OUR SERVICES

Forensic collision investigation

Collision investigation is at the core of what we do. A detailed understanding of collisions and injuries is the starting point for developing solutions and the end point for estimating their impact. Individual case reconstruction as expert witnesses in the legal process helps us understand wider collision data and vehicle performance tests results forming part of our research.  

Research on the safety characteristics of vehicles helps us understand the role of vehicle design, not just maintenance, in the individual collisions we investigate. Research and Expert Witness roles, forming a virtuous circle of continuous improvement.

We have provided expert evidence in relation to a wide variety of issues in collisions, but with considerable demand and limited time we will mainly only get involved in cases where the issues can be uniquely informed by our research or the case will give valuable perspective to our research. Typically these will be issues linked to specific features of commercial vehicles, or related to advanced control systems such as automated braking, or lane keeping technolgy

Vehicle testing

Apollo may not (yet!) be big enough to run our own test track but our key staff cut their teeth testing vehicles in laboratories, test tracks and on the public road. We have also helped design full scale test facilities and their component parts. Balancing the need for realism and repeatability within acceptable time and cost constraints is the key and the role of virtual testing as part of the mix is of rapidly growing interest.

Our focus is research and the development of new knowledge or test procedures rather than routine testing of products to an existing procedure. We are equipped with a sophisticated OXTS / ABD inertial motion unit for extremely precise measurements of vehicle location, speed, distance, acceleration (x,y,z), angles (pitch, roll, yaw) and angular rate. This is combined with Dewesoft data acquisition for the measurement of data from the vehicle CAN bus, integration of signals from additional analogue or digital instrumentation and synchronisation with video footage. This gives us a substantial in-house test capability. Our equipment is fully compatible with driving robot controls from ABDynamics for path following test control to 2cm positional accuracy and these can be hired in, subject to timing and availability. Our in-house capability can be extended to full ADAS testing with this partnership approach.

We can undertake testing at more than one airfield local to us, or we can travel to a venue of your choice. We are equally comfortable partnering with major test houses such as MIRA and UTAC/Millbrook where we will often specify a test programme, manage and oversee its execution on behalf of a client and then analyse and interpret the results in light of the client objectives.

Road trials have also become a much more common part of our work. We have been responsible for several public road trials where we either collect naturalistic driving data or we assess the real world, in-service performance effects of changes in vehicle characteristics or technologies. Through partnerships with telematics companies we can collect and process high frequency raw data from millions of miles of road journeys, intelligently breaking down enormous data sets into relevant metrics and event data of manageable size. From there we have produced genuinely ground breaking, innovative results and relationships.  

Data Analytics

In modern engineering, data is the new gold. Many data scientists have the skills to manipulate big data, few can combine this with the in-depth subject knowledge to understand the meaning behind the result. Apollo Vehicle Safety are among the few.

We regularly work with a variety of collision data, exposure to risk data, results from vehicle test programmes, road trials, mathematical analyses and computer simulations. Scale and processing tools and techniques vary depending on the project, but with our largest project to date covering 33 Hz raw data from more than 2 million miles of road driving, we have proven we can handle significant scale. Analyses of resulting data are interpreted in light of evidence from published literature and data from other specialisms such as economics, vehicle repair, emissions, infrastructure loading and driver behaviour studies to produce complex data models, risk functions and forecasts of future effects.

The result is that our client’s decisions are informed by the best data possible in situations that may often be constrained by time, budget or politics.

Regulation & Rating

When new technology emerges, Regulation can be a barrier preventing implementation. When technology has proven it’s worth, making it mandatory can guarantee rapid market penetration. However, Regulatory change can be hard. It can be time consuming and it will always form a minimum standard rather than a best practice to strive towards.

Voluntary schemes can be seen as a soft option. However, in economics, road accidents are a market failure: the profit motive has failed to provide the solution. Well designed voluntary interventions that adjust the market to make safe behaviour the most profitable behaviour can set that aspirational best practice standard and in the right circumstances can achieve better results faster than regulation.

Apollo Vehicle Safety speak fluent regulation and rating. Whether you are a policy maker, a vehicle or technology supplier, a fleet manager or a campaigner for change we can help you understand the context, identify the options, quantify the pros and cons of each option and develop the detailed technical requirements needed to implement your choice.