Investigators look at what remains of Tiger Woods' vehicle after a crash involving the golf legend on Tuesday.

By Chad Klassen

TIGER WOODS

Kamloops engineer involved in analysis of Tiger Woods’ traumatic crash on L.A. highway

Feb 24, 2021 | 5:14 PM

KAMLOOPS — The minute Tiger Woods’ SUV went off the road, the world stopped to see the fate of the golf legend.

Woods is recovering in an L.A. hospital after a traumatic crash that’s left him with significant injuries. The 45-year-old was driving around 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday when his SUV suddenly crossed a median, flew across the two opposing lanes and wound up off the road.

“There’s a host of information from this . We can see the massive destruction on the frontal surfaces — all the airbags have been deployed. The rear bumper has come off,” said accident reconstruction engineer Tim Leggett as he watched footage of the crash site. “There’s some belongings — his golf bag — have been ejected. Not sure where, likely the back window.”

Leggett is based in Kamloops and has been analyzing crashes like this for 35 years. His company, Forensic Dynamics, mainly analyzes crashes for insurance purposes. In this case, Entertainment Tonight hired Leggett to look into exactly what happened to Tiger Woods.

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“From the time he hits the median on his side of the road until the time he hits the other median, or at least the other curb on the other side of the road, it’s close to 200 feet,” he observed. “Then not only that, but after he goes through all of these impacts, and this could be more than one complete end-over-end roll… There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s speed involved.”

Leggett says the investigation is in the very early stages and, like the investigators on the ground, he is eager to see the information that comes out of the vehicle’s black box.

“We’ll know exactly how fast the vehicle was going. We’ll know exactly what braking, if any, was undertaken. We’ll know the angle of the steering. It doesn’t appear there is any steering. Once he steers hard into the left 15 degrees and hits that first curb, the vehicle does not appear to change direction. That in itself is odd,” he said.

Leggett is no stranger to analyzing car crashes involving celebrities. He looked into the crash that killed actor Paul Walker in 2013. He’s also analyzes two other crashes involving Woods. He’s become a go-to guy for many entertainment networks.

“I’ve worked with ET over the years on many occassions. In fact, I reconstructed one other of Tiger Woods’ crashes for ET, and then his first crash — the infamous golf club case — I think I worked on TMZ for that one. I do a lot of media out of L.A. and I think they find out about my little specialty.”