EP 9: Randy Bauder and Taylor Walker | ACTAR Exam Prep

RANDY BAUDER AND TAYLOR WALKER |
Tools and Tactics for Acing the ACTAR Examination

Lou sits down with Randy Bauder and Taylor Walker to discus the ACTAR exam – why they sought accreditation, how they prepared, and their advice for others taking the test.

A rough transcript of the podcast can be found below.

You can find the audio only version of this podcast on your favorite platform.

Links from the Show:

• Connect with Randy

• Learn more about ACTAR

• Read about the accreditation process

• Resources Discussed

  • Andy Rich’s ACTAR Prep Course

  • CA Association of Accident Reconstruction Specialists (CA2RS)

  • CA Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST)

  • IPTM Courses - Crash Investigation and ACTAR Prep

  • Northwestern University Center for Public Safety

  • Rusty Haight | Collision Safety Institute

  • YouTube Test Prep

Timeline of Topics:

Randy Bauder

00:00:00 – Introduction to the show and Randy’s background

00:04:33 – Randy’s decision to pursue accreditation

00:08:13 – The application process and requirements to sit for the exam

00:10:46 – Distinction between ACTAR and PE

00:12:30 – Preparation for the exam

00:20:30 – Reference materials used during the exam

00:25:50 – The morning session

00:31:37 – The afternoon session

00:34:35 – Finding out the results

00:36:41 – Advice for others seeking accreditation

Taylor Walker

00:39:40 – Introduction to Taylor’s background

00:45:03 – Taylor’s decision to pursue accreditation

00:52:20 – Training prior to the exam

00:55:09 – Preparation for the exam

01:02:44 – Advice for others seeking accreditation

01:04:48 – Tools used during the afternoon session

01:12:12 – The morning session

01:17:01 – The afternoon session

01:25:58 – Finding out the results

01:26:42 – Would you do anything differently a second time around?

Rough Transcript:
Please find a rough transcript of the show below. This transcript has not been thoroughly reviewed or edited, so some errors may be present.

Lou (00:00:00):

Good day, esteemed colleagues. We have a unique episode in store for today. I'll be interviewing two reconstructionists who recently took and passed the ACTAR examination. First you'll hear from Randy Bauder, a mechanical engineer who had hundreds of hours of recon-specific training prior to taking the exam. Then I'll talk with Taylor Walker, a law enforcement officer with many years of experience and lots of training through the POST curriculum, that's Peace Officer Standards for Training, and CAARS, the California Association of Accident Reconstruction Specialists. You'll learn how they prepared for the exam, what materials they brought to help them succeed, what they wish they did differently, and their advice for recons starting down the path to accreditation. So without further ado, enjoy the show.

(00:01:00):

Thanks for coming on. We met... We were just talking at WREX in 2023, and then it must've been just last month we were in Pasadena at my motorcycle class for Northwestern, and that's when I got to know you a little bit better. And I got to understand, one, that you're a super intelligent guy and you're working with Dusty at Adamson, and you guys are kind of on the forefront of some really cool technologies and you're exposed to a lot of advanced methodologies that I don't think everybody is, especially within the first five years. So could you just go through your educational background, your professional background a little bit so people have some idea of the context that you're bringing into this whole ACTAR process to begin with?

Randy (00:01:47):

Yeah. So first let me say, you mentioned the intelligence thing. It's not always about your intelligence. It's kind of the intelligence of the people that you surround yourself with. So just to set the record straight, there's a lot of really intelligent guys that I work with and work around. So I studied mechanical engineering in college. Well, I guess I should back up a little further. I got an associate's degree in mathematics and then my undergrad in mechanical engineering. I've been working with Adamson Engineering for five years now, and I'm surrounded by a lot of really smart people. We do a lot of fun stuff, get to enjoy a lot of really advanced techniques for accident reconstruction. I've taken several of the typical classes that you'll see accident reconstructionists take, including... Not limited to, but you've got your investigation classes, your reconstruction classes, dynamics, all the stuff that happened in my mechanical engineering coursework, Human Factors with Jeffrey Muttart, and most recently your motorcycle reconstruction class.

Lou (00:02:47):

I was doing a little bit of math to be like, "Okay, so how much education did Randy expose himself to before taking the ACTAR exam?" So you took it in 2022.

Randy (00:02:56):

That's right.

Lou (00:02:56):

And I just kind of tallied up some accident reconstruction specific numbers. Through 2021, it was 268 hours. So that's after your associates in mathematics, that's after your bachelor's in mechanical engineering, which was cum laude by the way. So you could play yourself down all you want, but we know you're smart. And then you had additional classes in 2022 that may have been taken before the ACTAR exam, so you're probably somewhere like 300 hours or more just of collision reconstruction specific coursework prior to taking the test. The one class that I was wondering if you took before taking the test was a Northwestern recon class?

Randy (00:03:33):

I think so. I think I've at least had one, maybe two of the Northwestern recon classes before taking that ACTAR test because I want to say the ACTAR test was later in the year in '22 that I took it. The only thing I can't remember is if I did the FE exam, the Fundamentals of Engineering exam before or after taking the ACTAR, and I can't remember that. I know I did a one two punch with the FE and the PE exam, but I don't recall the actual dates those happened.

Lou (00:03:56):

So you hit it hard, man. That's what I like to see personally on the engineering side is if you have the capability, get the PE, get the ACTAR, and then I feel like you're pretty bulletproof when you get onto the stand. But that's obviously asking a lot. Both of those tests are hard to prepare for, and that's the way that I did it. By the way, I went through a lot of Northwestern classes, but TAR 1, the recon class and then TAR 2 in addition to the investigation classes. But by the time I came out of TAR 1 and TAR 2, I'm ready to rock. I did a little brushing up, but at that point I'd been exposed to all of those concepts for so long that they were kind of second nature. So when did you first decide that you wanted to pursue ACTAR?

Randy (00:04:37):

When I started working in this field.

Lou (00:04:38):

Right out of the gate.

Randy (00:04:39):

So day one was, "Hey, this is going to happen someday." It was only a matter of how long it's going to take me to get to where I need to be to take that exam. Of course, I just want to say this, that the ACTAR exam is not the end-all, be-all. It's a good credential to have. I know lots of guys who don't have ACTAR who do a decent job, and I know some guys who do have ACTAR that could use some extra training in what they're doing. So it's a good benchmark. And the ACTAR exam's not the easiest thing in the world, but it's not the hardest thing in the world either.

Lou (00:05:12):

And when you look through the history of ACTAR and how this organization came to be and how the test was developed, it's a minimum training criteria. So it doesn't mean you're done by any stretch of the imagination. Part of what the ACTAR process is is you need to take at least 80 hours of continuing education every five years to maintain it. And personally, I try to take as much as I can because like you said, if you have ACTAR, that doesn't give you some sort of invincibility cloak. It doesn't mean you can't mess up. It doesn't mean you can't know something that you actually need to know. And I think it's becoming more and more challenging to encapsulate everything that's necessary for reconstructionist to know on one examination, because we have so many things that come into play, like heavy vehicles, downloads, and regular EDRs and motorcycle EDRs and human factors and all sorts of stuff that at least we have to have some sort of basic knowledge of. I saw Dusty Arrington has got a recent ACTAR number as well. So did you have encouragement from the peers over there at Adamson?

Randy (00:06:12):

Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Pretty much every one of them was like, "Hey, go do this." It's like, "All right, yeah, let's do it." And that encouragement is helpful mentally, but it's also helpful just knowing that some of these guys I really look up to, some of these guys who are very accomplished in their field have done that. It's a good metric and a good baseline to know, "All right, cool. Well, these people have done this. These people know what they're talking about and recommend it. That's a good sign."

Lou (00:06:41):

And I got it when I was really early on in my career and it helped me feel more confident on the stand. It's just very unlikely that they're going to be able to consider you disqualified even in the jury's eyes, maybe not legally disqualified, but just in the jury's eyes like, "Hey, man, this guy's... Sure he is young..." 28 or whatever I was when I was first testifying. I think it was even younger than that, but it's like well, you've got the engineering degree and you've got ACTAR. So it gives you that level of comfort that you're going to be okay on the stand.

Randy (00:07:09):

Yeah, and I think some of that too has to do with the associated work that goes along with that exam. You have the exam, but you don't just have that exam. You have all of the coursework. If you have an engineering degree, you've got the engineering degree. That implies learning. That implies you've done work, you've been through the grind to get what you need to understand physics, to understand some of the surrounding things that go along with accident reconstruction. And similarly if you've gone through some of those Northwestern classes, if you've gone through some of those IPTM classes where you're really looking and seeking to understand not just, "Hey, give me a formula and let me plug that in," but, "Hey, what's actually happening behind the scenes here? What are we really looking at here?" I think depending on what course you've kind of taken and what your ladders looked like, what your roads looked like, I think that it really speaks to the road. Getting to that exam is just as important as the exam itself is.

Lou (00:08:05):

I totally agree. Once you've got your butt in that seat, you've really earned the right to be there, for most of us anyway. And of course, you have to submit the application. So that process... I did it like 20 years ago, so I can't really recall what it was, but it's a graded system of some sort where you submit all of your educational background and then they let you know whether or not you can sit for the exam. Is that what your experience was?

Randy (00:08:28):

Yeah, it was something along those lines. I can't remember the exact criteria that they had laid out for that, but you do have to submit that application and have to have approval to sit for it prior to actually signing up for the exam.

Lou (00:08:40):

So which was first for you, the PE or ACTAR?

Randy (00:08:43):

I got ACTAR before I got PE, and again like mentioned before, I can't remember if I took the PE exam before I took the ACTAR exam. I think it might've been after. But I do know that one of the limiting criteria for the PE licensure is experience. That's something you can't get around. That's something you absolutely have to have for PE. And so a while back, Texas decoupled the exam from the experience. Used to be you had to get your four years of experience or eight years if you have an engineering technical degree and then you sit for the PE exam. Well, you can sit for the PE exam first now, but you still have to have that experience prior to getting your PE licensure.

Lou (00:09:20):

Okay. Yeah, I remember when that happened. That seems really useful because I think I took the PE when I was maybe 10 years out of grad school and I had forgotten some of the basic things. So I had to relearn all of that because they needed the experience first. But that'd be great. You just come out of school and if you've got the FE already, you sit for the PE and then you get the license four years later.

Randy (00:09:41):

I was a little bit of a dumb-dumb. I didn't realize you could actually take the FE before graduating. So I took the FE after I graduated, and then I went straight into studying for the PE. It was kind of a tit-for-tat type situation with what they did. So they gave you the ability to take the PE exam before meeting the experience criteria, but they also said, "Hey, this is going to be a computer-only exam." So you can't show up with your stack of references anymore. I couldn't show up with my stack of references. I had to use their reference manual and that's it. That's all they give you is their reference manual. So if you have something that's not well-defined in there, you really have to understand what it is you're looking at.

