To successfully present a personal injury claim and get a favorable result requires the plaintiff to prove that the applied force by the defendant contributed to the injury. The defendant can prove that the forces were inadequate to cause the injury to plaintiff and it was caused due to other activity or event. Thus, the plaintiff as well as defendant can require qualified experts to examine injury mechanics.
Role of accident reconstruction engineers and medical doctors
Accident reconstruction engineers quantify the auto accident dynamics experienced by the plaintiff. Medical biomedical forensics doctors, on the other hand, typically identify and treat the injuries of the plaintiff.
Why do you need Injury biomechanics experts?
Reconstruction engineers have found to lack formal level of training in physiology, injury mechanics and anatomy. On the other hand, medical doctors have obtained no formal training in areas of occupant loading, engineering mechanics, and tissue tolerance due to injury. Thus, both medical doctors and accident reconstruction engineers lack necessary expertise to render opinions related to injury mechanics.
Injury biomechanics experts are most suited for this task because they have got formal training in tissue injury as well as engineering mechanics. Injury biomechanics experts are engineering graduates (Ph.D. or MS) in kinesiology, bio or biomedical engineering, biomechanics, with an aim on injury mechanics.
A few biomechanics experts also have degree in medicine along with biomechanics and engineering. Thus, injury biomechanics expert has formal training that helps in application of engineering principles to deal with all the failures of biological tissue. This helps in efficient testing of biological tissues.
Usefulness of the formal training undergone by an injury biomechanics expert
The injury biomechanics expert’s training comprises of a detailed understanding of the ways in which different human body parts as well as interact with external forces. It also addresses how stress builds in tissues at the time of the impact.
This training provides sufficient knowledge to the professional to understand the tolerance and failure mechanisms of different kinds of tissues, along with its wide variability in mechanical aspects of biological tissue.
When seen from a medical perspective, the training taken by a biomechanical expert includes the physiology and anatomy required to understand diagnoses of medicine, different classification schemes of injury, and the impulses and neuro-musculature can lessen and aggravate the reply to outwardly applied forces.
This combination of medical and engineering knowledge is required to comprehend the “biomechanics of injury” in the best way.
How does a trained biomechanics expert help?
A properly trained biomechanics expert offer opinions on varying topics that include injury mechanism, forces or accelerations applied to the occupant motion, resident, restraint use, effectiveness, and driver identification. A variety of brand-new technologies, as well as research studies available to biomechanics experts, helps in their evaluation of automobile accidents.
Conclusion
Like scientific disciplines, biomechanics is also a field that sees constant evolution. New scientific tools enable trained experts to get important information pertaining to an auto accident like impact severity, vehicle speed, seat position and seatbelt use.
Biomechanical experts stay updated with continuous research and relying on updated published literature. The more informed you are with respect to scientific principles that govern injury biomechanics field, the better you can evaluate your event and counter-examine other experts.