Rebecca Grossman's Own Expert Witness Testifies She Was Speeding At 73 mph

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]All right, good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon.

[00:00:03]Would you please state your name for the record?

[00:00:06]It is Robert Snook. Spelling last name is S N O O K.

[00:00:11]Mr. Snook, you're an expert retained by the Lewis Brisbois firm, is that correct? Yes, sir, that is correct.

[00:00:18]And do you understand they represent the Grossman defendants?

[00:00:22]Uh yes.

[00:00:23]>> [clears throat] >> Referring to your expert designation in this case, it states that the general substance of your anticipated testimony will be regarding accident investigation. Were you aware of that?

[00:00:40]Yes, sir, the documentation of and the investigation itself, yes.

[00:00:47]Um any other areas of testimony beyond those that you just identified?

[00:00:54]Not that I've been asked to do, no, or or to for this proceeding.

[00:01:00]For For purposes of this case, can you tell me what areas of expertise that you have that you are using?

[00:01:10]Well, I may certified accident reconstructionist.

[00:01:14]My background is in accident reconstruction for the last 40 plus years. Um I have taken in excess of 2,000 formal hours related to accident investigation and reconstruction.

[00:01:27]Um all of the classes that I've attended from various schools throughout the US.

[00:01:32]Um the classes that did have testing, which is most of them, I certified or passed the class successfully. Um I've been doing an expert in the field of accident investigation and reconstruction um in excess of 150 times.

[00:01:48]Um and I I think given my background um what I did for a living with the California Highway Patrol, um my current company, and I am a certified instructor with the state of California at two levels within the regiment of post PO.

[00:02:04]All right. Okay. Can I just ask you some >> [clears throat] >> background facts about this case? Okay.

[00:02:11]So, you understand, sir, that this case concerns an auto versus pedestrian collision? Correct.

[00:02:18]And the collision occurred on September 29th, 2020 at approximately 7:10 p.m.

[00:02:24]Yes.

[00:02:25]>> [clears throat] >> The crash occurred at the intersection of Triunfo Canyon Road and Saddleback Mountain Drive in Westlake Village.

[00:02:32]Correct.

[00:02:33]And with respect to the intersection, I I will refer to that as the intersection or the subject intersection, do you understand that that's exactly what I'm talking about? Absolutely.

[00:02:44]Um Um Mark and Jacob Iskander died as a result of this collision, is that correct? It is correct.

[00:02:53]Um at the time of the crash, Rebecca Grossman was driving a white 2018 Mercedes GLE bearing California license plate 8BBH031, is that right?

[00:03:09]Um I I You probably said it correctly. It does Yes, sir. I'm just checking the license plate, but you are correct.

[00:03:17]And then on the day of the crash a deputy sheriff found her vehicle with Rebecca Grossman about half a mile away from the intersection, is that right?

[00:03:29]It was she was away from the intersection, but they did Yes, that was his version of the distance, yes.

[00:03:34]What was What do you believe the distance was?

[00:03:38]I wasn't looking at it, but I want to say it was probably closer to a quarter mile. I believe that deputy um he had changed it later on in his testimony to a quarter.

[00:03:46]I I Sitting here right now, the number of about 1,700 ft sticks in my mind, so that would be about 3/10 of a mile.

[00:03:55]Somewhere in there, so.

[00:04:02]Um with respect to where you believe it it finally came to a resting point, Rebecca Grossman's vehicle, do you know how it got there?

[00:04:10]Um just based on um the testimony that I've seen um and the you know, the little bit of knowledge on the car and so forth that once the airbags deployed, uh the vehicle would stay running, but it would lose power.

[00:04:29]Um and basically I believe uh in the report I think Ms. Grossman talked about it, her car glided to a stop.

[00:04:39]Did you ever do any analysis about where her vehicle would have ended up if just after impact she applied emergency braking?

[00:04:57]No.

[00:05:00]And if by emergency braking I'm using 0.75 Gs, is that the number that you use when you do emergency braking analysis?

[00:05:08]I would I would use a higher value than that for emergency or panic level braking.