Lou (00:10:18):

That was the PE?

Randy (00:10:19):

Yeah.

Lou (00:10:20):

Because I remember the way that I took it, the FE, that was the way it was. They gave you a book that was your only reference material. For the PE, everybody was wheeling in suitcases, kind of like you see at ACTAR sometimes.

Randy (00:10:29):

Used to be you could take your suitcase, carry on, check baggage, all of that with you, right?

Lou (00:10:34):

Yeah.

Randy (00:10:34):

Can't do that anymore. You got to use their computer.

Lou (00:10:37):

Okay.

Randy (00:10:37):

Fourteen-inch, sixteen-inch monitor and you got half the monitor is your reference manual, half of it's your work problem, and they give you a little dry erase board to work your problems out on.

Lou (00:10:46):

Dang. So how do you see the distinction between PE and ACTAR? What are they covering in broad concepts and why do you like to have both?

Randy (00:10:57):

Well, I mean for me as an engineer, PE is the... I don't know about saying the gold standard, but it's really hard to get to. It requires a lot of understanding in all aspects of engineering, and it is focused more on the fundamental concepts and the practicality of numerous different engineering problems and fields. ACTAR is more centered directly on accident reconstruction. Whereas it does pose a challenge, there's a good portion of it that's conceptual, and then we will probably get into it later on, but there's a conceptual portion. You've got a section where you work out your problems. Then you have another section where you work on a crash and you work that crash from start to finish on paper. So it's really good for getting a fundamental understanding of crash reconstruction and showing that you have a fundamental understanding of crash reconstruction. But as you mentioned earlier, man, this industry is changing. There's a lot of technology out there now that allows us to have some very interesting data and do some very detailed analyses that would be really difficult to cover in one exam.

Lou (00:12:05):

Yeah, it's almost like the civils have to do, at least in California and I think other places where we have the basic civil and then we have a soils and an earthquake or whatever they've got. They've got all their sort of disciplines. Who knows if that's how things will progress for ACTAR, but like you said, you got the basic fundamentals and ACTAR is currently covering that well, but then there's all sorts of spin-offs now and things that we all really do have to at least be aware of.

(00:12:30):

Okay. So you've got the mathematics degree, which I'm sure is helpful. You've got the engineering degree, then you've got a few hundred hours of collision reconstruction specific training. You set your sights on ACTAR accreditation, taking the exam. What did you do to specifically prepare as far as watching videos, joining IO groups or getting practice exams? How did you attack that?

Randy (00:12:54):

So I'll tell you. I wish I would've known about the IO groups before ACTAR. There's some really smart people who are willing to just share incredible knowledge in some of those groups. But I went for the training classes. I took a lot of those classes and I studied quite a bit for ACTAR. One of the most beneficial things... For me, this was for ACTAR and for the PE exam and for the FE exam. There is no replacement for doing the work. I'm blessed in the position that I was in with the companies that I've worked for here that I've had the opportunity to work on somewhere north of a thousand cases, and I've done hundreds of tractor trailer inspections and downloads and vehicle inspections and have touched hundreds of reconstruction cases. And that experience means something. But as far as the studying itself for ACTAR, there's no replacement for sitting down and doing problems.

(00:13:49):

You got to sit down, you got to do the work, you got to grind through it, and you got to be willing to make some mistakes on those problems that you're practicing and realize where those mistakes are and fix them so your brain can kind of get that algorithm down and understand what it is you're looking at and really understand what you're going for with those problems. So there's no better alternative to preparing for an exam where you're going to have practical problems you need to work out outside of practicing those problems and doing those practical problems.

Lou (00:14:18):

Like you said, you got to build that muscle memory. That was my experience as well. And then you get quick at it, you know your weak spots, you can focus on those and build those up. And then time management is just a big deal with any of these exams. So you've got to really get yourself to the point where you're efficient. So where did you get those problems? How did you seek out problems that you thought were representative of what would be on the exam?

Randy (00:14:43):

Obviously, the exact contents of the exam are closely guarded, which is great. It should be that way. It's a good way to prevent dishonest behavior. So two main things. It's well known that the reconstruction side of that ACTAR exam has to do with a vehicle crash. So practice working known crashes. That's one thing you can do that really helps. IPTM has preparation courses you can take that do a lot of practice problems and things like that. I did one of those. That was really helpful as well. But again, you got to sit down and you got to do the work. You can't just say you took the class and move forward. You got to sit down and do it.

Lou (00:15:20):

Yeah, like you said on that practical, so I pulled up some of the stuff that ACTAR publicly announces that's going to be on there. So on the second part of the exam, they basically say that you have to demonstrate your ability to perform a reconstruction without a computer. And during the practical examination, you're going to complete a crash reconstruction case based on controlled crash test with objective data and definitive answers. So you're going to be given a scale diagram capturing post-impact roadway evidence, and the candidate must analyze case problem facts to properly locate and draw vehicle positions at specified locations on the diagram. So we know right out of the gate, we have no computer, we're going to be working on a diagram. When's the last time most of us have done that? So it's like, okay, to your point, practice specificity, practice what you're going to need to implement, and diagramming and momentum analysis, that's the next part.

(00:16:17):

It's going to say you got to determine approach and departure angles from the diagram to complete a momentum analysis and answer a series of questions, which I would just argue that the vast majority of reconstructionists have not done for a very long time outside of the classroom. And of course, it illustrates and demonstrates a foundational understanding that's coming straight from your brain and your hand as opposed to a simulation or something. But there's no way that you will be efficient and proficient at doing that unless you put in the time and give it some practice.

Randy (00:16:50):

And I mean, with all the technology that's out there right now with the data that we have, with the ability to collect data from so many different systems on vehicles, that type of reconstruction is not as common anymore, like you were just saying. But what happens when you have that crash where you have not much data or no data? It's good to understand that it's good to have that fundamental understanding of what's really going on.

Lou (00:17:10):

Yep. I totally agree. So you took the IPTM class. Was that Andy Rich? Is that who taught that one?

Randy (00:17:15):

I don't remember. I don't remember the instructor. I don't think it was.

Lou (00:17:18):

Yeah, I think Andy has his own one now.

Randy (00:17:21):

Yeah, it was an online class, one of those ones where they have the little instructor in the bottom corner and the stuff going on behind it. I don't think it was Andy Rich, but I don't want to lie to you. I couldn't tell you for sure.

Lou (00:17:30):

Okay. And then what books did you find most useful? You have the IPTM book, the Northwestern book. Where did you get your kind of foundational information?

Randy (00:17:39):

Yeah, so I don't like to play favorites. They allow you to pull in whatever you want to pull in. So if you have a reference book that is based on science and is peer-reviewed, well-established in the industry, it could be helpful. I have the Crash Investigation and Crash Reconstruction books from Northwestern that I brought. Those are both really helpful. If you do take a class prior to... If you do your research, if you do your practice beforehand, I found it super useful to bookmark certain areas in that book that I expected to find problems come up on for referencing material if needed, for referencing equations if needed, things like that.

Lou (00:18:16):

So did you have anybody that you were taking the test with at a similar time that you could kind of bounce stuff off of or were you flying solo?

Randy (00:18:22):

Yeah, as far as folks that I knew, I was flying solo on it.

Lou (00:18:25):

Okay. How much time do you think overall you studied? And the reason I ask this question to give a little more context is I feel like a lot of people sit down for the ACTAR exam before they have potentially done the work necessary to sit, and I'd like to help people understand that somebody with your background, hundreds of hours of reconstruction training and mechanical engineering degree and mathematics degree, it sounds like you still put in a lot of time to make sure that you were prepped and ready to rock on test day. If you had to estimate, how much time did you put into the actual studying and run practice problems?

Randy (00:19:03):

That's a tough one, Lou.

Lou (00:19:04):

I'm good at those.

Randy (00:19:05):

Man, maybe a couple months.

Lou (00:19:06):

Okay.

Randy (00:19:07):

Maybe two or three months, something like that. But that's a tough one because you're studying, you're also working while you're studying. And at that point in time, I was dealing with young kids while working and studying, but I want to say... Probably fair to say, two or three months, somewhere around there.

Lou (00:19:24):

You put in a ton of work. It was not something that even after all your education... Like I said, you come out of the Northwestern TAR 1 class, which is really the fundamentals of the reconstruction portion of the ACTAR exam as opposed to the investigation, like evidence analysis, and you still put in a bunch of time, so that's awesome. I have to imagine that you felt well-prepared walking in.

Randy (00:19:48):

Yeah, I did. And it's important to note that I didn't spend eight hours a day for three months studying for it. A couple hours here and there as I'm able to. And then the timeframe of the actual prep course.

Lou (00:20:01):

Where did you take the exam? Was it at a local police department?

Randy (00:20:04):

Yeah. It's actually... It's funny. No, I took the exam where The Office was filmed.

Lou (00:20:10):

Oh, you're kidding.

Randy (00:20:11):

Where they said it was supposed to be, in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Lou (00:20:13):

No way. Okay. You went the distance to find one that just worked with when you were done studying, essentially, so that you wouldn't let any information-

Randy (00:20:21):

Yeah. Schedule was a primary limiter for us at that point in time for me with that. So we found one that was the closest one after, and I was like, "All right, that's where we're going."

Lou (00:20:30):

Yeah, that's the way to do it. You don't want to let any of that information or skill atrophy while you're just waiting for a test to come through Texas, which, if I remember correctly, every organization offers it once a year. So if you're ready to take the test in September and the next test is not until August of the following year, then you better get yourself to a spot where there's a test. Okay.

(00:20:53):

So what materials did you...? We touched on this a little bit, but what materials did you bring in with you for the exam? And let's talk both about reference material with respect to textbooks and equation sheets maybe, and also tools for diagramming, because I think that there's a lot of different methodologies out there, and as we mentioned before, the ability to efficiently and accurately diagram is a key skill.

Randy (00:21:17):

Yeah, reference material, the two Northwestern books were super helpful, both the investigation book and the reconstruction book. There were also some equation sheets and some reference material from the reconstruction classes that I laminated and made into a binder and brought that as well. The material that ACTAR themselves gives you, I took all that, laminated it, put all that in the binder. So those are the primary reference materials that I used for that exam. As far as the practical materials that I would use for the diagramming, things like that, there are two that stand out or three really that stand out as exceptionally helpful. One is a foam board, and it may sound weird, but bring a piece of foam board. If you're having to fly somewhere for it or you're packing a carry-on suitcase, cut the foam board in half. I use foam board. I use clear plastic, kind of like that transparency material with those slide projectors that we had when your kids.

