Plate 5. License plate imprint in wood utility pole.

Plate 5. License plate imprint in wood utility pole.

Segal, Murray D.

Research on Fatal Highway Collisions.

Traffic fatalities.

The last external program of the Department of Legal Medicine was the Research on Fatal Highway Collisions project; Alfred L. Moseley, a psychologist, was the principal investigator. The project, funded by a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health of the U.S. Public Health Service, started its work in December 1958. The project was criticized for its methodology, however, and an ad hoc committee appointed to evaluate it determined that the project "did not present a research design supported by data but were instead written around conclusions" and that it would not be profitable to continue the research. The project was closed down on June 30, 1963.
The Research on Fatal Highway Collisions did print two volumes of its research papers and also this report by Murray D. Segal to the Highway Research Board. The plate shows the imprint of a license plate on a utility pole, indicating the point, direction, attitude, and height of the collision impact.

Segal, Murray D.

Segal, Murray D., 1949-
Procedures for investigating environmental factors
in fatal highway collisions, [1962].

1962

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1 printed photograph

English

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E49.B26.

Gift of Alfred L. Moseley to the Library of Harvard Medical School, 1962.