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Surveillance Camera Analysis

Surveillance video camera usage has become extremely common in today’s society and cameras installed for security now often provided valuable information for use in forensic analyses when they happen to capture some portion of an incident.  Surveillance footage is often very useful in the area of accident reconstruction where it can be employed alone or in combination with more traditional methods to determine accurate vehicle positions, speeds and the timing of events. Even when the video quality appears poor to the untrained eye, valuable and accurate information may be obtained.  Surveillance videos with limited views of an event can also be used to develop 3D animations of the event which can then be viewed from other more useful vantage points. An accident reconstruction based upon camera footage is often accompanied by a site visit to obtain accurate measurements of the location, items, and landmarks seen in the video, which can be used to convert the 2D video images into 3D positions of vehicles, people or other objects.  When investigating motor vehicle crashes, the video can be used to determine vehicle positions at different times, which can then be used to calculate the vehicle’s speed, often to a high level of accuracy. Surveillance video can also be used in combination with electronic data recorder (EDR) reports tho corroborate that data, provide context and fill in gaps in the data.