Lou (00:22:14):

Yeah, the Elmos. Yep.

Randy (00:22:15):

Yeah, yeah. One of that kind of material. And I'll explain why here in a minute. And then this ruler right here.

Lou (00:22:22):

Oh, yeah. One of those curvy architecture type.

Randy (00:22:25):

So Staler makes it. It's bendable, it's moldable.

Lou (00:22:28):

For those that aren't watching the video, it's one of those semi-flexible rulers that can curl up and form to curves and things like that. Now, does it have a scale on it, or what specifically are you using that for?

Randy (00:22:39):

So it has inch and centimeter scale on it.

Lou (00:22:41):

Okay.

Randy (00:22:41):

Inch on one side, centimeter on the other. That is really helpful for measuring skid distances and things like that. If they give you-

Lou (00:22:49):

Oh, I got you.

Randy (00:22:49):

If they give you skid marks, something like that. Or if they give you a specific distance that's along a curve or something like that, it's really helpful for measuring that because the traditional foot ruler, you've got a straight line, and if you're trying to measure the length of a skid mark, that's not perfectly...

(00:23:03):

And if you're trying to measure the length of a skid mark that's not perfectly straight, that ruler is really helpful for that.

Lou (00:23:06):

Brilliant, yeah.

Randy (00:23:07):

And then the foam board and the transparency material along with a push pin, those are really helpful for placing your vehicles. Basically you can make a scale vehicle using that transparency material, find your axle locations, draw some faux wheels on it with fine point permanent marker. You can use that, push your push pin through the CG of that vehicle, and use the foam board as backing for your sheet. And you can actually use that for accurately placing and diagramming where your vehicles are at and tracing that vehicle on your diagram just to increase your accuracy on it.

Lou (00:23:43):

Yeah, I love that. It keeps it nice and tidy it would sound like as well, because you're tracing with that piece of transparent paper, the plastic, you're tracing the path of the car based on the tire marks, and then you can just kind of punch a hole in the CG and you're like, "That's what matters. Now I can move it off." Whereas, I think probably the method that I used was draw a bunch of cars, but if you mess up, you have to erase something or you're really just trying to keep things tidy in your head. It's a way messier diagram.

Randy (00:24:12):

Oh yeah, yeah. I messed around with that a little bit. And man, you can make your paper look messy in a hurry.

Lou (00:24:17):

Yeah.

Randy (00:24:18):

Using that transparency, you can experiment a little bit more with placement of your vehicle and you can actually line it up with your evidence prior to punching a hole for the CG. And once you've found where that vehicle belongs, punch your hole, and then you can keep that vehicle locked in place with that CG punch while you trace it. So it actually helps keep that trace nice and tidy as well. It just makes the whole thing cleaner. It makes it easier to understand. And that's really what this is all about, right? We're trying to help people understand what's going on.

Lou (00:24:49):

So are you cutting out that piece of plastic-

Randy (00:24:51):

Yeah.

Lou (00:24:52):

...so that it's the approximate shape of the car? Okay.

Randy (00:24:54):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cut it to scale to the size and shape of your vehicles that you're dealing with. Draw your CG over it, draw your axles on top of that transparency, put some wheels in there on scaled to the vehicle. It just makes it really nice for tracing where that vehicle's supposed to be and understanding what's going on, the dynamics of the crash.

Lou (00:25:14):

Yeah, it sounds like ... So the .io groups we were talking about earlier, George Meinschein runs one of those groups, which like you said, it's so awesome that he's willing to share all that information and help people get through the process. I think what you did is one of his recommendations. Somebody else has string involved and I've seen some of those people using those methods and that seems helpful too, but it's like whatever's going to keep you organized, to your point, it's like whatever keeps you organized. And you want to allow for yourself to make mistakes, in my opinion, because I know that I did and I had to erase some stuff. So anything you can do to help iterate the process.

(00:25:50):

To the morning, which they call the theory portion of the exam, what ACTAR says we should expect on there is kinetic energy, momentum, PDOF, occupant kinematics, analysis of collision evidence, kinematics, delta-V, critical speed, airborne, and Newton's laws. There's a lot going on there. How did the morning go for you and follow up question, did you have the scenario based questions where they give you a huge, I shouldn't say huge. I don't want to make it sound scarier than it is, but they give you a big collision situation and then ask you four questions about it, or did you take the exam before that was implemented?

Randy (00:26:28):

No, it was after that was implemented.

Lou (00:26:30):

Okay, good. I'd love to get your feedback on basically how the morning went, time management strategies, if you felt like you were under the gun, just any qualitative feedback.

Randy (00:26:41):

The morning went fine. Side note, I started feeling really poor while I was taking that exam that morning.

Lou (00:26:47):

Just to add a little chaos to the already chaotic situation.

Randy (00:26:51):

Yeah. Gave us a break between the morning and the afternoon. Came back in the afternoon and I felt like I had ... I was just feeling awful. Got back to the hotel after I was done with the whole thing and had 103 degree fever and found out that night that I had come down with COVID.

Lou (00:27:05):

Oh, damn.

Randy (00:27:06):

While taking the exam. So that was a bummer. Yeah, the morning session went great. There wasn't really anything too out of left field on it. I will say that the larger scenario problem you're talking about, time-wise, it did take quite a bit of time. Just there's a lot of calculations and a lot of things they were asking you to do on that. A lot of it was momentum. There's a lot of momentum questions on there for that.

(00:27:33):

It was fun. It was good. I enjoyed the content. Nothing earth-shattering, but if you've been exposed to this field for a while, if you've done your research, if you've practiced, you're not going to find anything earth-shattering. Their analysis of evidence, they got questions on there about that. They've got questions about the kinematics and the airborne equations, so they pretty much covered what they said they were going to cover on there.

Lou (00:27:58):

Yeah, and to your point, some of them are super quick. One of the sample exam questions they have in their prep guide is the departure angle of a vehicle involved in a collision is measured from its impact point to its final rest position, true or false. So you can bang that one out pretty quickly, but then you are going to be subject to these scenario based questions, which is this one that I'm looking at is five paragraphs, and there's a lot of energy stuff in here. It looks like there's some momentum stuff in here. Then there's skidding friction stuff. So it's like a whole crash kind of almost like an afternoon question distilled down into a morning thing, which I think is great, but you got to be ready for that.

Randy (00:28:38):

Yeah.

Lou (00:28:39):

And to be able to handle it efficiently.

Randy (00:28:40):

It's funny you described it that way because that's exactly the way I described it. It was like an afternoon session that they broke down into those individual portions for those questions. It's not anything more difficult than you'd find otherwise, but it does require a lot of time management because there's just a lot more there. I did ask the proctors about it afterwards and they said, "Yeah, we were finding people were leaving too early for the morning session." They were finishing up an hour and a half, two hours after starting, consistently.

Lou (00:29:08):

That's not good. Not in that, right? That means there's some blanks probably.

Randy (00:29:12):

Yeah. That was what triggered the starting of that extra-

Lou (00:29:16):

Oh, I see. Before they added the scenario base.

Randy (00:29:18):

Correct.

Lou (00:29:18):

People were-

Randy (00:29:19):

Yeah.

Lou (00:29:19):

Yeah, it just didn't seem like it was representative of-

Randy (00:29:23):

Right.

Lou (00:29:23):

...the minimum trying criteria.

Randy (00:29:25):

Yeah. So there's a lot of time management required. If you're asking me my advice, I'd say if you're just scratching your head at a question, move on. I know it's hard to do, but if you're scratching your head, just put it out, move on to the next one, mark it, come back to it when you have extra time, if you have extra time because there's no point sitting there scratching your head when there's more work to be done.

Lou (00:29:47):

Yeah, I totally agree with that methodology. Like you said, it is difficult to let the problem go when you're at it.

Randy (00:29:52):

Oh, yeah.

Lou (00:29:53):

Especially for us kind of people, and you're just like, "No, man, I'm figuring that one out." But at the end of the day, you only need to get so many right to pass the exam, so go through the whole test. This is what I learned for the PE, which was really valuable, you go through the whole test and the easy ones, you bang them out, then you go to the medium ones and bang them out, and then you go to the really hard ones and it's possible, you don't even need the really hard ones to pass. I think that that's really valuable advice. Do you remember about how long? Did you run right up into the end of the exam or did you have a little buffer?

Randy (00:30:25):

I think I was about 30 minutes early.

Lou (00:30:27):

Okay.

Randy (00:30:28):

So I did have a little bit of a buffer, but it wasn't as much as I had been told about before. But they also didn't tell me that they had added all this stuff in before, so.

Lou (00:30:36):

Yeah. So you were probably right on that cusp before the prep guide told you that the scenario based, if there was such a cusp, it sounds like there was.

Randy (00:30:43):

I don't know, the scenario guide might've had it in there. I don't remember that part. I just know that the guys that I was talking to about it were unaware of it.

Lou (00:30:50):

Then, okay, you get finished at a half an hour before or something like that, you have lunch, you realize that, "Shoot, I might have COVID." Fortunately, you built up this analytic reserve so you could be a little bit deteriorated and still handle the afternoon. Whereas, I feel like if you were riding the raggedy edge and you had a fever, you're probably done. You come back and you feel like crap and then you're handed this.

Randy (00:31:16):

I start feeling really bad as the afternoon progressed, right? Morning was kind of a, you know, you start feeling a little bit after lunch, come back, start, we're doing the afternoon session, and that was really when it kind of started tanking. It's like as that afternoon's going on, I'm like, "I don't know. Something more is going on here than just test stress." Yeah.

Lou (00:31:37):

That's brutal. So you got the diagramming, you're going through the collision problem momentum, PDOF, delta-v, that they tell you is going to be there. How do you feel like your preparations sets you up? Like you said, these preparation exams and the preparation tests, they are basically the same thing that you're going to see on the exam just different cars, different numbers, different situation. So you have the ability to run through those. Did you feel well-prepared considering what you did and did that go pretty smoothly?

Randy (00:32:10):

Oh yeah. The afternoon was great. I mean, I know that that's when most of the time, if someone doesn't pass it the first time, usually it's the afternoon session that gets you, and that's really where that practice comes into play. Man, if you practice, if you get that down, you're going to have a much better time of it.

(00:32:27):

You were asking about the materials to use, the actual practical materials for the exam, and I'd mentioned some things, but having a triangle, having two triangles, actually, is really, really helpful as well.

(00:32:42):

One of the things that I did on the afternoon session that I really thought, some people laugh at me for it, but I measured each point when plotting out the evidence and things like that. I took those measurements two or three times-

Lou (00:32:55):

Make sure you didn't mess something up.

