One car is parked, and another car sideswipes it. Both cars have scrapes on the side (one on the left, the other on the right). Is there any way of determining, by examining the scrapes, which car was parked and which was moving?
Don’t assume the car with the left-side damage was parked. The only evidence is the scrapes, themselves.
well ya, the one with the scratches closer to the front was the one moving. since the steering wheel controls the front, the front would hit the other car first. the other car would probably somewhere towards the middle so that would be the one parked.
What if the moving car was reversing?
Happened to me this winter. Backed out of driveway. Was stopped, in drive, about to proceed forwards. Looked left and saw neighbour backing out of his driveway. He had plenty of time to see me, or hear the horn, and stop. He didn’t do any of the following. I would have sped out of the way, but it was winter and the road was covered. He backed into me. It was deemed “no fault” because - regardless of the skratches - it couldn’t be proven I wasn’t in reverse.
He was driving a pickup. No damage to his. $2600 to mine.
I suppose the parked car would leave different skidmarks.
Look at the scrapes, and you’ll be able to see the point of impact, with trails showing what direction the other car was going.
You will need more info to sort out whether Car A (the one on the left) was pulling into a space and hit Car B (the one on the right), or if Car B was backing out and hit Car A. Either of these scenarios would put the same direction of scratches on the cars - trails to the back on Car A and trails to the front on Car B.
I’d suggest opening up the ol’ PowerPoint and creating two rectangles representing the cars. Move one around, rotating it a little, changing direction, etc. for different scenarios as it slides past its stationary twin and it’ll help you visualize what kind of contact marks to expect. Copy, paste and edit multiple times to create different approaches and then find the one that best matches the actual evidence, using the start and stop point of the actual scratches as guide. Off hand, I can only think of four basic setups:
[list=#][li]Car moves forward, touches parked car in the middle, inflicts more scratches to it than itself[/li][li]Car moves forward but is turning, to make contact with front corner of parked car, suffers more scratches to itself than parked car[/li][li]Car in reverse, touches parked car in the middle, scrapes along it, inflicting more than receiving[/li][li]Car in reverse but turning, to make initial contact with rear corner of parked car, receiving more than inflicting[/list][/li]
Of course, that assumes the cars were facing in the same direction, which I gather is a given since one car is scraped on the left while the other is scraped on the right. In any case, running a quick and easy simulation with a computer may prove useful and since you already have the computer and PowerPoint or something similar (I assume), free.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
[list=#][li]Car moves forward, touches parked car in the middle, inflicts more scratches to it than itself[/li][li]Car moves forward but is turning, to make contact with front corner of parked car, suffers more scratches to itself than parked car[/li][li]Car in reverse, touches parked car in the middle, scrapes along it, inflicting more than receiving[/li][li]Car in reverse but turning, to make initial contact with rear corner of parked car, receiving more than inflicting[/list][/li][/QUOTE]
In actuality, the choices are between 2 and 3. The car on the left has damage along about half its length, while the car on the right has about 2 feet of damage. So is there any way to determine whether 2 or 3 occurred?
Where on the cars is this damage? If a number line from 0 to 10 was drawn on each car, starting at the bumper, what is the range of visible damage on each car?
You’re not giving us a lot of facts, here.
The damage to car A is from 4 to 8, on the right side. The damage to car B is 1 to 3, on the left side. I should also point out that the side of car A is fairly straight, and the side of car B is more curved, with the front wheel well (where most of the damage is) sticking out further than the rest.