Inside the Mind of a Crash Scene Investigator

Veteran police officer and crash investigation product expert, Marcus Rowe sheds light on the mindset, motivation, and essential tech that an investigator needs to capture, interpret, and present a collision scene.

When one talks about crash reconstruction and the法医数字双胞胎, we are talking about tools that enhance a process that begins in the imagination. “My Dad was an architect, so I grew up with an affinity for plans and scale models and taking measurements in the Cornish rain,” explains Marcus Rowe. “I must have developed the ability to see the intangible before it is created, but also to reduce a real object to a few important numbers. I had strong interests in electronics, physics and maths but finally ended up spending a total of 30 years in police work. For more than 16 years, I was a forensic collision investigator and that is when the visualization abilities that I developed as a kid resurfaced.”

没有两个场景是相同的：“我知道这听起来有点好莱坞，但是当您遇到严重崩溃的现场时，您立即开始制定假设并重播脑海中的碰撞。可能有很多碎片，因此您必须开始确定哪些碎片相关。我在脑海中向后擦洗时间表，以查看是否正确加在一起。”

Is that a skill that anyone can develop or is it a gift? “It’s more a question of, do you love Newtonian mechanics and all the other laws of physics? Because in the end, whatever visualization tools you have, it’s still physics. There is noise and there is scientifically reliable information. Whatever I believe or the witness claims happened, physical evidence is how we know the truth.”

当碰撞案最终出庭时，通常是因为发生了悲惨的死亡或严重伤害，这意味着大量的钱受到威胁。事故调查专家必须以一群非专家利益相关者（包括律师和陪审团）都可以理解的方式提供证据。

“This is where Leica Geosystems crash investigation solutions really make a huge difference on both the evidence capture and the presentation side,” says Rowe with conviction. On the evidence capture side, there is always time pressure. “It might be getting dark or snowing. A traffic jam caused by an accident can be a huge economic disruption in a busy city. That is why you have this one tight window of opportunity to read the scene, collect all the data and then clear the road as quickly as possible.”

Tools like theLeica RT360 laser scanner让您比以往任何时候都更快地创建碰撞场景的完整，准确的3D记录。最重要的是，您不需要做出任何决定，您以后可能会后悔；因为在解决方案或最感兴趣的领域方面没有妥协。您只需获取所有信息并将其“冻结”在法医数字双胞胎中。这意味着您从场景中拥有不变的原始版本，然后可以用来测试您的假设并创建各种演示文稿或动画。

The level of detail that you can capture, and the crash scene visualisation possibilities allow you to create immersive presentations for the courtroom or an insurance company that will draw the stakeholders into the reality of what happened and help them to make solid decisions.

“As a police officer, my work was making Devon and Cornwall safer and fairer for everyone. Now as a technology expert at Leica Geosystems, I am passionate about sharing our hi-tech solutions for crash investigation and collision reconstruction with peers and clients all over Europe. It has been a long road from tape measures to 360° point clouds, so I know firsthand the difference that it makes when you have the best tools on-scene and afterwards.”

In the end, it’s not about more features: at Leica Geosystems, we care about continuous enhancement of our solutions for law enforcement or private investigations because better workflows translate into real safety and quality of life improvements for our users and the public. Furthermore, knowing the truth about an accident and being able to present it convincingly really helps drivers, victims, and their families to come to terms with what has happened and move forward with their lives. And, if serious accidents happen over and over at the same location, then the authorities can simulate and implement preventive measures with the help of our technology.

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3 good reasons to choose theLeica RT360 laser scanner

沉浸式
A library of Forensic Digital Twins of many accident scenarios allows investigators to put themselves in many different situations and learn from them. This strengthens and develops investigative skills.

DECISIVE
的信息从一个法医数字双(3D image of the real world) created with the Leica RTC360 system, it is ensured that there is no doubt in court about the accident sequence or the evidence, which supports the making informed decisions.

保护的
莱卡（Leica）的法医数字双解决方案保存并保护原始证据，以3D的全面分辨率，因此无论案件发展哪个方向，研究人员始终都有不可变的真理来源。