Randy (00:32:56):

Yeah. And I spent a lot of extra time up front doing those measurements and making sure those were exactly correct because everything else you do later on is based on those measurements that you take and based on you accurately plotting that information on the sheet. And if you're off, it could mean the difference between a tire matching up with one tire mark versus matching up with a completely different tire mark, and you may wind up with a completely incorrect assumption only because you plotted something wrong or you were off in your accuracy a little bit. Spending that extra time to make sure that evidence is accurately plotted is, in my opinion, is invaluable and will really set you up for success.

Lou (00:33:36):

Yeah, I agree. I did a lot of prep work, but I feel like that was a spot that I probably should have focused a little bit more effort was on diagramming efficiently and quickly in practicing that skill set. I can't remember exactly what I messed up, but it was something on the diagram where I realized it halfway through and I busted out the big fat white eraser and was just going ham on my diagram. I was like, "Oh man." And as a result, I finished two minutes before the clock ran out.

Randy (00:34:03):

Oh wow.

Lou (00:34:03):

Fortunately, successfully.

Randy (00:34:05):

Hey, but you got it. That's good.

Lou (00:34:06):

I got it. I got it. I stuck with it, man. I stuck with it.

Randy (00:34:06):

Yeah.

Lou (00:34:11):

And when I walked out of there, it doesn't sound like you had the same feeling. I was just like the afternoon could have gone either way. When I get the envelope, if it's big or small, I'll know. But I can't say with 100% confidence that I passed or failed.

Randy (00:34:22):

Man, the only thing I felt when I was leaving that room was I need to go to bed.

Lou (00:34:26):

Yeah, I bet. Hopefully you didn't have a flight that night.

Randy (00:34:29):

No, I actually postponed the flight.

Lou (00:34:32):

Smart man. So it sounds like you passed the first time.

Randy (00:34:34):

I did, yeah.

Lou (00:34:35):

Yeah. Congrats. How'd you find out? Where'd you get the envelope? How was that day?

Randy (00:34:40):

Yeah, so they give you, I think it's 60 days.

Lou (00:34:43):

I think that's right.

Randy (00:34:43):

I think they say 60 days. I have been given the advice, because they say up to 60 days, I've been given the advice that don't expect it any sooner than 60 days because it will be on the 60th day and it was on the 60th day, and everyone I've talked to afterwards, it's been on the 60th day. Pretty much that's when you're getting your envelope, so plan accordingly. Yeah, I was at work and the envelope showed up, assistant brought it to my desk, and I saw it was the big envelope, not the tiny one.

Lou (00:35:14):

Yeah, you don't want the classic mail envelope. You want something with a certificate hopefully or a binder in there, a folder as it was. For me, it was a red folder. I don't know what it is now, but.

Randy (00:35:24):

Oh, I don't remember what that was, but the certificate and everything was there. Yeah, I was just doing my work and it showed up, and opened it up and I was like, "Awesome."

Lou (00:35:33):

Yeah, I know. So if you were to do it over again, is there anything that you would do differently?

Randy (00:35:39):

I don't think so. I mean, I feel like I prepared adequately for it. I feel like the effort was worth it. I don't feel like any of it was wasted and I don't think I overstudied. I also don't think I understudied. Maybe working a few more problems ahead of time would've aided in my efficiency and my speed of being able to understand and figure out the problems. But my experience was good. I think I prepared well for it and I have no complaints.

Lou (00:36:03):

Yeah, I mean it's clear you didn't take it lightly. I think that that's probably one of the easier ways to get yourself into trouble is just to be like, "I'm good. I've been doing recon for a long time," and it's like, yeah, you might be doing recon for a long time and you might be really good with the methodologies that you implement day to day, but are those the methodologies that you're going to be questioned on come test day and are you going to be able to use your same techniques? And for almost all of us, the answer to that is no. You're not going to be able to use your same techniques. Even if you are doing 360 momentum all the time, you're probably doing it in AutoCAD or something like that, so you're going to have to practice things.

(00:36:41):

I guess two questions in one. Any game day advice for people that are ... The way that I envision this is probably people who are starting to sit down and study for ACTAR are going to watch this podcast and be like, let me talk, let me see what a few guys who just ... Or a couple guys as it was, who just took the exam, what their experience was like and what advice they have. Any game day advice and any overall advice for people that are starting this process.

Randy (00:37:07):

Man, keep it calm. There's no need to overstress yourself over something. My main advice would be rather than focusing on just passing the exam, focus on understanding the material. Because that's really what's going to get you further in your career rather than just saying, "Hey, I passed an exam," is, "No, I understand this. I understand what I'm talking about. I know the material." And if you're just memorizing something to pass an exam, in the short term, maybe you can get away with a little less studying, maybe you can get away with a little less work, but you're going to hurt yourself in the long run in your ability to do the work and to actually understand what you're talking about.

Lou (00:37:42):

Yeah, when you understand those fun foundational concepts like conservation of energy and momentum and why it exists and why you're using this angle and why you're doing that, you're also so much more resilient when something gets thrown at you that might not be textbook 101 type of a problem, you can handle it because you understand the foundational concept, the first principle. That's great advice. Hopefully that serves people well.

(00:38:09):

I think that about wraps it up, man. I really appreciate you coming and sharing the experience you had, information and advice for people. Is there anything else you want to say before we tail out and finish off?

Randy (00:38:20):

Man, good luck out there. Get it done. Stay calm during the exam, enjoy the process because it's a process and I hope you do well.

Lou (00:38:28):

Awesome. Thanks so much, Randy.

Randy (00:38:29):

You're welcome, Lou. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Lou (00:38:31):

It's a pleasure.

(00:38:32):

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(00:39:16):

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(00:39:40):

Now my conversation with Taylor Walker. Well, thanks a lot, Taylor. I appreciate you taking the time to be here. We've probably run into each other, I noticed looking at some of the CAARS trainings that you were at and I was at, but I didn't really get to know you well until last month was it, or maybe two months ago in Pasadena at the Northwestern motorcycle class. And it was during that class. I was like, "Hey, I'm thinking about doing a podcast, one engineer, one law enforcement officer talking about ACTAR, the process, how they went through that process, how they studied, how they felt the test was," and all that jazz.

(00:40:13):

And then you and Randy were kind enough to volunteer to come on. Just about two hours ago, I spoke with Randy and got a lot of good insights and got to see under the hood of what he did to prepare. I'm looking forward to having that same conversation with you or a similar one.

(00:40:28):

To give people a little bit of context to understand your path to accreditation and what you had to do to prepare and what the test was like for you, if you could just go over your background from an educational standpoint and a professional standpoint just to let them know how you started out of the gate, so to speak.

Taylor (00:40:46):

Yeah, so going into ACTAR, I have a master's degree. It's not in anything useful. It's in counseling, so it's useful to an extent, but definitely ACTAR does not really care how well I can talk to people.

Lou (00:40:58):

Comes in handy as a law enforcement officer, though, I imagine.

Taylor (00:41:00):

It does. And my undergraduate's in American history, also not generally very helpful for ACTAR. So almost all of my prep for ACTAR and my background going into it is from law enforcement. I've been a law enforcement officer for 11 years, almost, all with the same agency in Southern California. I knew from the get-go that I wanted to be a traffic officer. I went to the academy where I did my basic kind of collision investigation training, which is only about eight hours. But throughout the academy I picked up on the fact that for some reason every other officer come in, every instructor like, "Oh, I been three years in narcotics, three years gangs, three years here, three years there." Except for the traffic guys. The traffic guys, are all, "I've been a traffic officer for 25 years." And something in my 21-year-old brain went, "There's probably something to that."

Lou (00:41:52):

Good insight.

Taylor (00:41:53):

And got to the collision investigation stuff. Yeah. I got to the collision investigation stuff and I loved it. I've always loved math and physics. Before being a cop, I was in EMS, and so science was always something that I was interested in so it really worked out for me.

(00:42:08):

As far as additional education and training, it really all came through POST for the most part, California Peace Officer Standards and Training. They have a whole curriculum for collision reconstruction and accident investigation, including we call an intermediate, which is just your basic skid school, which is about 40 hours of education and training and identifying tire marks, doing some of the basic equations, some of the things that we honestly use every day. I think it's one of the most important schools that we go to. And then advanced collision investigation, which is a lot of theory, and then reconstruction itself, and then we obviously have additional follow-on schools from there.

Lou (00:42:46):

It looks like you started ... I was checking out your resume before the podcast, and it looks like you started going down that path in 2017, seemed to be the first exposure to that recon class you were talking about where you're analyzing tire marks and trying to determine speeds and stuff through that. And then I saw a lot of CAARS training, which those are great, the quarterlies and the annuals, all free from some pretty high level speakers.

Taylor (00:43:10):

Yeah. I was really fortunate. When I got in patrol, I had supervisors that wanted to see me succeed. They knew that I wanted to go to traffic, so I found CAARS kind of on my own. No one really pointed it to me. I had supervisors that let me go to CAARS conferences when I worked patrol, even when I wasn't a traffic officer, so I got some exposure there. And then my supervision was fantastic. When traffic classes came around, even though I worked patrol at the time, they were all about letting me go and get exposure. I was fortunate enough to have a squad, too, that really supported me. They knew, "Hey, if there's a crash or a DUI, Walker's going to take it."

Lou (00:43:53):

Yeah. Yup.

Taylor (00:43:55):

They were more than happy to let me do that. They were willing to pick up the slack for a week while I was gone.

Lou (00:43:59):

Dang, that's really awesome. And speaking with a lot of other law enforcement officers, that doesn't seem to always be the case for sure. I speak with a lot of officers at conferences that are taking vacation time and paying with their own dollar to just make sure they're up to speed on a lot of stuff. So that's super fortunate. Did I see you have a Bachelor's of Science as well in computational mathematics?

Taylor (00:44:21):

I'm working on a Bachelor's of Science in Computational Mathematics.

Lou (00:44:24):

Okay, I see. Was that something that you started going down the path of after you got into Recon?

Taylor (00:44:29):

Yes. Yeah, I started that about a year ago.

Lou (00:44:32):

Very cool.

Taylor (00:44:34):

I love math. I'm kind of the math guy in my department, so I just really, I was like, "Oh, where do I take this?" And well, not a whole lot of engineering degrees online that I could fit into my schedule being a full-time police officer. I've got kids, wife, all that, so I was like, "Ah, I found this math program. This will work." And computational math being algorithms for computer inputs and stuff like that is, I think, really going to help as reconstruction moves towards simulations and things like that.

