Maritime Institute offering course in crash-investigation skills
ACCIDENT RECONSTRUCTION and investigation with the use of a black box is predicted to become the way of the future, and the Caribbean Maritime Institute has developed a programme geared at preparing future experts in the field.
“We have started a course called crash investigation. It is a course designed for the insurance market to train insurance assessors, and also lawyers, how to reconstruct accident scenes. We have been working with the Island Traffic Authority, the Road Safety Unit, and two overseas partners. We had some funding through the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank), and we have teamed up with a specialist school out of the United States and out of England. They have helped us to develop a curriculum that is internationally positioned,” Fritz Pinnock, executive director of the institution, told The Gleaner yesterday.
The courses offered related to reconstructing accidents are all accredited by the Chartered
Institute of Transport and Logistics in the United Kingdom, which, Pinnock said, would provide persons with skills for emerging jobs, particularly in the area of deciphering critical information from crash scenes.
“The black box in the vehicle is like the black box in an aircraft. It can give you a lot more information, so we can be more clinical and analytical with accidents, not just two people getting out and fighting like what we normally see on the road. The black box collects and gives you data, and it is very accurate. It could give you the positioning of the driver – if they were on the pedal or were accelerating or decelerating. This is a major demand that we see, not just for Jamaica, but in the Caribbean, so we are filling the voids within the transportation sector, looking at niche market opportunities and making use of them.”
Pinnock said that institutions need to become more focused on responding to markets with potential for growth, rather than enduring courses that will, in the near future, become irrelevant.
Pinnock has called on all persons interested in the field to visit www.cmi.edu.jm to apply.