A Book Review from the Desk of Joseph E. Badger
Motorcycle Accident Reconstruction and Litigation, Fifth Edition.
At least that is what it says on the book’s cover. At Lawyers & Judges’ website the book is titled Motorcycle Accident Reconstruction and Litigation, Fifth Edition with Hurt Report.
This new tome has over 400 pages in two parts, plus a Part III contained in an accompanying CD, which contains the Hurt Report along with an assortment of appendices.
You may think it a bit ironic to have a “Hurt Report” in a book about motorcycle crashes, but there you have it. That report, by the way, was prepared by H.H. Hurt and others, the final version of which came out in 1981. It is 425-page Portable Document Format (PDF) and covers Vehicle Systems, Injury Mechanisms, Vehicle Dynamics and Accident Reconstruction. (PDF files require an Adobe Acrobat reader; but if your computer doesn’t have it, the CD offers a free download.)
More about the contents of the CD in a moment.
“The objectives of this research,” as noted in the paper’s opening under “1.1 Objectives,” “were to conduct a detailed investigation and analysis of a large number of motorcycle accidents with a highly specialized multidisciplinary research time. In this way, complete engineering and medical information could be collected and all of the accident events could be reconstructed to determine accident and injury causes. This scientific, multidisciplinary approach could provide must more exact and complete information than was available from police traffic accident reports.”
The 2011 Motorcycle Accident Reconstruction and Litigation, Fifth Edition book by Kenneth S. Obenski, et al. began in 1994 as merely Motorcycle Accident Reconstruction, but without the et al.
The et als incorporate addtional chapters written by Obenski and Hill; other contributors include the late Bernard Abrams, O.D., Leslie Weintraub, O.D., Jack Debes, Ph.D, and Eric Shapiro, A.S.E.
The original was basically a text comprising 114 “regular” pages followed by two voluminous appendices.
This new L&J book’s Part I is mostly by Mr. Obenski, but with chapters by contributing authors, is titled “Forensic Engineering Reconstruction of Motorcycle Accidents.”
Part II, titled “Legal Analysis,” was written by Paul F. Hill, a retired law school librarian whose research specialty is bicycle and motorcycle law. Mr. Hill also co-authored another Lawyers & Judges book in 2006: Bicycle Accidents: Biomechanical, Engineering, and Legal Aspects.
Obenski’s first edition contained 12 chapters ranging from “Understanding Motorcycles” and “Highway Factors” to “Conspicuity” and “Methods.” The latter discussed various mathematical equations for solving speed from skidmarks, speeds from scrapes and gouges, speed from flight (we’re talking airborne here), speed from momentum, from car rotation (after the bike hit it) and speed from damage, radius, and acceleration.
Obenski’s fifth edition contains all the above plus 26 additional chapters!
In addition, where his first book was about 6 x 9½ inches, the latest is 8½ x 11.
You can read all about it at
Better yet, just go to type “Obenski” (without the quotation marks) in the search box and click on “By Author.”
Once you arrive at the book’s web page, you can click on Table of Contents and see just how extensive Obenski’s new volume is.
Beside the Hurt Report, the CD also contains a 124-page “DOT Motorcycle Standards and History. The search feature didn’t work for me in either the Hurt Report or DOT Standards, but the feature worked okay on the other files.
Among those others are several PDF files covering many years of NHTSA’s Traffic Safety Facts. They are all searchable. As is another NHTSA paper covering Motorcycle Helmet Use Laws. Finally, Lawyers and Judges include a number of their newsletters (to which you may subscribe).
Motorcycle Accident Reconstruction and Litigation, Fifth Edition contains several photographs not available in the first edition.
I encourage you to explore the Table of Contents especially for Part II. In some 19 chapters, Mr. Hill covers all manner of case law from helmet laws, negligence for not wearing one, intersection collisions, collisions involving cables or chains, product liability and so on.
(About the reviewer: Joseph E. Badger is an internationally known accident reconstructionist and consultant who has had over 100 articles published in such periodicals as Law and Order magazine, Accident Reconstruction Journal, Accident Investigation Quarterly, and others. Having retired after 20 years with the Indiana State Police, Mr. Badger resides in Bloomington, Indiana.)