Cedric E. Stephens | When the crash scene becomes a ‘witness’

Kenute Hare’s new book deserves attention because it asks a question Jamaica can no longer afford to treat as technical: When people die or are injured on the roads, are we investigating crashes well enough to deliver justice, settle claims fairly, and prevent the next tragedy?

Hare challenges readers to stop calling road crashes ‘accidents’. There is a point at which a crash ceases to be merely a traffic incident or another data point, and becomes a question of evidence, accountability, and public safety.

That is the central proposition of his Caribbean and Developing Country edition of The Forensic Foundation: A Comprehensive Guide to Traffic Crash Investigation and Reporting for Developing Nations, Volume I in the Captain Hare Black Box EDR Series. The 656-page work is ambitious: it calls on developing countries to move crash investigation from narrative-taking to evidence-led reconstruction.

For readers concerned with insurance and risk, that shift is the book’s real importance. Hare’s argument is direct: crashes should not be explained primarily through competing stories, but through physical evidence, physics, engineering, medical science and digital data.

That distinction should matter enormously to insurers, intermediaries, and the insurance regulator. A motor claim is, ultimately, an exercise in determining what happened, who or what was responsible, what damage resulted, and whether the circumstances fall within the terms of the contract. If the investigation is poor, everything downstream can be poor – liability decisions, claims settlements, litigation, premiums, and even road-safety policy.

Hare, a Jamaican road-safety specialist with more than 26 years of experience and extensive international training, writes from that practical perspective. The book says his professional experience includes work with Event Data Recorders – the vehicle ‘black boxes’ increasingly capable of recording critical information about what happened immediately before, and after, a collision. Insurers and intermediaries – and even motorists – often ignore this rich source of data.

THE FOUNDATION

The book’s title is therefore apt. This is about building a foundation. Its opening chapters establish the professional framework for crash investigation and insist that the investigator must move beyond being a mere reporter of what happened. The book’s philosophy is that the investigator should be able to reconstruct the sequence of events using measurable evidence.

That distinction is important in Jamaica. Police reports, witness statements and driver accounts may all assist an inquiry, but none should automatically become the final word; memory is fallible, perspectives differ, and interested parties may frame events to suit their position.

The forensic investigator’s job is to test those accounts against the scene, the vehicle and the science. That discipline runs through the book’s treatment of physics, human factors, scene examination, vehicle systems, restraints, tyres, and occupant injuries.

One of the book’s strengths is its urgency about preservation. Crash evidence is perishable: vehicles are moved, roads repaired, tyres changed, debris cleared, witnesses forget, and electronic data may be overwritten before its significance is recognised.

For insurance professionals, this is not academic. Consider a disputed collision in which one driver says the brakes failed, another says excessive speed was involved, and the vehicle’s owner claims that a mechanical defect caused the accident. A conventional investigation may produce competing narratives. A forensic examination may reveal something very different.

POLICE REPORTS RECORD ONLY ONE PART OF STORY

The same evidence-first approach shapes Hare’s treatment of human factors. By examining perception, attention, visibility, distraction, fatigue, impairment and reaction time, he moves the inquiry beyond the simplistic question of whether someone was merely “looking” at the road.

A driver can look in a direction without properly perceiving a hazard. A person can see something without processing it in time to respond. Fatigue, expectation, distraction and impairment can alter the sequence. This matters because insurance investigations frequently begin with a deceptively simple question: “What did the driver do?”

The better question may be: What could the driver reasonably have perceived, when could the driver have perceived it, and what physical evidence demonstrates the opportunity to respond?

Hare’s treatment of vehicle evidence is another particularly useful feature. Modern cars are increasingly computers on wheels. EDRs, diagnostic systems, warning indicators and other electronic systems can provide information that did not exist in the traditional accident-investigation era.

The book does not appear to invite blind faith in technology. Its standard is more demanding: electronic data, physical findings, witness accounts and official reports must be read together, with each tested against the others.

The sections dealing with tyres, lamps, restraints and occupant kinematics demonstrate just how much information can remain after a collision. A tyre can tell a story about pressure, wear, braking or failure. A lamp filament can help establish whether a light was operating at the time of impact. An injury can provide evidence about occupant position and movement.

For an experienced insurance claims officer, these details can sometimes be the difference between a defensible settlement and an expensive mistake. The book’s greatest contribution, however, may be philosophical rather than technical. Hare sees road deaths as a systemic problem. He argues that inadequate investigation does more than harm an individual claimant or defendant. It can lead to injustice. Also, it deprives governments of information that could prevent future crashes.

If every serious collision is simply recorded as another ‘accident’, policymakers may never discover recurring defects in a particular road design, vehicle component, intersection, enforcement practice or driver behaviour.

The insurance industry should care about this because insurers are not merely bill payers after crashes. They are major participants in society’s risk-management system. Claims data, properly analysed, can reveal patterns of loss. Better forensic investigation can make that information more useful.

WEAKNESS

The book’s main weakness is not lack of substance, but accessibility. At 656 pages, its scale and technical density may limit its usefulness for ordinary motorists, junior claims officers or policymakers who need quick operational guidance. A shorter practitioner summary, model investigation checklists, and clearer guidance on institutional adoption would make the work easier to translate into Jamaican claims practice, police procedure and road-safety policy. Its uncompromising tone may also provoke debate among investigators, lawyers and engineers who approach evidence from different professional traditions, but that tension may be part of the book’s purpose.

Hare is not merely asking readers to document crashes more thoroughly; he is asking Jamaica to raise the standard by which crashes are understood. That makes The Forensic Foundation more than a technical manual: it is a call for professionalisation.

That call is timely. Jamaica has long debated road deaths, reckless driving, speeding, enforcement and road engineering; but prevention depends on knowledge, and knowledge depends on reliable evidence. The book’s message to investigators is therefore also a message to insurers, lawyers, engineers, policymakers and the courts. The road, the vehicle, the tyre, the body and the onboard computer may each preserve part of the truth. The question is whether Jamaica has the discipline, training and institutional will to read that evidence before it disappears.

That is why The Forensic Foundation deserves a serious place in Jamaica’s road-safety conversation, and an even more practical place in the insurance system that must price, investigate and settle the losses that follow.

VERDICT

It is a demanding, ambitious, and distinctly Jamaican contribution to forensic crash investigation. Its immediate audience may be investigators and technical professionals, but its larger value lies in what it demands of insurers, regulators, lawyers, and policymakers: a shift from accepting crash narratives to testing them scientifically. For Jamaica, that lesson is urgent: a serious crash is not simply something that happened; it is evidence waiting to be understood.

If you require assistance managing risks or solving insurance problems, Cedric E. Stephens offers free counsel and advice. To obtain information and counsel, please write to The Business Editor at business@gleanerjm.com or contact Mr Stephens directly at aegisja@gmail.com. Letters and e-mails will be edited for clarity and length.