happily do anything needed for someone’s analysis. Thank you!
I’m trying to use pictures that include landmarks visible in the picture of the Jeep at rest(in the previous post) and marked them on the picture, as well as which vehicle was traveling which view. Also added the page from traffic report that shows where damage was on cars.
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Wishforanswers
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Part 2 additional pics from 4/1/24 post asking if there’s anything in these pictures that can show how accident happened

Post by Wishforanswers »

Hi, I’m adding more pictures, this time of the Jeep from home. Can pictures show by the damage what angle someone was hit from, and especially whether or not it may have been hit twice - the first impact, and then a possible second time when the Kia driver tried to flee the scene? (Because my son was concussed, he didn’t have a memory from between when he saw her and when she drove away until the acute concussion symptoms resolved, so whether or not he was hit twice is not a definite.)
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uwef_de
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Re: Do pictures show enough to support likelihood of how this accident happened?

Post by uwef_de »

Based on the pictures in the present quality and resolution, it is hard to find evidence for a second contact of the vehicles. Maybe or maybe not. But this detail is not decisive in my opinion, as a second contact can occur when the vehicles detach after the primary collision, e.g. due to defective steering and steering/acc. action of one driver.

The central question in my opinion is: who left his/her lane?
Again based only on the pictures above, we can see that the final rest position of the Jeep is very close to the debris area. This suggests that the Jeep was the relatively slower vehicle and absolutely slow (the final (angled) position of the Jeep relative to his lane also supports this). There seem to be some scratches on the roadway surface which suggest the point of impact. That rather speaks for the Jeep's leaving his lane. At the moment I can't see anything that supports the scenario "Kia is crossing into the Jeep's lane and at the same time the Jeep did not leave his lane". It is possible, that the Kia was far left in his lane.

Further conclusions are perhaps possible based on high resolution pictures from the scene where details of the scratches and traces can be recognized. Then, underbody pictures of both vehicles would be useful to allocate the scratches on the roadway. Finally, with the masses of the vehicles we can obtain an estimation of the velocities (if relevant in case of a low speed limit).
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