Lou (00:45:03):

Yeah, that seems like the perfect degree for the future of recon, for sure. When did you first get the idea that you wanted to pursue ACTAR accreditation? We are speaking a little bit about this before we started recording, but it's a rarity for law enforcement officers in California to pursue that accreditation.

Taylor (00:45:22):

I got to traffic division in 2018, which is really where I started reconstruction as a uniform traffic officer doing the initial collision investigations for all our fatals and felonies and things of that nature. I started going to more CAARS conferences, and I started hearing this ACTAR term, having no context and any idea what it was until I got my first accident reconstruction journal and I saw the advertisement. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to look that up." And when I looked into it, I was like, "Okay, that seems like something I should do." I felt like it was something that would set me apart, especially in the law enforcement sphere, because no one around me had it.

Lou (00:46:03):

Yeah. So, we were.

(00:46:04):

Yeah. So we were saying, and don't take us to the bank on this, but it's something to the effect of 10 police officers in California are ACTAR accredited.

Taylor (00:46:11):

Yeah. Something like 10 active. At least 10 people that have listed their agency on the ACTAR directory are accredited and full-time law enforcement officers.

Lou (00:46:20):

That's interesting. I'll do a little bit more due diligence and try to fact check that before we publish this, but it gives an indication anyway, that it is a rare thing in your choice to pursue that. Like you said, it gives you some standout credentials. Then I imagine it makes it a lot more... I mean, you tell me. But did it make it more comfortable when you had to testify?

Taylor (00:46:41):

I have actually yet to testify since I became ACTAR certified. Especially on our end, doing mostly criminal, I very seldom ever get to testify. It's usually settled out before I ever take the stand. I'd like to think that's because I write good reports, but-

Lou (00:46:57):

Right. Yeah. Nobody wants to go up against that.

Taylor (00:47:01):

But no, actually that was a big factor in it for me, because I looked at it, when I have testified in the past, be it civil or criminal, I found that the opposing counsel always wants to paint the officers as just a cop. Especially with my academic background, I'm not an engineer, I'm not a mathematician, so it was a lot easier for them to try to paint me in that corner of, it's just a cop that went to a couple of schools and learned how to do some fancy math. It is really, he's not really an engineer, he is not smart. Look at my expert. He's got a master's degree in engineering, he's got ACTAR, professional engineer license. He's got all those things. I saw ACTAR as a great level for me because I could say, "Well, yeah. I am not an engineer, professional engineer, I don't have that education. But I passed the same test that he did."

Lou (00:47:54):

Yeah, that's great. I was laughing a little bit because I do have a master's in mechanical engineering and I get exposed to the same thing when I'm on the stand. Like, "Well, you're not a cop. How many crash sites have you been to? You're not on the boots on the ground. You're just some fancy engineer in a cooled office with classic music playing, and doing your fancy math. You don't know anything." So, it's funny, they'll pick on whatever they can, but it's great to eliminate that whenever you can.

Taylor (00:48:18):

Jokes on them, because I do the same thing.

Lou (00:48:20):

Yeah, yeah. It's good to focus on the analysis instead of worrying about that sort of thing. When you started to talk to your peers about the fact that you were going to pursue ACTAR accreditation, what was their response? Was it encouraging or was it like, "What are you doing that for?"

Taylor (00:48:36):

Mixed. The guys who are more my peers in my office, they were definitely very, very encouraging. The more senior guys that had been doing this for as long as they have without it, were kind of like, "Well, you don't really need it." I understand that but... It was a mix of it. Right now my department and my division is very junior. When I started at traffic division, I was the most junior guy by 10 plus years in service. Now that's not the case. I mean, police departments across the country are a little bit younger than they were just five, 10 years ago. Somehow I'm the second most senior detective in my office right now.

Lou (00:49:18):

Now they're looking up to you and being like, "Well, Taylor's got ACTAR accreditation, so maybe it's something we should pursue."

Taylor (00:49:28):

So, I got the mixed responses. I got, " That's awesome. Go for it." I've talked to a few guys about it in my office about, "This is something that you should consider doing. I'm not saying that you have to, just saying that it would be a good idea." At the very least, if you take the test, you know where you're deficient, because it does seem to test some things that, on the law enforcement side, we don't do a lot of. We don't do a lot of momentum. In fact, I don't think I'd done a momentum since finishing recon school and then prepping for ACTAR. It's just something that we don't do.

Lou (00:50:07):

Because you have EDR so often at this point?

Taylor (00:50:09):

I think it's because we have EDR, because I think our goals are different generally when we're reconstructing a crash on the law enforcement side. It's, "Well, do I have probable cause?" I got probable cause, we'll send to the DA and we'll let them roll with it, and then the civil side can deal with the civil side. But, yeah. I mean, ever since then, when I started my prep class, I was like, "Oh, I'm going to do momentum on this, just to refresh and practice the skills." That's another thing I've been trying to encourage. I understand that you don't have to do it, but if you have the ability to do a momentum here, it's a good idea to do it. You might find something that you didn't know was there.

Lou (00:50:50):

Yeah. So true that at the beginning of a case, before you perform all the analyses, you often think you have a firm understanding of what's happened, but then you put everything together and you're like, "Oh. Well, this must've been happening instead." Especially with simulation for me. I'm like, "Oh, wow." I have to make all sorts of decisions to run an accurate simulation that you might not have considered if you hadn't gone down that path. So, when you're in pursuit, by the way, of probable cause, is speed very often one of the things that you're going for? Or are there other things more common like a DUI or something to that effect?

Taylor (00:51:25):

For our general manslaughterers and things like that, it is something that we're looking for. Is the speed reasonable or unreasonable, lawful or unlawful? Because obviously in California we have two different speed laws. We have the basic speed law, which is, it's unsafe to use a motor vehicle at a speed that's unsafe for the inherent conditions on the roadway. Then we have the speed law that says, it's illegal to go over 65 unless it's posted 70 plus. So, we're looking for violation, because for us, generally we're looking for a series of different traffic code violations in order to justify gross negligence versus simple negligence.

Lou (00:52:09):

I got you. Yeah, that makes sense. Then we have video now all the time too, so it's like, you've got video, you've got EDR, you have all these things stacking up and you might not be performing momentum analysis all the time. So, with respect to your specific training, I pulled some stuff out of your CV so that we could give the audience a little bit of a flavor as to what training you had been exposed to by the time you took the ACTAR examination, which was October 2024, it looked like.

(00:52:40):

So, pretty recently, and like we mentioned already, your first CAARS trainings were 2017, so you're going to two hour trainings, eight hour trainings. Then in 2017 you have that Intermediate Traffic Investigation course that we spoke about, that skid mark analysis, which was 40 hours. Then you had an Advanced Traffic Collision Investigation, which was 80 hours. Then you had Traffic Collision Reconstruction, which was 80 hours, Riverside County Sheriff's Department. Then you did the EDR Tech and Analyst, which combined is 56 hours. CAARS Video Analysis, I put that one in there with Andrew Fredericks, because we were both there so we must have crossed paths. Then you did some FARO training, for using the scanner, using Zone. That's 80 more hours. I haven't tallied all this up, but it's a lot of hours. Then you have the EDR Analyst again for 40 more hours, and then you've got your ACTAR. So, does that about cover the accident reconstruction specific training that you were exposed to prior to sitting for the exam?

Taylor (00:53:37):

I think so. That's about it. Obviously lots of seminars through CAARS. I mean, I don't know how many specifically. I did quite a bit... IPTM does some self-guided training as well. I've done quite a bit of that.

Lou (00:53:49):

Oh, that's cool. I haven't seen those. Do you pay for that and then it's like an online course and you go through it whenever you want to, or is it just like-

Taylor (00:53:55):

Yeah.

Lou (00:53:55):

Okay, cool.

Taylor (00:53:57):

It's simple stuff, like they had seatbelt forensics, headlights and lights, so your bulbs and stuff, how to tell if the headlights were on, things like that.

Lou (00:54:06):

No, that's cool.

Taylor (00:54:07):

Hours of training, maybe an hour. But they were really good and very thorough. Enjoyed it.

Lou (00:54:12):

You don't always need a 40-hour class on some of this stuff. Sometimes an hour long class on just examining filament deformation is invaluable.

Taylor (00:54:19):

Right. Doing a lot of reading too. I get the Accident Reconstruction Journal, I read it, just to see what's coming out there and see what research is happening.

Lou (00:54:29):

It sounds like you had seven years of experience or so, somewhere around there, maybe six, and then you had all these hours of education. So, I have to imagine when you applied to sit for the exam, that was passed without any issue, they granted you that permission?

Taylor (00:54:45):

Yeah. There was no issue. In fact, I think something in my application went haywire. I think there was something wrong with the system, their automated system went down. I got an email from... I can't remember his name. One of the-

Lou (00:54:59):

Greg probably, Vandenberg.

Taylor (00:55:00):

Yeah. He was like, "Something went wrong with your application, just resubmit it. But from everything I've seen, you're not going to have any problems."

Lou (00:55:09):

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I think you're overqualified at that point, not literally obviously. But way above the minimum threshold, let's say. So, you had all that training, you had on the job experience for a long time at that point, but like you said, not all of it was completely applicable because you're not doing momentum analysis and diagramming and determining departure angles and PDOFS and things like that all the time.

(00:55:36):

So, as you're approaching the ACTAR exam, what did you do to prepare in the form of classes, books, YouTube videos, IO groups, whatever you exposed yourself to?

Taylor (00:55:49):

Yeah, I went to IPTM, I took the prep class with Andy Rich online.

Lou (00:55:53):

Oh, great. Andy's awesome.

Taylor (00:55:55):

I found that to be incredibly helpful. Then YouTube, YouTube ACTAR, especially when it came to the practical portion, to prep for that. The department I work for, it's very large, but they don't care about traffic. So, our budget is not great on the traffic side, so when I came to traffic I hand diagrammed stuff. I learned how to do that, but it'd been years since I'd done it. I figured the theory stuff, it's like, "Okay, this is technically review. I have learned this stuff." It was learning some of the nuances. Andy Rich's class was also fantastic in really pointing out some of the nuances of the ACTAR test, because the way that they ask questions, the way that they're looking for you to answer things like that, was really helpful. I think it took a lot of stress out of it, to me.

Lou (00:56:52):

So, you can just focus on the analytics and not worry about some of that procedural stuff that you might not have been aware of otherwise.

Taylor (00:56:58):

Right. Then I actually, I don't know where I came across this, but I had read, it's actually solid strategy to consider it two separate tests. To study for the theory, because you have your three chances. Study for the theory and just make sure that you are solid in theory, to take and pass that part of the test, because if you pass it you never have to take it again. Then take the practical, but don't be too concerned about it. Understand, get the experience of the practical that way you know where you're lacking, because I found that there's not a whole lot of good prep for that. It's very conceptually different than what I think most of us do nowadays for reconstruction.

