Applications of Matchmoving for Forensic Video Analysis of a Fatal Sprint Car Accident: Part I

The methodology used for the reconstruction of a high-profile Sprint Car accident that was captured by at least three different video recording devices is presented in two parts. Part I discusses a classical method of an accident reconstruction, and Part II discusses matchmoving technique to accurately analyze the video footage of the accident. Accidents captured on video are unlike most simple car collision evaluations and require expert knowledge from experienced professionals. Understanding the race car vehicle dynamics as it relates to recorded video footage allows a proper methodology to be followed in order to gather and process the evidence needed to provide meaningful data to the trier of fact. This paper discusses the classical process to reconstruct the accident as well as the currently acceptable scientific methodologies that were used to collect and interpolate the available scientific evidence. A visualization of the vehicles involved, Sprint Car #13 (SC#13) and Sprint Car #14 (SC#14), is shown in Figure 1.