A lot has happened!

A lot has happened

It’s been a long time since the last blog post but a lot has happened since last spring.

I had an excellent week at WCX17 in Detroit where I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present the latest research on frozen speedometers. I apologise to those who were there who had to listen between my bouts of coughing after a heavy aircon cold. However it was a great opportunity to speak to the engineers working on the next generation of vehicles. I spent some time chatting with the guys who designed and built the new Ford GT – it really is a stunning car made from very lightweight materials – even the windscreen is made from gorilla glass to save weight. I also had chance to chat to the team running the prototype autonomous vehicles. These new cars sense what is around them and learn as they go building a 3D picture of their environment and understand the difference between a building and a parked truck. Again, very clever stuff.

Ford GT

Ford GT

Since then, the summer involved more research. This time I became a crash test dummy at the yearly ITAI crash test day at Bruntingthorpe. We were looking at the contact marks left after rear end and side impacts at speeds below 20 mph.

The next big event was the EVU conference in October in Haarlem near Amsterdam. Collision Science was a conference sponsor. We had a stand where we launched a new book called ‘Finding Order in Chaos – The manual of Collision Scene Evidence’. We have co-authored the book with Per Bo Hansen from DanCrash in Denmark.

Finding Order in Chaos

Finding Order in Chaos

The book is aimed at practitioners who attend the collision scenes and need to understand what evidence can be present and how to record it. The book has been well received with copies being sold across Europe, USA and South Africa.

Here are some of the comments made.

M.C. “An excellent book, well written and interspersed with great quality photographs. A great read for CI’s new and old”.

N.L. “Very useful and pulls a lot of information together into one place that was previously scattered across various platforms. A must for new and dare I say old CI’s”.

A.W.L “A good read’.

G.D. “This is an excellent reference book for those experienced in the field and an essential purchase for those starting out. Highly recommended”.

A new page has been added to this website for online orders at https://collisionscience.co.uk/book/

October also saw me able to spend some time helping in Newquay Cornwall at the Bloodhound slow speed trials. When I say slow, I mean it reached 210mph in 7.95 sec! This was the first time the car had run and to say it went better than expected is an understatement. One of the advantages of being a Bloodhound Ambassador is that you can talk with the rest of the engineers and crew. I was chatting to Andy Green, the driver and he was saying that with the jet engine at idle the car would still do 60mph and he had to hold back on the runs because the car just wants to go faster!

Me and a 1000mph car

Me and a 1000mph car

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