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[h=4]Special cops work to unravel confusing highway pileups[/h]It all happened so quickly. That's what Kaleb Whitby remembers most about the crash last month that left his pickup truck pinned between and beneath two jackknifed tractor-trailer trucks on a foggy Oregon
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Multivehicle pileups are on the rise on our nation's highways and the result is mass casualties, property damage and deaths. USA TODAY analysis shows there have been at least 54 pileups of 10 vehicles or more since Thanksgiving, all weather related. (USA NEWS, USA TODAY)
Cars and tractor-trailers are tangled up after a huge pileup along Interstate 81 Feb. 6 near Sandy Creek, N.Y.(Photo: Norm Johnston, AP)
It all happened so quickly.
That's what Kaleb Whitby remembers most about the crash last month that left his pickup pinned between and beneath two jackknifed tractor-trailer trucks on a foggy Oregon interstate.
It was early on the morning of Jan. 17. He was on Interstate 84 eastbound near Baker City, Ore., driving his Chevrolet Silverado on a business trip to Council, Idaho.
"It was cold, dark and foggy," says Whitby, 27, a cattle farmer from Mesa, Wash. "With the fog so thick, and no way, really, to see that far in front of me, I decided to get behind this big truck. We started to go down this hill. I noticed the hill start to get a little slippery. The truck in front started to slow down, then it fishtailed. He jackknifed across both lanes."
Whitby realized he was "kinda stuck in a bad spot" and unable to stop. He down-shifted and aimed for the truck's trailer. He crashed into it and heard silence as his vehicle's systems shut down.
Then Whitby saw it: Another tractor-trailer sliding straight toward him. "I knew he was going to hit me," Whitby says. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, thinking, Is this my time? Is this going to be how I die? He began praying fervently. "I said, 'Please, no. Please, no. Please protect me,' " he says. "All I could do was tense up and brace."
The second truck slammed into the rear right corner of his pickup, spun it underneath the first truck and pinned him into "a small V" where he could see both trailers within arm's reach of his crushed truck. "If it had pushed me another foot, I would have been crushed," he says.
But he wasn't. His steering wheel and dashboard were pushed down on his legs, and he had to slowly leverage himself out of the crushed truck. His injuries were minor: a bruise over his left eyebrow, scratches on his right hand and some numbness in his legs from the steering wheel.
Whitby was part of a 24-vehicle pileup that sent 12 people to the hospital and tied up traffic on I-84 for 19 hours, according to Oregon state police.
This kind of multiple-vehicle pileup is occurring with metronomic regularity across the USA this year amid a particularly harsh winter. According to a USA TODAY analysis, there have been at least 57 pileups of 10 vehicles or more since Thanksgiving. Almost all occurred in snow squalls or freezing rain. On Saturday, at least 13 occurred across Michigan, Indiana and Ohio in snow squalls touched off by an intense cold front.
The biggest pileup of this winter occurred Jan. 9 in a snow squall on I-90 near Galesburg, Mich., involving 193 vehicles. One person was killed, and 23 were hospitalized.
USA TODAY
Modern safety systems prevent car crashes
A single spate of wintry weather can trigger multiple pileups. That was the case early Jan. 18, when light rain drifted up the East Coast and froze in places. From Baltimore to Connecticut, at least 12 pileups occurred within a few hours, killing three and injuring more than 100, according to USA TODAY's analysis. Hundreds of other drivers crashed in smaller pileups.
Unraveling these crashes, which can involve scores of vehicles in a tangled half-mile stretch of utter confusion, is a slow, painstaking process that can take months.
In many cases, that task falls to specially trained cops known as collision analysts and reconstruction specialists who are certified by the North Platte, Neb.-based Accreditation Commission for Traffic Accident Reconstruction.
No matter how many vehicles are involved in a pileup — which is usually several separate crashes — these specialists can almost always determine what occurred and where culpability lies, says Pennsylvania State Police Cpl. Tracy Flynn, who supervises the Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Specialist Unit.
"It's a slow, methodical process," he says. "We as a unit don't get bullied by the fact that people want us to hurry. Once we're done, we're confident in our ability to tell you exactly what happened. There are occurrences where we can't figure it out – much less than 1% of the time."
"There is a lot of engineering-level mathematics," says his boss, Lt. Jeff Hopkins.
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With recent reports that Apple is looking to get involved with car technology, USA TODAY auto writer Chris Woodyard and tech columnist Jefferson Graham talk technology in the car now. Video by Sean Fujiwara
MAPPING A CRASH SCENE IN 3-D
In the Oregon pileup last month, four investigators from the Oregon State Police Crime Reconstruction Unit arrived on the scene that morning. They brought three total measuring stations, electronics devices similar to those used by surveyors that map a crash scene in three dimensions, says Sgt. Scott Skinner of the CRU.
