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Dr. Wolfe is the Director of Accident Reconstruction and specializes in the fields of accident reconstruction, human factors, and lighting. Dr. Wolfe investigates and reconstructs passenger vehicle, commercial vehicle, pedestrian, and bicycle collisions. He is accredited as a Traffic Accident Reconstructionist by the Accreditation Commission for Traffic Accident Reconstruction (ACTAR #3532). In addition to specializing in collisions involving nighttime recognition and conspicuity issues, he also performs lighting analyses in slip, trip, fall incidents and matters involving perception and object detection. His analysis techniques include headlight mapping of vehicles, luminance and illuminance mapping of artificial lighting, scene luminance, visibility modeling, and low-illumination and nighttime photography.

Dr. Wolfe earned a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, and a B.S. in Engineering with a minor in Mathematics at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia. During his doctoral candidacy, Dr. Wolfe researched and studied in the fields of physics, electromagnetics, optics, photonics and lighting. He relies on his educational background in electrical engineering and physics to design, test, and analyze automotive electrical systems. He also evaluates and tests various Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) that utilize technologies such as light detection and ranging (LiDAR), millimeter wave radars, infrared, and optical cameras.

In 2018, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported that 76% of pedestrian fatalities occurred during dark lighting conditions. A decrease in illumination often has a diminishing effect on the performance of the human visual system with a reduction in visual acuity. A driver’s ability to detect and recognize potential and immediate hazards is influenced by a number of factors, such as, illumination, luminance or contrast, size, pattern, eccentricity, and adaptation luminance. Accident reconstructionists are frequently asked to evaluate at what point in time an object or pedestrian would have been detectable or recognizable to an approaching driver. This presentation will cover analysis techniques such as headlight and streetlight mapping, low-illumination photography, luminance measurements, and the application of small target visibility (STV) models to field data. Additionally, several case studies will be presented that demonstrate how these quantitative and scientific principles can be applied to incidents involving lighting and conspicuity issues.