Many accidents involve questions regarding human visual performance. For example, drivers involved in accidents often report that they did not see what they hit, or that they saw it too late to do anything. In these cases, it is often necessary to determine if people or objects at the accident scene (pedestrians, motorcycles, other vehicles, debris, etc.) would have been visible to the reasonably alert person under conditions of a particular accident. This determination must be made with proper consideration of both inter- and intra-person variability. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the value of considering issues of vision and visibility when reconstructing an accident. Illustrative examples from actual accidents will be used throughout.
Abstract