Lou (00:57:48):

Yeah. It's rare that we're putting down the computer and hand diagramming everything, and how efficient are we at that?

Taylor (00:57:57):

So, I took it from that perspective and I was like, "Well, I'm going to give it my best and we'll see what happens," and it worked out for me. I can't lie, I spent that entire CAAR's conference that followed, "There's no way I passed that test. There's zero chance." But then I got that letter.

Lou (00:58:17):

That's awesome. So, then the YouTube videos, I've done a little bit of YouTube and around, it's probably George Meinschein talking about methods for establishing departure angles and how to create the diagram in an effective manner that allows you to accurately track the vehicle's CG. So, I guess we'll get to that, but I'm curious what your diagramming method was. So, any books that you found useful, Northwestern, IPTM, any of that stuff?

Taylor (00:58:43):

I honestly just followed the curriculum from Andy Rich's class.

Lou (00:58:46):

Nice. That says a lot about his class. Was that two days?

Taylor (00:58:49):

It was all online, so it was self-paced.

Lou (00:58:51):

Okay.

Taylor (00:58:52):

So, I just followed that, and I would take the problems, the practice problems and things that he gave us, and I would do them until I got them right, to make sure that I understood the concepts. Then if I didn't understand a concept, I would go back to the Lynn Fricke books and try to understand it. Or if there was a concept that I couldn't find, I would try to find an SAE paper, something to help shore up the conceptual end for me. But it was mostly just the prep.

Lou (00:59:23):

Okay. Yeah. Did he give some practice practical problems, like afternoon problems where you just get the aftermath of a crash and you've got to diagram and perform a momentum analysis?

Taylor (00:59:35):

He did. I honestly didn't get to that part before I took the test.

Lou (00:59:39):

I'm impressed you passed first time without just going through some of those, but that's impressive.

Taylor (00:59:45):

So, I didn't get to them. I was honestly doing my prep work while I was at work. So, it'd be like, "Oh, okay. I just submitted a search warrant and so now I'm not going to get returns on this for the next six weeks, and that's where all my cases are right now." So, I was like, "Well, I've got to fill my 10 hours a day doing something." So, I'm like, "Okay, we'll do some prep work." That's where I fit the prep work in. During that whole time, I'm also still a graduate student in a seminary, so I was doing that back and forth.

Lou (01:00:16):

Yeah, you've got your hands full and you've got a family.

Taylor (01:00:18):

Yeah.

Lou (01:00:18):

That's a lot. But it sounds like you understood the momentum concepts really well. You studied the process, but you didn't sit down for four hours and work through six of them, stem to stern?

Taylor (01:00:33):

No. No, because my whole strategy was, I'm going to take the theory. I'm going to make sure that I can nail that part, and I'm going to experience the practical. I knew that there was, I think it's coming up at the end of next month, the EDR conference from NAPARS. I knew that they were going to have a second one there, so I was like, "All right, I'm going to make sure I nail theory and then I will spend the next six months working on the practical, to take it then." Yeah, that was my strategy. It was bad. I'd already paid for the hotel and everything.

Lou (01:01:11):

Oh, man. Yeah. So, you walked out thinking, no way. That was not good?

Taylor (01:01:17):

Yeah. The only saving grace I had for myself walking out of that room, I was like, "Well, the speed I got," because I knew that all the practicals were from crash tests. So, I was like, "Well, I mean the speed I calculated was typical crash test speeds."

Lou (01:01:32):

Yeah. It was not like 95 miles an hour or something totally off the wall?

Taylor (01:01:37):

So, I was like, "That's got to be somewhere in the ballpark." I don't know if it's what they're looking for. From what I understand, they're pretty exact about how you calculate it and what you come up with.

Lou (01:01:47):

Yeah, you can't be way off, that's for sure. Okay. So, you've got the YouTube, you've got Andy Rich's course, the Northwestern Books by Fricke, no study buddies I imagine because you're the only guy there that really cares about ACTAR at this point. Any resources that you wish existed that didn't at that point?

Taylor (01:02:05):

Not that I can think of. Honestly, the IPTM course was so fantastic and thorough that I wasn't wanting for information generally. Going back into the other books and stuff was more for if I didn't understand how Andy Rich explained it, which happens, we all learn in different ways. That I was like, "Okay, I'm going to go read how someone else explains this real quick, just to make sure that I understand." That's really all it was. But yeah, his lectures in that course were fantastic.

Lou (01:02:37):

Yeah, Andy's super sharp, really good teacher, really in tune with the community, so it doesn't shock me that he was able to put together a good class.

(01:02:44):

So, my next line of questioning was going to be, what advice do you have for anybody who's studying and what process? Sounds like number one for you would be like, take a class, and Andy Rich's is awesome. Anything else on top of that?

Taylor (01:02:55):

Don't stress too much. I honestly think that's a big part of it, talking to people I took the test with. Talking to people at allied agencies that I know have taken the test and maybe haven't passed. It seems like a lot of it's like, you know how to do these things. You may not have done it in a while, but clearly at one point you knew how to do it and you demonstrated that you could because you passed recon. So, don't stress, just take it in, take the review and just know that you know how to do all these things. Even on the practical side, even if... It's a different medium for sure, but it is not different than what you do when you take a total station and plot a scene. You're still doing the same thing, you're just plotting it with your pencil instead of a computer, that's all it is.

Lou (01:03:46):

Yeah. Same Cartesian coordinate system. There's no 3D here, we're XY, we're good. You have all that education obviously, and then you have the class itself. Let's add the class to this question, which is how many hours do you think approximately, or weeks or months, or however you can quantify it, did you spend studying before sitting down for it?

Taylor (01:04:05):

12 hours a week for two months.

Lou (01:04:08):

Yeah. Serious effort. Basically two hours a day for two months, something like that. You're not winging it at that point. So, I guess it's not a total surprise you passed on the first time, first go through, because you made a big commitment and put in the time.

Taylor (01:04:24):

Yeah. The theory part, I knew going into it, I was like, I'm going to get that theory part no matter what. I would say probably, of that time, maybe a day or two of the practical. It was mostly the YouTube videos that I watched, how to layer your graphing paper over the thing, how to use a cork board to plot your points.

Lou (01:04:48):

So, let's get into that. What did you bring... It's a question I have later, but this is a great time to just dive into it. In the afternoon, ACTAR tells you you're going to be doing a momentum analysis. You need to know departure angles, you're going to be plotting evidence, we're going to give you some evidence. You need to plot the cars, is what they say. So, how did you set yourself up to do that, practically speaking, from a tools and a methods perspective?

Taylor (01:05:13):

So, I had a foam board. I had a whole brand new pack of pushpins, some pencils, I wish I would've brought colored pencils, going away from it that was one of the things that I was like, okay. That was dumb of me, because by the time I plotted everything, I was like, it's all gray.

Lou (01:05:33):

Which one is which?

Taylor (01:05:36):

I had a curved edge, which I found came in handy later on. I basically just set out, I got my stuff. First thing I did was I made my scale cars.

Lou (01:05:45):

Did you do that on tracing paper or acetate?

Taylor (01:05:48):

I did it on acetate.

Lou (01:05:49):

Okay.

Taylor (01:05:50):

Yeah. So, I did that so that I would have little models to put over and play with it, because in the field, one of my favorite tools is Hot Wheels cars. I love to give two Hot Wheels cars to a witness and be like, "Show me how this happened." I looked at those as my Hot Wheels cars. Like, "Okay, I'm going to put these on the paper and I'm going to play with them and see how this happened." Plotting the tire marks and stuff like that, it's not difficult. If you can do the Cartesian plane, then it's really not... That part's not tough. It's figuring out how the car's moved on them that's difficult. But putting them on acetate and being able to move them around the marks, in a way that makes sense. Having that concepts of physics and center of gravity momentum, really, as long as you can put all those together, you're going to figure it out.

Lou (01:06:38):

That clear acetate allows you to iterate a lot and be like, okay. Well, what if this is the left front tire? What would that mean? Nope, that doesn't work. How about the right front tire or whatever?

Taylor (01:06:48):

Exactly.

Lou (01:06:48):

Yeah. I think I used tracing paper, but probably should have used acetate, it would've been a little bit better instead of crumpling everything up 65 times. So, then you find out where the CG is based on tracking the evidence, and then you take a pin and you pop a hole in the foam board through the CG of your acetate, and just do that enough until you're comfortable with the approach and the departure?

Taylor (01:07:11):

Yeah. That's all I did. I did that. It was a few times where I was like, "Man, this is sketchy. I don't know if this is exactly right." But I'm like, "It looks right." My guess is, I don't know this for a fact, but my guess is that people probably freak out a little bit. It probably looks right and they're probably right, and then they psych themselves out, and this can't be right. That's my guess, because the momentum that I had really wasn't overly difficult. There was a little rollback and little things like that to account for, but that's nothing that anyone taking that test hasn't seen.

Lou (01:07:52):

Yeah, right. You've got the experience. They've deemed you ready to take this examination, like you said. So, just try not to stick in your head and freak yourself out. There is that certainly the time constraints that you don't feel like you have all the time in the world. You're like, "I've got to be efficient. I can't make any mistakes." That's got to come into play. It came into play for me because I botched my diagram, so I had to do a lot of erasing and start over. I was like, "Oh, shoot." Can't even remember what I did, but I think I reversed the X and the Y or something like that.

(01:08:21):

Okay. So, then you've got tools for that, then would be the foam board, cork board, the acetate. You're bringing a pair of scissors I imagine, to cut out a marker to draw on the acetate, and then pins. So, that'll set you... Obviously you need a calculator too, but it seems like all the calculators that they can approve are good. But this is my go-to calculator. Any calculator advice or any calculator will do?

Taylor (01:08:47):

I just use the TI-30 and I would just say just... I use my phone at work for everything.

Lou (01:08:54):

If you can make that work. Were you the one I saw with the TI... Somebody in the Northwestern class had a TI-83 simulator on their phone, and I was like, "That's pretty awesome."

Taylor (01:09:03):

No, that wasn't me.

Lou (01:09:03):

... simulator on their phone, and I was like, "That's pretty awesome."

Taylor (01:09:03):

No, that wasn't me. I just used the standard Android calculator app for 99% of what I need to do. And when I was like, "Oh, I'm going to take this test. I better get familiar with a calculator." So I grabbed a TI-30 and that's just... I used that for all my prep whenever I was practicing.

Lou (01:09:20):

Yeah, I've got a lot of time behind the TI-30. So you took it at CAARS in 2024? That was last year. So that was in Palm Springs or wherever we were, huh?

Taylor (01:09:30):

Yeah.

