the-BA : Silent Witness

Round the bend. Damn! Hit the brakes. Screeching rubber. Crunch! The driver panics. Quick look round. No witnesses. Right, “I’m out of here.” Reverse a few metres, and away he goes, leaving the police with a puzzle. The driver thinks he’s got away with it; but he’s wrong about there being no witnesses. Skid marks and broken lights can’t speak, but they can certainly tell a story.

Have you ever wondered how police piece together the evidence from a hit-and-run incident to decide what happened, and who may have been involved?

You might like to …

• think about what types of evidence the driver has left at the scene, and what he has driven away with; decide how they might try to link the two, to identify the vehicle involved
• devise laboratory tests to investigate how various factors might affect skidding (provided you have a safe area to use as a test track, you may be able to perform tests with a bike); from your results, suggest what information can be deduced from a skid mark and how
• investigate whether reversing over a skid mark destroys potential evidence, and/or leaves other evidence in the new tyre tracks
• investigate ways to test fragments of glass and transparent plastics, so that those left at the scene can be matched to a suspect vehicle.

Further links:

www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20041215/Feature1.asp

http://www.bbc.co.uk/crimewatch/

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