However, some observers argued that while the consequences of the impact were more severe than the earlier crash, at least the car was prevented from travelling farther.
Goddard recalls a similar test last year, when a post left marks on the underside of the crashed car. “The post acted like a ramp, sending the car skywards and leaving scratch marks along its chassis. Had we not seen the crash and the marks, we might not know to look for similar damage. There’s a principle in forensics that says every mark will leave a trace. In a car crash, you have thousands of contacts. Our job is to work out what caused them.”
One crash in the low-speed zone involved a Toyota Auris being reversed into the side of a Suzuki Vitara. The Toyota was travelling at 5mph, but had it been a real-life incident, the damage to the Honda’s door and sill would likely have resulted in the car being written off.
An investigator for loss-adjusting firm QuestGates said that seeing the impact was useful in his work defending the growing number of claims relating to Gap insurance, in particular where claimants have ‘return-to-invoice’ cover that pays the difference between an insurer’s settlement amount and the original invoice price of the car.
“It’s a growing problem with insurers more ready to write-off cars and more people staging fake crashes towards the end of their PCP [finance period],” he says.
Alongside him, a lawyer acting for insurers adds: “We help insurers defend spurious personal injury claims. Today’s crashes shine a light on events few people will experience, and it gives people like me the opportunity to understand their outcomes.”
More crashes followed, including a high-speed T-bone and one involving a pedestrian dummy being struck by a Volkswagen Golf (the dummy’s head shattered the windscreen). But as the day drew to a close, the two that everyone was keenest to see were a high-speed crash into the back of a lorry and another into the back of a line of stationary cars.
For the former, a Jaguar X-Type rear-ended a seven-ton lorry at 61mph. It was catastrophic, with half the car ‘submarining’ below the truck.
