Texas Motor Speedway, Dallas, TX
Background: The accident occurred when a Legends race car being driven during a track day for Boy Scouts struck another child and severely injured him. In addition to injuring the bystander, the race car itself was heavily damaged.
What We Did: An identical race car was procured and the trajectory of the accident race car was carefully determined from witness testimony. Using a professional driver who was the same age and weight of the accident driver, the instrumented exemplar vehicle was driven through the accident trajectory and velocity and acceleration data were recorded. A scale model of the scene and trajectory was constructed, along with a similarly scaled model of a football field to give distance perspective to Jurors. Data showed that the race car was (perhaps unintentionally) being driven at near its performance limit when the accident occurred.