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Napoleon knew it. Patton knew it. Even Attilla the Hun knew it. Before the battle, know thy enemy! You may be outnumbered, but if you know where the opposing general is going ahead of time you can cut him off at the pass.
Also, Shakespeare must have been thinking of a courtroom when he wrote "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players..."
An accident reconstruction expert's battlefield is a courtroom; with its good guys and villains, bystanders and witnesses, combatants and a referee. As an accident investigator or reconstructionist, you'll suffer slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Remember: know thy enemy.
But who is the enemy? They don't wear black hats so you can't spot `em right off. But they're the other side. If you're testifying for the prosecution, the defense attorney is the bad guy. In a civil case, one of the lawyers is your friend, the other -- the one over there! - is ready to sink his teeth into you and never let go.
Somewhere in Circumvention of Law 101, young attorneys learn that if you can't attack the facts, attack the witness. It doesn't matter if you have just saved a dozen lives and were named Officer of the Year, at least one of the lawyers in the courtroom is going to try to take you apart. If you know what his weapons are ahead of time, you can have the right shields in place. You can not only persevere, but come away victorious.
A traffic accident reconstructionist will eventually end up in a courtroom. As a mere investigator, you are a "fact witness" and generally neither side has an axe to grind with you since, if the lawyers know what they're doing, you probably won't be giving any opinions. But as an "expert witness," someone in the courtroom won't like what you're going to say because it's probably going to make his client look bad.
Before a trial, I lay awake half the...