From the presses at Lawyers & Judges Publishing Co. comes a book of benefit to a number of audiences including attorneys, ophthalmologists, highway engineers, and accident reconstructionists. This review is mostly for the latter group.

The book Forensic Vision: With Application to Highway Safety, 3rd Edition’s principal author is Marc Green, with numerous contributions by Leslie Weintraub, J. Vernon Odom, plus late Merrill Allen (1918-2003) and Bernard Abrams (1929-2003).

Among the topics discussed are psychophysics; attention; conspicuity; eye anatomy and optics; systemic diseases; alcohol and other drugs affecting highway safety; and visual problems and hazards in the automobile and on streets and highways. And there is a must-read Chapter 17 titled “How Long Does It Take to Stop?: Methodological Analysis of Driver Perception-Brake Times.” After reading that chapter, you will never use 1.5 seconds as a perception/reaction time again. Later in a chapter titled “Forensic Vision Toolkit,” author Abrams writes concerning a hypothetical case, “This perception/reaction distance at night in an unexpected situation would be, in this author’s opinion, between 2.5 and 3.5 seconds.”

I often testify regarding driver expectation and conspicuity, especially in nighttime underride accidents, and I talk about replacing the word “see” with “perceive as a hazard. In the section on attention and conspicuity, Marc Green writes it another way: “Visibility refers only to whether the viewer can detect a sensation. It does not specify whether the viewer will like notice the sensation.”Green notes, “…people don’t see what they don’t attend to, and they don’t attend to what is irrelevant.” We have had attorneys ask us what a normal driver would do in such-and-such an instance. Who is to say what is normal? Chapter 9, Visual Aging, addresses that very thing under the heading “The Definition of Normal.” Perhaps a good section to quote when asked about “normal” in a deposition. Speaking of underride accidents or any involving retroreflectors or retroreflective sheeting, read Chapter11. Although the chapter discusses candlepower and relative luminance, it is also useful regarding nighttime pedestrian accidents.

Accident reconstructionists not versed in optometry may be dazed at terms such as dichromatic confusions and anomalous trichoromats or words such as endogenous and parasympathomimetic, but fear not, if you like and must have equations, chapter 13 “Visibility Analysis: Physics” is for you.

Among the topics covered by Forensic Vision: With Application to Highway Safety are: Cognitive Information Processing, Physiology, Eye Anatomy and Optics, Types of Attention, Cognitive Conspicuity, Inattention, Metabolic Diseases, Visual fields, Reaction time, Peripheral Visual Field Loss, Color Blindness, Depth Perception, Age, Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus, Anatomical/Physiological Changes with Age, Windshield Tint, Glare Effects, Perception-reaction time, Child Behavior and Accidents, and Driving: Are Older Drivers Really Worse Drivers?

For a complete list of topics, visit Lawyersandjudges.com, search the book title and click on Table of Contents. You can also read more about the book’s contents and its authors. Readers may notice the appendices begin with “Appendix B.” That’s because Appendix A and supplementary materials are included on a CD, neatly tucked away inside the back cover.