(TORONTO) — 30 Forensic Engineering, Canada’s leading and fully-independent multi-disciplinary forensics firm, is pleased to announce that the Society of Automotive Engineers International (SAE) has published a technical paper produced by the 30 FE Trucking and Collision Reconstruction groups.
Titled “A Study of In-Service Truck Weights” – the paper was presented by Mark Fabbroni, Principal Trucking, at the SAE World Congress in Detroit, Michigan on April 5, 2017. This event is the annual global meeting place of the automotive industry. The 30 Forensic Engineering presentation was part of the “Occupant Protection: Collision Reconstruction” session of the Congress, which is dedicated to “the latest research related to methods and techniques for reconstructing vehicle crashes.”
Mark Fabbroni, Jennifer Rovt and Mark Paquette (members of the 30 Forensic Engineering Trucking and Collision Reconstruction groups) developed the paper in response to a data gap they discovered relating to the weights of heavy vehicles such as tractor-semitrailers, straight trucks and combination vehicles travelling on North American roads. When such vehicles are involved in collisions, their weights are rarely known. As collision reconstruction relies on the availability of accurate numbers for use in calculations and simulations, this lack of data is a significant barrier to producing accurate reconstructions.
About the Research Paper
The team discovered that the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario had conducted a Commercial Vehicle Survey in 2012, which sampled the weights of over 45,000 heavy vehicles of various configurations. Fabbroni, Rovt and Paquette gained access to this data and immediately recognized its value in the context of collision reconstruction involving heavy vehicles. The next step was to organize the data into a practical resource, which could be referenced by professionals in their field. The resultant paper analyzes weight data according to the vehicle configuration, body style, and total number of axles and presents the results for the empty and in-service weights of the surveyed trucks. Through comparing these results to prior studies, the 30 Forensic Engineering team was able to conclude that the results should be applicable to most North American jurisdictions.
About SAE International
SAE International, founded as the Society of Automotive Engineers, is a nonprofit organization that develops and publishes standards used for the aerospace, automotive and commercial-vehicle industries. Headquartered near Pittsburgh, SAE standards are authorized, revised and maintained by over 9,000 engineers and other professionals and are used by 120,000 members located around the world.