Accessing Impact force and Speed of Side Collision

If you are looking for legal reasons then you probably need to hire an expert. I don't know what country you are in but (as far as I know) in the U.S. you must be accepted by the court as an "expert" before you can present opinions, calculations, etc. Even if you have the right answer and have calculated it correctly I don't think you can present the evidence.

If you are not looking for a legal reason then it is an interesting exercise but the most logical answer is probably to accept the information in the police report.

Note that I am not a lawyer and I am not qualified to give legal advise. These are just my opinions.

Thanks Bruce. I am in HK, which doesn't required pre-qualifaction as an expert. I got a professor willing to help but he needs help as where to find such information.

[A few phone calls to Toyota's crash testing centre/center] seems to be the route to the solution.

Why? My guess is that it helps your case.

There are outfits and experts that specialize in these types of accidents - obviously, for a fee.

However, that fee may be well worth the price. The reason is that an "expert" witness with credentials caries far, far more legal weight than a bunch of anonymous would-be engineers on some internet forum.

My "unprofessional opinion" is to contact a "good" accident attorney.

P.S. I have been known to be right. :)

Albert, if you send fotos and measurements to the Porche people they should be able to help....I suppose thay have done such tests that should carry weight!

My bet is that they will not. Porsche will not want to expose their @ss in any legal way. Their attorneys will prevent release of any such information faster than light.

You would need to subpoena that information and I would bet the only way you could do that is if the court and the attorneys see Porsche is possibly liable in this case.

The car manufacturers will likely not want to get involved but you may be able to get information on their crash test program (possibly videos) from the internet and use this to compare to your damage. Accurate speed and damage assessment is VERY difficult due to vehicle crumple zones which vary from car to car.

Try seeing if there is video of the accident (street camera's, public cellphone video, etc). A long shot, but if you can find it you can us it to work out the speed.

Witness testimony seems like the only realistic option. What do both insurance companies say?

I am assuming the taxi driver was in the wrong, if you were and the accident is your fault then all bets are off and it likely doesn't matter what speed the taxi was traveling.

Thanks Jack. I am sure that I was following the traffic light but need to prove it. Thus would like to access the impact force needed in causing such scale of damage to calculate the speed of the taxi during collision; and then basing on its distance travelled to proved that it wan't just started from stagnation.

I found this accident investigation calculator which may help. If you google the term or impact calculators you may get others. If you took pictures that would help. The length of the Toyota's skid marks before impact and the distance it drove the car are a better factor to base speed on. It is this speed you want to determine if the car was stopped or not at the intersection before he started forward.

http://www.greatrix.co.uk/AICalculator.html

Thanks Ozzb very much. I feel the simulation program would be very help; any suggestion how I could obtain the stiffness coefficient of both vehicles as well as the coefficient of friction of the road surface?

http://www.aras360.com/resources/vehicle-stiffness-database.html

As far as the coefficiant of friction of the road surface. You should be able to find a listing of it. Which would be determine by the type of surface and it's condition wet or dry.