SINGAPORE: In 2016, a Mercedes-Benz barrelled down the Ayer Rajah Expressway (AYE) towards the movement of traffic, earlier than crashing right into a automotive and a scooter. One individual was killed in the accident and 4 injured.
At the Mercedes driver’s trial in 2019, there was a query about whether or not the expressway’s slope had contributed to the automotive’s rushing because it moved towards traffic movement, stated Grace Wong, appearing deputy laboratory director of Health Sciences Authority’s (HSA) Forensic Chemistry and Physics Laboratory.
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Technology, in the type of a three-dimensional map of that stretch of the expressway, helped the forensic scientists calculate the gradient of the AYE stretch, with out having to manually scan accessible elements of it.
The driver was finally sentenced to a 12 months’s jail.
“The ability for us to go back in time, so to speak, and revisit that scene (digitally) was invaluable,” stated Wong.
Technology now kinds a cornerstone of the work by HSA’s traffic crash reconstruction group, which may conduct extra of its investigations remotely.
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In the previous, a bigger variety of expressways and roads had to be closed for forensic scientists to manually take 3D laser scans of the crash websites, whereas investigating complex and deadly traffic accidents.
It was time-consuming and disruptive to the movement of traffic, stated Dr Alaric Koh, appearing division director of HSA’s Forensic Science Division.
Before laser scanners had been used, the scientists even had to use measuring rollers and tapes to measure the width and distance of a web site.
Dr Koh added that whereas its traffic crash reconstruction group appears into about 80 circumstances yearly now, in contrast with up to 5 a 12 months greater than a decade in the past, its use of superior expertise has helped the group investigate these accidents extra effectively.
In 2021, there have been 100 deadly street accidents.
These applied sciences embody three-dimensional replicas of the accident web site and simulation fashions that recreate occasions main up to the accident and its aftermath.
Recreating the accident helps forensic scientists reply investigative questions, corresponding to whether or not the autos had been rushing or flouting traffic guidelines.
The HSA group can use digital replicas from the Singapore Land Authority’s (SLA) National 3D Mapping Programme, which began in 2014, to measure the size of a stretch to calculate a automobile’s velocity. Through the SLA initiative, each street, lane and freeway in Singapore was mapped through a 3D laser scanner with cameras mounted on a automotive.
The scanner sends out hundreds of thousands of laser pulses in a second, and when the pulses hit objects corresponding to a street stretch, timber or lamp posts, these objects’ heights and geometry are plotted in a 3D area.
Since 2019, HSA’s Forensic Chemistry and Physics Laboratory has used SLA’s 3D map for about 50 circumstances.
While the forensic scientists have to take their very own scans at occasions, primarily as a result of the SLA knowledge is outdated due to elements corresponding to street reconstruction, Dr Victor Khoo, director of SLA’s survey and geomatics division, stated the federal government physique will proceed to replace the map commonly.
“We are going to start another campaign to continue to capture (3D data of the roads). This ought to be a continuous process. And autonomous vehicles will also depend on these 3D point cloud data to drive themselves,” he added. – The Straits Times (Singapore)/Asia News Network