Lou (01:09:31):

Okay, cool. And so what materials did you bring? We already went over the afternoon, obviously. Other than books and reference material, what did you take in that regard?

Taylor (01:09:42):

All I took was a formula book. That was it.

Lou (01:09:45):

Wow, okay. I love it. It sounds like you studied enough to feel like you didn't really need anything but some formulas?

Taylor (01:09:51):

Right.

Lou (01:09:52):

You weren't going to be looking up what it meant when a filament was deformed.

Taylor (01:09:55):

Right. And I had a little bit of a freak-out moment for myself there because I had bought one of the... I don't remember who the author is off the top of my head, but I bought one of the thick lawyers and judges collision reconstruction books. And I had did not open that book, that particular formula book, until I got to the test site. And I meant to bring... I have a tiny little pocket one that I use at work, and it is gone through and beaten and bent. I was using it today when I was at work. I love that thing to death. And I left it in my desk. And it was sad because I literally had stopped at my desk because I drove up the morning of the test, my home near the border. And so I stopped at my desk at work and I grabbed pens and pencils just to make sure that I had everything, and somehow that book got left in my desk.

Lou (01:10:53):

So did you leave your house the morning of the examination or the day before?

Taylor (01:10:56):

The morning of. Yeah.

Lou (01:10:57):

Morning of? Yeah. You're an early riser. See, I could never do that. Exam starts at 8:00 a.m., right?

Taylor (01:11:03):

I start work at 6:00 typically in the morning.

Lou (01:11:06):

Okay. Yeah.

Taylor (01:11:07):

Yeah. So I actually didn't have to get up any earlier than I normally do.

Lou (01:11:12):

I haven't been out of the house for... Well, sometimes I get out of the house before 10:00, but it's kind of a rarity. So yeah, I imagine that elevated the stress a little bit when you are showing up without one of your favorite references.

Taylor (01:11:25):

Yes, definitely. So that would probably be another piece of advice. Make sure that you know... Open your references before you bring them. Because trying to navigate that it worked, it is fine, but trying to navigate how that author set up his book versus what I was used to is very different. I assume same publisher, probably be more or less the same. And I couldn't be further from wrong,

Lou (01:11:49):

Dude, so true. So I took Northwestern classes from Investigation 1 to 2, to Dynamics to TAR 1, to TAR 2, and that equation sheet is ingrained in my soul. So if somebody hands me some other equation sheet, like an IPTM sheet, and it's like square to 30D after there's conversion factors in there or anything, yeah, that's not going to play well with me.

(01:12:12):

So for the morning portion, ACTAR basically tells us to expect kinetic energy, momentum, PDOF, occupant kinematics, analysis of collision evidence, kinematics, delta V, critical speed, airborne, Newton's laws, everything is on the table. And on top of that, the more modern tests have those scenario-based questions, which are fairly rigorous, Randy and I were talking about this and we both kind of described it in a similar manner where it's a miniature practical examination like an afternoon, but in the morning.

(01:12:46):

So how did you feel about that morning session? How did it go? And did you feel like you were under the gun? Did you have sufficient time to handle everything?

Taylor (01:12:57):

The morning session, I felt fine. Andy Rich's class is honestly set up that way. So it's a lot of the scenario-based questions. So it's like, "Hey, we're going to give you the scenario and here's 15 questions that you're going to have to figure out. And they're compounding questions. So if you screw up part 3, you're going to be messed up at part 9."

(01:13:19):

So I felt fine with that. And honestly, in a lot of ways, I felt that was helpful because that's how we do a reconstruction anyways. We're not answering single questions about a crash. We're taking a crash in its context and then figuring out what happened. And so I felt that that was actually useful. I preferred that because it helped me to think about it logically and kind of step through. And then having my experience, I was like, "Well, okay, I can read the scenario and some of my background in EMS" because the National Registry of EMTs, I used to teach prep classes for that.

(01:13:55):

And it kind of reminded me a little bit of that where read the scenario, read the questions, and then answer the questions in the order that makes the most sense to you. And I did the same thing. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to read the questions that are related to this scenario. I'm going to do things the way that I would always do things. So I'm not trying to learn a new process. I'm going to use the process that I know works and I'm going to answer these questions as I can. And then I'll fill in the blanks where necessary."

Lou (01:14:26):

That's a great point because the single questions, they might be one line. And I have some examples of some of those here, where it's like the amount of overlap can be best determined by contact damage. "True or false? Tearing, breaking and puncture is our example of what? Eccentric damage? Directed damage?" They're fairly quick, but they don't provide the same context that you get with one of these example scenarios I'm looking right now in the prep guide is like, five paragraphs and they're like a Nissan that weighs this much is traveling this angle and hits a Buick that weighs this much. And you start to build up the context that you're kind of used to in the real recon world. So when they ask you a question about it, you have all of the context of those five paragraphs as opposed to this real isolated system. I hadn't thought about it that. That makes a lot of sense.

Taylor (01:15:15):

Yeah. And so getting back to your original question, the morning part, I felt fine. I didn't have a time crunch. I finished, I think, with an hour left or so. I was wiped out though.

Lou (01:15:25):

I bet. That's a lot.

Taylor (01:15:27):

I was exhausted. So I went to lunch. Funny story, I was up there and of course I trying to get my lunch peacefully. Dude comes into the restaurant and is whacked out his brains on meth. And I'm like, for whatever reason, I guess this guy... I wasn't wearing anything. I don't think I particularly looked like a cop, but somehow this guy could just sense. So he singled it on me. I was like, "Great, I'm going to have to fight this dude..."

Lou (01:15:55):

"In between my sessions."

Taylor (01:15:58):

Yeah, because he's yelling, "F you, pig!"

Lou (01:16:03):

No way.

Taylor (01:16:03):

I'm like, "I'm just sitting here eating my food."

Lou (01:16:06):

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Dark rim glasses on and a pack of pencils and a calculator with me.

Taylor (01:16:12):

Yeah. So I was like, okay, well this is fun. So fortunately, he decided that he was going to go be high somewhere else and...

Lou (01:16:20):

That's good. I was going to say, you got enough cortisol and stress from the morning. And you're hoping to get a little break, nice coffee, a sandwich. Instead, you get another dose of real potential violence between the practicalness-

Taylor (01:16:36):

Yeah. I was like, "What's going on here?"

Lou (01:16:36):

Yeah, that's brilliant.

Taylor (01:16:36):

"I thought Palm Springs was supposed to be nice."

Lou (01:16:37):

Oh, man. Okay. So yeah, that was actually my next question, is like, I'm really impressed that you finished with that much time to spare. That morning seems to be no joke. So that gave you at least what? Two hours, maybe even two and a half to try to recoup and regain some of the brain power to fight the afternoon.

(01:17:01):

And then you hit the practical portion. Sounds like you're totally prepped from a logistic standpoint. You have all your tools, you know how to use them, you have a plan of attack, and then you're going to get the test, see what kind of situation they give you and just kind of pound away at it. Having said that, you weren't super well practiced in that methodology as far as diagramming by hand and being really efficient with that. So how did the afternoon go? And considering how it went, would you change any of your preparation techniques?

Taylor (01:17:29):

Yes. The afternoon was a polar opposite of my morning. I was completely confident-

Lou (01:17:35):

Which makes sense because that's what you were focused on. Like, you decided to focus on the morning and see what happens.

Taylor (01:17:40):

Yeah, but I'm also a perfectionist. I can't stand the idea of failure. So I was like, "Well..." Even though I told myself like, "All right, we're just going to go check this out. We're going to see how this goes. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. It's going to be fine. You're going to get another shot in March. You don't even have to wait that long. And you don't have to travel that far. It's two hours. You'll be in an even nicer place."

Lou (01:18:02):

Hopefully, sans meth head.

Taylor (01:18:04):

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I was like, "Okay, we're going to go in there." And immediately from the YouTube stuff, I started making my scale cars. Come to find out, of course I didn't have to do that because on the new test, they give you an outline of the cars to scale. I didn't know that until after I'd drawn my cars and put them over, and I was like, "Of course."

Lou (01:18:24):

"I just waste a little time." Yeah.

Taylor (01:18:26):

Yeah. So that took probably about 45 minutes because I'd screwed up one of the cars. And the table that I was working on had a black tablecloth. So as soon as I put something on the tablecloth, it was gone. It was just lost forever. So maybe I'd probably bring a bigger cork board or something so I'd have more contrast to whatever my table background is.

Lou (01:18:47):

So how big was your cork board? About?

Taylor (01:18:49):

16 by 12, I think.

Lou (01:18:51):

Okay.

Taylor (01:18:52):

Yeah, I just went to Amazon and I found the cheapest bulk buy I could because I was like, "Okay, well I'll use these for prep." I think I got 30 of them for 12 bucks.

Lou (01:19:01):

Okay. So you'd get something. So if that's 16 by 12, not as... Yeah, I guess it's as tall as a piece of paper and twice as wide. So you would go for maybe something twice as big as that?

Taylor (01:19:13):

Yeah, I'd go for something a little bit bigger. And that way I could put all my stuff on it because you don't know what your table is going to look like, especially when you're working with the transparencies and the acetate and with a dark Sharpie marker, you put something down on a black table, it's gone.

Lou (01:19:30):

Yeah. That'll maybe be handy for CAARS to know as well, that maybe we should avoid the black tablecloth when administering the ACTAR examination.

Taylor (01:19:38):

Yeah. I think it was all the hotel stuff. I don't think they had a say in it. So I get it. I give them leeway. And it's, honestly, to me, I'm like, "It's no excuses. Play like a champion."

Lou (01:19:48):

Yeah. Get in there.

Taylor (01:19:48):

It's on me to keep track of my stuff. Yeah, but I'd screwed up one of the cars. And of course realizing I didn't actually need to do that. I just needed to trace the cars that were given to me, that was 45 minutes out of my time that I wish I would've gotten back.

Lou (01:20:04):

Yeah. Then that amps up the stress, because yeah, you're already stressed about doing the actual mathematics and the reconstruction. And now you feel like, "Okay, I'm actually now trying to do it in three hours and 15 minutes instead of the four hours that I had."

Taylor (01:20:16):

Right. And then to me, a lot of it was about attacking the parts that I know I can do well after I had those cars done, because I'm like, "I can't do anything until I have these cars done anyways. If I'm going to use my Hot Wheels method, I need to have these cars done." And it's like, "Okay, well, I know how to plot points on graph, so we're going to knock that part out. We're going to plot every point that it asked me to plot onto this graph first." And then when it comes to... Then I'm like, "Okay, I have my cars, I have my lines drawn. Now I can plot where the cars go." And I poked holes at the axle point for each of my cars too, on top of the center of gravity, so that, okay, all I have to do is put my car on top of the diagram and I'll stick my fine tip pencil through the hole that I poked and that'll mark one of my tire points and then I can trace around it.

