Citation

Miller R. Collision 2010; 5(2): 92-96.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Collision Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The "butterfly effect" is part of chaos theory and concerns the relationship of minor variations and their unforeseen effect on outcomes. This article describes an accident reconstruction case that loosely demonstrated the concept of the butterfly effect. In this case, which involved a head-on collision in New York, a seemingly insignificant aspect of an investigation had a far-reaching consequence. In 2008, an automobile driver in the morning hours crossed over the centerline of the roadway and struck a pickup truck head-on. Although the occupants of the truck survived, the automobile driver did not. Although the case originally seemed to be a simple case of falling asleep behind the wheel, the accident reconstructionist noticed that the airbags in the automobile had not deployed despite the severity of the accident. His discovery of this detail and the subsequent investigation eventually led to the recall of 228,910 vehicles with potentially defective airbags.