Crash experts question Ravnsborg’s car-deer explanation and raise concerns of distracted driving
An experienced traffic-accident reconstruction expert is casting doubt on the claim made by South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg that he thought he hit a deer with his car the night of Sept. 12 when in fact he had struck and killed a man.
After viewing an image of the site where Ravnsborg hit and killed 55-year-old Joseph Boever, reading articles about the incident and viewing a photo of Ravsnborg’s vehicle taken after the crash, Kurt Weiss, a mechanical engineer who has 34 years of experience in reconstructing hundreds of car accidents, said it is highly improbable that Ravnsborg would not have known he’d hit a man unless he was distracted and not looking at the road at the time of the collision.
“If he [Ravnsborg] is looking forward and had the headlights on, it would be easy to discern if it’s someone’s jeans and a flannel shirt versus a beige-colored deer,” Weiss said. “But if he’s looking down or to the left and he blasts something, you might not know what you hit. But how could he not; look at the hole in the windshield.”
“It would be easy to tell the difference; even at 100 mph, you would be able to tell the difference between an erect human versus a deer, no question,” Weiss said, “and that would be part of the interrogation of Mr. Ravnsborg.”