Lou (01:21:10):

Yeah, that's smart. So did you bring a bunch of foam board in case you made a mistake or-

Taylor (01:21:16):

Yes.

Lou (01:21:16):

Okay.

Taylor (01:21:16):

Yeah, I brought the entire stack with me. I think they were a little concerned because I walked in, there were a whole cardboard box from Amazon just full of these supplies. Everyone else had backpacks and tackle boxes. I had cardboard box. They had everything I needed. Yeah, and just work it through there.

(01:21:37):

The math part I wasn't worried about because it's like the math is the math. It doesn't change. All that changes is the inputs that you put into it. So I didn't concern myself too much with that. Obviously your inputs, that's what CAARS I think is trying to get you to, to figure out, is your inputs, because I think at that point they have assumed that you can do the math.

Lou (01:21:57):

Yeah, ACTAR. Yeah. You said CAARS, but I know what you mean. ACTAR.

Taylor (01:22:01):

Yeah.

Lou (01:22:02):

Exactly. Can you figure out? And they say it in their prep guide, like, "We're going to ask you to figure out departure angles and approach angles and perform a momentum analysis." And to your point, the math never changes on those momentum analyses. It's just, can you tell us what the inputs are supposed to be? So unless you fat finger something on the calculator, it's all about the inputs.

Taylor (01:22:25):

Right. So yeah, it's just about making sure that I got those and as best as I could. One of the things that I've taken plenty of class is through Rusty Haight, who's a veteran of my police department. One of the things that I really like that he says is that when we're doing reconstruction, what we're really doing, we're not just looking at numbers and inputs and stuff. We're figuring out the logical sequence of events. And so that's kind of what I thought about when I was doing the practical was, does what I'm doing here, does my diagram make logical sense? Do the events make sense as I see them here? Because if the answer is no, and especially if you're taking the test, you've probably seen a crash or two in your life, you kind of get a sense when things aren't right. So I wasn't getting that sense. I was like, "Okay, it's probably as good as I can get." And frankly, because I wasted that first 45 minutes, I remember them saying, "You got 10 minutes left." And I'm like, "I still got a whole back page."

Lou (01:23:24):

Oh, geez.

Taylor (01:23:25):

So it was like, whether it makes sense or not, this is what I'm going with right now.

Lou (01:23:31):

Yeah, it might've been a nice forcing function that you couldn't go back and second guess your work.

Taylor (01:23:36):

Yeah. Probably.

Lou (01:23:37):

It's like, "No. It makes sense. I'm just marching forward." I was just talking to my son about that because we were doing some basic math and he was taking 37% of some number. And I was like, "Well, it should be about a-third. So if that number's 100, then you should be... Well, let's say it's like 200. It's like, all right, it's going to be a-third of 200. So it's going to be somewhere around 60 to 70." So now do all of your math, but if you come back and it's not 60 to 70, then something went awry. And I feel like a lot of us get so wrapped up in the little details of the calculations that we don't just pull back and zoom out and be like, "Does this look right? If I hit the car behind the CG, which way is it going to rotate? Did it rotate that way? Could these tire marks ever come from the other vehicle?" And you could save yourself a lot of trouble like that.

Taylor (01:24:20):

Yeah, I was doing a crush last week. And it was a side impact crush, and I was getting A values of 700. And I was like, "No."

Lou (01:24:30):

Yeah.

Taylor (01:24:30):

No.

Lou (01:24:31):

Not unless it's the trailer truck. In front of a tractor trailer truck happening.

Taylor (01:24:35):

Yeah. So I was like, "Okay. Clearly something I am doing is wrong here."

Lou (01:24:39):

It comes in really, really handy. Okay. So yeah, you got the afternoon done. Didn't feel great, but you didn't really have time to second guess it. So you just went through, you did your thing. You had a method down, you put everything you knew to the test and kind of walked out being like, "I'll see you next time. That's not going to happen."

(01:24:58):

But you passed the first time both sides, both portions I should say. So how did you find out? Were you at the office and just some staff walked in and handed you a fat envelope or...

Taylor (01:25:06):

Basically, because I took that week off from work to take the test and then go to the CAARS conference, so basically within an hour of finishing, all my coworkers are blowing up my phone. And so I realized I had read on the website that as soon as they've graded your stuff, the website gets updated.

Lou (01:25:25):

Oh, so you're just F5, refresh.

Taylor (01:25:28):

Yeah. So I'm just like, once a week or so, I would go in there, I'd be like, "Oh, we'll see what happens." And I knew like, "Oh, you got 60 days to do it." So I was like, "Okay, whatever." Come November, I'd stopped. I was like, "I don't even know why I'm doing this. I know I didn't pass." So I'd already signed up to take it again and everything like that. I was like, "There's no way I passed this thing." And sure enough, on my birthday I went on there, I was like, "Oh, let's just go see." And I refreshed it and there I was, ACTAR number 5075.

Lou (01:25:58):

Dang. So the rumors are true. That is the fastest way to find out.

Taylor (01:26:01):

Yeah. So I didn't get the envelope until I think a week, maybe 10 days later.

Lou (01:26:05):

And that was anticlimactic because at that point, you already knew.

Taylor (01:26:09):

Yeah. I even told my wife. I was like, "I mean, clerical errors happen, right?"

Lou (01:26:12):

Right. Yeah.

Taylor (01:26:13):

was so convinced that I didn't pass that test.

Lou (01:26:16):

Yep. Not with Greg Vandenberg at the helm, by the way. They do not happen. Kidding. That's awesome, man. Congratulations. That must've felt fantastic. I remember where I was every single test that I passed, when I passed the FE, when I passed the PE, when I found out and where I was when I found out that I passed ACTAR. I just came in. It was before they had the online portal, and I just came into my office and the big fat envelope was sitting on my office chair and I was like, "Ooh, this is a good sign."

(01:26:42):

If we could just summarize that though, because I think I probably poked in with some questions, what would you do differently if you were preparing again?

Taylor (01:26:49):

If I was preparing again, I would probably not take the same strategy. I wouldn't take the theory, focus on one part and then the other. I would probably have dedicated more time to the practical, because I was probably over-prep for the theory. I could have definitely spent a lot more time on the practical. I would've done a lot more practice problems. And honestly, I would have taken my crashes that I was working and then practice the techniques with the things I knew I was going to have to do for ACTAR. I would've done a lot more of that.

Lou (01:27:23):

Yeah, that's smart. Kill two birds with one stone.

Taylor (01:27:25):

Exactly.

Lou (01:27:26):

Okay.

Taylor (01:27:27):

Yeah. And then other things I would've done is I would've considered some of my materials a little bit better, like the bigger cork board. Making sure to bring colored pencils and color coordinating my stuff because like I said, by the time I'd drawn everything, it was just a gray blob at that point. So trying to pick things out was not the easiest. Having different colors for different things would've been fantastic.

Lou (01:27:45):

Yeah, Randy and I were talking about that. It's just so important to keep your brain organized and to be able to logically follow everything that you've done. And to your point, when you pull out, I did the same thing, all gray, pencil. And when you pull out and look at the diagram, it's hard to differentiate what's coming from what. And you can save yourself a lot of trouble, it sounds like, by going with a colored pencil.

(01:28:08):

Okay. Yeah, that's good to hear. And I'm thinking like, okay, you finished the morning an hour early. And the modern morning test by all accounts is difficult, so that goes right in with what you're saying, where you're like, you were really, really well-prepared for the morning at the expense of the afternoon, which you didn't think you really had a chance of getting past the first time, but it turns out if you had more evenly distributed that study time, it probably would've been fairly easy for you on both ends of it.

Taylor (01:28:36):

It was still difficult test, but it definitely would've been way less stressful. I would've gone in there with a lot more confidence.

Lou (01:28:43):

Yeah, I'm glad you said that. I didn't mean to say that it wasn't a difficult test because I've never talked with anybody or spoken with anybody who's come out of that and been like, "Easy-peasy. I don't even know how you could fail that." Everybody comes out and is like, "That is difficult. You could definitely fail. You got to put in the work."

(01:28:59):

So then what advice would you have for anybody who tomorrow, say, is going to start studying for the exam and start the journey?

Taylor (01:29:07):

Put in the work. Definitely put in the work for studying. But also, I think I kind of touched on this earlier, but know that you're not doing anything that you don't know how to do. If ACTAR is saying that you're good to take the test, you have done either, in a classroom or in real life, all the things that you're going to do on this test. So don't worry too much about a user processes that you know that work and applying to the test. If you're taking the test, you know how to do reconstruction. All you're doing is demonstrating it and doing it in a different medium. Instead of on the computer, you're doing it on paper. That's it.

Lou (01:29:47):

So how about game day advice? I imagine would you still leave the morning of, or would you stay the night before? I guess just overall question-

Taylor (01:29:53):

Oh, definitely stay the night.

Lou (01:29:54):

... game day advice. Okay. Stay the night before. Yeah.

Taylor (01:29:56):

Yeah, definitely stay the night before. Yeah. When I booked my hotel for NAPARS, I was like, "Oh, I'm going to stay the night before. I'm going to get a great night's sleep." Especially because I have two young kids, so sleep is not a guarantee every night.

Lou (01:30:11):

Yeah, you want to take out that volatility.

Taylor (01:30:13):

Yeah. So definitely do that. Game day, I would say don't change your routine too much if you don't have to. I'm not a breakfast eater, so I didn't eat breakfast. I'm a vigorous monster drinker, so I pounded my monster before the test started, and I did my afternoon one before the afternoon session. So if you have a routine, do your best to stick to it and just let the ACTAR test be where you would fill in your work hours.

Lou (01:30:42):

Yeah, that makes sense.

Taylor (01:30:42):

That'd be what I'd do again if I had to do it.

Lou (01:30:45):

Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Taylor. I really appreciate you coming on. Sharing all the information and advice that you gave is really valuable to people who are starting this process. And hopefully it helps them get through the process smoothly, pass on the first time, hopefully, and save themselves any undue stress. So thanks so much.

Taylor (01:31:03):

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Lou (01:31:08):

Hey everyone, one more thing before you get back to business, and that is my weekly bite sized email, To the Point. Would you like to get an email from me every Friday, discussing a single tool, paper, method, or update in the community? Past topics have covered Toyota's vehicle control history, including a coverage chart, ADAS, that's advanced driver assistance systems, Tesla vehicle data reports, free video analysis tools and handheld scanners. If that sounds enjoyable and useful, head to lightpointdata.com/tothepoint to get the very next one.