By then, Whitby had managed to open the door of his smashed truck about 18 inches and a truck driver had helped him work himself out. "The trucker grabbed my left foot and almost broke my ankle to get me out of the car," Whitby says. "The steering wheel was in my hip. I slid down and underneath it to get out. It took five to 10 minutes for us to work me out of there."
In a multiple-vehicle pileup, experts say, the extent of an accident reconstruction is determined by whether there is a fatality or significant property damage. When there's a fatality, investigators do a full reconstruction.
"Early on, we didn't know the extent of the injuries," Skinner says. "We document where the vehicles are and attempt to identify any roadway evidence. We tried to see the condition of the roadway and photograph that. We take pictures and walk through the scene with the officer that was originally there."
They divided the crash into four segments, and each CRU investigator worked his segment separately. For accident reconstruction specialists, eyewitness accounts are important, but they are used primarily to buttress the investigators' findings. "Sometimes people can remember things differently," Skinner say. "They can remember seeing it when they didn't. We look at where they were. We check their relationship to the crash based on the physical evidence we see at the scene."
Emergency personnel work at the scene of a multi-vehicle crash along Route 30 Feb. 14, west of Columbia City, Ind.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Nicole Minier, AP)
The investigators routinely look at skid marks, at any indentations in the pavement and at leaked or spilled fuel. They might do what's called a "yaw mark analysis," which is a study of tire marks left by a vehicle that slides sideways while moving forward.
In pileups that involve a fatality, reconstruction specialists will gain access — via a court order in some states — to crash vehicles' "black boxes." These are the event data recorders common on most automobiles that measure events such as vehicle speed at time of impact, whether the driver braked and whether seat belts were buckled.
"We don't rely on the electronic data (alone)," says Hopkins of the Pennsylvania state police. "We use it as a method of verification. We use it to validate the street analysis."
Accident reconstructions can take months. In Pennsylvania, state law gives investigators up to a year to file criminal charges, Hopkins says. "Once our investigation is done, we don't automatically have the option of prosecuting. We provide our reconstruction to the district attorney, and they make the final determination for prosecution."
PILEUPS ALL TOO COMMON
Multiple-vehicle pileups are all too common on the nation's roads, especially this time of year. Monday night, a 40-vehicle pileup on the New Jersey Turnpike left a 52-year-old man dead and 68 others injured. It occurred in Cranbury Township during rain, snow flurries and sub-freezing temperatures.
Two tractor-trailer trucks braked to avoid crashes and lost control, according to the New Jersey state police. The trucks blocked the roadway and caused a chain reaction crash. Darryl C. Williams of Bordentown, N.J., was trapped in his Toyota Corolla in the chain-reaction crash and was pronounced dead at the scene. None of the injuries was life-threatening.
The incident is under investigation, but the icy conditions probably contributed to the wrecks.
Adverse weather is often a factor in pileups, along with people driving too fast for conditions.
There is little research on why these crashes occur. Neither the Federal Highway Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety nor auto club AAA has researched the phenomena.
"There are no definitive data that defines exactly what the most significant contributing factors are," says Jacob Nelson, AAA's director of traffic safety advocacy.
Weather and road conditions are contributing factors, and driver distraction probably contributes, he says.
It's unknown whether drivers' over-reliance on the safety features common on new vehicles – such as lane departure warning systems and forward collision warning systems – might be a factor, Nelson says. "Are we over-relying on these technologies to save ourselves? When it comes to the role of technology, that's probably an area where we know the least," he says. "There probably is an effect on driver engagement and performance, but it's not been thoroughly researched or evaluated yet."
Jim Barbaresso, an intelligent transportation systems (ITS) expert with the Kansas City, Mo.- infrastructure solutions firm HNTB, says he doesn't think drivers plow into other vehicles because they're counting on their cars' safety features – not yet anyway.
"I don't think that occurs yet, but I think that's a risk going forward, that people will acquiesce to the car's safety systems and not be alert, potentially," he says.
'IT WAS JUST VERY QUICK'
In the Oregon pileup, Whitby says he was alert.
"I had kinda gotten used to the fact it was going to take awhile because of the conditions," Whitby says. "We weren't going fast, maybe 40-50 mph, and then when I shifted down to second gear, maybe 20-30 mph.
"I can still see it happening in my mind," he said. "It was just very quick. The whole thing was maybe 30 seconds to a minute, but in my mind, it was so fast. I don't know what I could have done different."
No criminal charges will be filed in the pileup, Skinner says.
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