Over the past 50 years ATA Associates, Inc. has established itself as a respected forensic engineering firm with demonstrated national and international reach utilizing the most up-to-date accident reconstruction technology available.
Building upon ATA’s first case, when company founder and owner, Bob Swint, investigated an occupant’s ejection from a moving boat and the propeller strike injury that followed, ATA has become widely known not only for the investigation of boating mishaps but also for reconstructing thousands of car and truck wrecks.
ATA Associates: Reputation for Excellence in Accident Reconstruction
ATA’s well-deserved reputation for excellence in vehicular accident reconstruction rests upon core competencies in compiling and evaluating the available evidence, understanding the underlying physics, writing conclusive reports, and preparing persuasive demonstrative graphics and videos. All those attributes provide a firm foundation for convincing deposition and trial testimony from ATA’s staff of seasoned experts.
The same areas of expertise, together with an array of data-gathering hardware and software in a well-equipped lab and shop, also provide ATA with inspection, testing, and analysis capabilities in many areas beyond boat and motor vehicle accidents.
What We do at ATA Associates:
While some forensic firms are “boutiques” that specialize solely in either defending or pressing complaints against a particular industry or product, ATA embraces a broader view of our identity, capabilities, and mission.
We cannot and do not claim to be experts on everything – knowing how to stay in your own lane is a crucial part of maintaining credibility as an expert – but our many years of experience and our proven track record in diverse areas of inquiry demonstrate that a solid grounding in science and engineering coupled with an up-to-date awareness of current, trending technologies provide a basis for understanding and forming valid, defensible opinions in a wide variety of technical fields including:
“Thinking Outside the Box”
Although the popular phrase “thinking outside the box” might be dismissed as a cliché, it is, nevertheless, as good a way as any to describe a characteristic that has led to ATA’s successes in diverse fields. A hallmark of ATA’s approach in unusual cases is the use of a proven method of investigation from one technical field to shine a meaningful light on a problem in a different field.
Acceleration, kinetic energy, and momentum are physical parameters that are typical elements in most of ATA’s car and truck crash reconstructions. Using analysis of those same parameters has also been effective in understanding roller coaster motions, the coupling impacts between locomotives and railcars, and the opening and closing behavior of rolling gates in residential and industrial fences. Likewise, the same general understanding of mechanisms that makes the operation of automobile and eighteen-wheeler steering systems intelligible has also unlocked insights into defects in a dump truck’s bed lifting apparatus, critical misalignment issues in oilfield hammer unions and wellhead valves, and the malfunction of a latch intended to hold the lid in place on a stove-top pressure cooker.
The Advancement of Accident Reconstruction Using GPS Data
ATA’s investment of resources over the past several years to understand the model of the Earth and the associated trigonometry that underpins location and distance measurement by the global positioning system (GPS) has opened surprising avenues in accident reconstruction as the number of vehicles and devices incorporating GPS proliferates. In recent ATA cases, GPS data has been used to track not only the paths of cars, trucks, and boats involved in mishaps but also the paths of bicyclists, water skiers, and wakeboarders.
“It’s All Just Physics”
The preceding discussion is not meant to imply that reconstructions of an eighteen-wheeler crash and a pressure cooker malfunction are equivalent since “it’s all just physics.”
That view trivializes both the unique challenges entailed in each type of investigation and the boundless scope of modern physics. Likewise, the discussion does not discount the utility of boutique forensics in certain cases. Instead, the discussion is a reflection on unusual cases ATA has seen, such as the capsizing of a commercial fishing vessel caused by the hoisting of an over-filled purse seine, where no forensic expert specializing in that particular circumstance was available and the only recourse was to explore the physics involved.
Explore our capabilities, learn about us, our previous experience, and our expertise as leading accident reconstructionists across all industries.
