Forensic Engineering Analysis In Injury Event Reconstruction And Causation Analysis - References To Activities Of Daily Living

In the forensic engineering analysis of injury events (including event reconstruction and injury causation analysis), the forensic engineer often presents any associated forces in units of g's. However, the ability of nontechnical individuals (including jurors) to accurately understand a given force in g's may be limited. One approach sometimes employed by forensic engineers to address this problem is to cite a number of so-called Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) along with their associated forces. Legal challenges to such citations are often based on an argument "it is confusing" in reference to jurors' ability to consider such information. Alternately, attorneys may argue that cited ADLs mislead the jury in that they may conclude that the presented ADLs somehow model the injury event under consideration (sometimes this is actually intended by the presenter). This manuscript will examine the use and potential misuse of ADLs. This will include a compilation of ADLs from credible sources. ADLs can indeed be useful to help others understand what a given force means via comparison to the forces associated with other hopefully familiar activities. The forensic engineer must be cognizant of the source of the ADL data, including both how and why the measurements were made. Most ADLs are not intended to somehow model a specific injury event, so the forensic engineer must exercise caution regarding this issue. Both appropriate and inappropriate applications of ADL citations will be discussed in detail, including actual case examples.