About

Motor Vehicle Fire Investigation
Computer-Based Training

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support and funding of Motor Vehicle Fire Research Institute and the support of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for the execution of the computer-based training program. We would like to thank Dr. Kennerly Digges, Dr. Rhoads Stephenson, and the staff of the NHTSA for their suggestions and assistance with the project. We also thank Henry Velick, Jeff Zeunert, and Zach Romano, who programmed this website, and Mark Hallenbeck and his staff at the University of Washington Transportation Research Center (TRAC), who produced and hosted the site.

Version

Version 3.0
© 2020, Leland E. Shields, Inc.
Responsibility for the contents of the website rests solely with Leland E. Shields, Inc. (LES, Inc.) and the views do not necessarily reflect those of TRAC or the University of Washington. The entire contents of this web site are copyrighted under the United States copyright laws. LES, Inc. is the owner of the copyright. The materials and information on this website are available solely for non-commercial use. Material downloaded from this website may not be reproduced, redistributed or retransmitted without attribution. Permission was obtained by LES, Inc. for the use of copyrighted materials on this website. Downloading, copying or distributing material attributed to others may be a violation of copyright restrictions. Although every precaution has been taken to eliminate errors in the information included in this website, LES, Inc. assumes neither responsibility for any errors or omissions on this site or on any site to which this site is linked, nor liability for any damages, indirect or direct, lost profits or lost data resulting from use of the materials on this website or any linked sites.

Authors

Robert Scheibe is an Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington, a researcher for the Washington State Transportation Center, and a consulting engineer with Exponent, Inc. in Bellevue, Washington. For the past 38 years, he has investigated numerous accidents and fires involving vehicles, and other equipment, and has expertise in the analysis of vehicle and product safety from the perspective of design, maintenance, and use. Dr. Scheibe holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Washington. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in several states and is a Certified Fire and Explosion Investigator and Certified Vehicle Fire Investigator through the National Association of Fire Investigators.

Leland Shields has been an independent consultant with 36 years’ experience investigating collision and non-collision motor vehicle fires. He has also researched vehicle fires for the Washington State Transportation Center at the University of Washington. Mr. Shields is currently the president of Leland E. Shields, Incorporated in Seattle, Washington. His experience includes numerous inspections to determine the causes of fires, collisions, and injuries for incidents involving passenger cars, light trucks, heavy and recreational vehicles. He has also designed and executed instrumented vehicle-fire test programs to define specific conditions of fire initiation, propagation and mitigation. Mr. Shields has managed recall investigations to determine the root causes of particular vehicle models with fire-related issues including increased tendency to have non-collision fires. Mr. Shields has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Contact If you would like to report a problem with program functionality, or have suggestions for additional resources to include, please send email to: scheibe@u.washington.edu.