Expert Witness Journal Issue 66 April 2026 - Flipbook - Page 33
Fraud or Force: Using objective
crash data in personal injury claims
by Craig Arnold, Chartered Forensic Practitioner at Hawkins.
Since July 2024, every new vehicle sold in the EU must
have an event data recorder (EDR). These devices
record crash data, such as vehicle speed, driver
inputs, seatbelt usage, and other information that is
vital to collision investigators. While this regulation
only applies in the EU, many manufacturers
provide coverage for vehicles sold in the UK; some
manufacturers have been providing access since
around 2012. Although an EDR may seem similar
to a black box on an aircraft, they are actually very
di昀昀erent, but can be equally helpful. They do not
capture voice recordings, but some modules within
the vehicle may capture video and/or still images,
although their availability is limited at present.
Figure 1: EDR download being conducted on the vehicle, with the
recovery equipment connected directly to the vehicle’s OBD port.
When a car is being driven the EDR, which forms
part of the vehicle’s airbag (ACM) or restraint
control module (RCM), is constantly monitoring
the vehicle. When an impact is detected, the
module decides whether an airbag and/or seatbelt
pretensioner (which removes slack from the seatbelt)
deployment is appropriate. If the module determines
such a deployment appropriate, it will ‘trigger’ them
and the airbags and/or pretensioners will deploy. In
EDR cases, this is referred to as a ‘deployment event’.
When a deployment event occurs, in most cases, the
EDR will record and store the crash data inde昀椀nitely.
Where the module detects a potential crash event
but does not deem the deployment of airbags and/
or pretensioners necessary, this is considered a nondeployment event. When such an event occurs, in
most cases, the EDR will record and store crash data,
but it may be overwritten if further non-deployment
events occur.
Figure 2: EDR data being recovered directly from
the module at Hawkins forensic lab in Manchester.
Use cases
Such objective crash data is clearly useful in any
investigation of a road tra昀케c collision, and there
are many scenarios where this data could be used to
assist a case. For the purposes of this article, however,
I have used two speci昀椀c case studies where this kind
of data has been especially useful. The 昀椀rst involves
a fraudulent personal injury claim, and the second
involves a serious head injury. To ensure anonymity,
the details of the case have been changed, but the
manner in which the data was used remains.
Accessing this data is relatively straightforward.
Our data recovery equipment can be connected to
the vehicle’s on-board diagnostic (OBD) port when
the vehicle has power (Figure 1). If the vehicle has
sustained signi昀椀cant damage, the module can be
removed and downloaded in a lab or workshop
environment (Figure 2).
EXPERT WITNESS JOURNAL
31
APRIL 2026