[00:05:14]What would you use?

[00:05:16]I believe that vehicle's published to be probably somewhere in the nines, and emergency braking to me is the the the the massive sudden or hard application of braking. I don't You know, the the Fred Flintstone manner where you're pushing the pedal to the floor.

[00:05:36]But as it relates to that analysis, you have that's not something you've done and you don't have an opinion about that, is that correct? All right.

[00:05:43]Um the the speed limit where the crash occurred was 45 mph, is that right?

[00:05:50]That is correct.

[00:05:52]Well, sir, I'll I'll publish Here, let me do uh Let me do your EDR report. I'll publish it to the screen, so let me share my screen. Thank you. I didn't I didn't print that out. That's okay.

[00:06:08]Okay. Let me see the name.

[00:06:14]Uh okay. So, let me >> [clears throat] >> publish this next document. It's seven.

[00:06:22]Okay.

[00:06:25]Exhibit seven is a 10-page PDF.

[00:06:28]Um and Sir, do you recognize recognize exhibit seven CDR crash data retrieval report that you performed on the vehicle driven by Rebecca Grossman that was involved in this crash?

[00:06:47]Yes, I do.

[00:06:49]And then I'm referencing the identifying information here on the very first page towards the top.

[00:06:57]And it identifies the VIN number, of course, and then the user is identified as in D J K N R Snook. Do you see that? Yes.

[00:07:07]And who's DJK? I state the name.

[00:07:10]Okay.

[00:07:12]And then um How does this user field populate?

[00:07:20]That information that you see in the box, um a lot of it such as the the date and time, um the crash data retrieval tool 2.15 and so forth, and then the last couple of uh entries, the EDR device and so forth, that is populated by the computer program um active at the time. Um the VIN number, uh depending on uh you can ask the system to read the VIN or you can put it in yourself, but the names um the case number um and that type of thing, um who owned you know, that that's all input by All right.

[00:07:57]Do you have an opinion about whether um Mark and Jacob Iskander had the right of way at the time of the crash?

[00:08:08]Well, in in the context of the definition of right of way, they did.

[00:08:12]They had been established um crossing the roadway.

[00:08:15]Um they had been out there a little bit, and that would give them the right of way. Defined as immediate use of the highway, yes.

[00:08:24]And And why did that oncoming vehicle require to yield the right of way? Is that correct?

[00:08:32]Okay. So, let's go back to the >> [cough and clears throat] >> EDR or CDR. And let's um I'll pull up your CDR report in a moment. You and I have been using the term EDR and CDR.

[00:08:48]EDR, do you understand that means electronic data recorder? Yes.

[00:08:53]And CDR is collision data recorder or collision data retrieval?

[00:09:01]Yeah, the the company Bosch CDR, yes.

[00:09:04]And would you agree that those terms are synonyms?

[00:09:09]Well, the the CDR basically refers to the equipment. Uh the EDR is actually the device in the vehicle that captures the data. Okay. But it it is used in that context, absolutely. People use it freely back and forth.

[00:09:24]All right. And EDR, have you heard it referred to as like a black box?

[00:09:31]That's usually what everybody calls it, yes. Thank you for the media.

[00:09:35]And uh um not every vehicle has an EDR, is that right?

[00:09:41]That is correct.

[00:09:43]Um in this case, Correct.

[00:09:53]And in your world that you've done and you talk about, you know, your download of the EDR.

[00:10:01]Have you seen other EDR reports in this case?

[00:10:07]Um there was Yes, I have.

[00:10:09]Um all right. So, with the the the three EDR downloads from Rebecca Grossman's vehicle, based on your knowledge and your review of those reports, do they all generate the same data and information?

[00:10:28]I believe they did, yes, sir. Especially when it comes to speed and and that the main things we're looking at, yes.

[00:10:35]Do you believe that the data from the EDR from Rebecca Grossman's vehicle that was generated in all three reports is accurate and reliable?

[00:10:48]Since And so, as I understand what you just told me is Um at the end of the day, to your testimony, you don't believe that Scott Erickson hit the little boys, correct?

[00:11:06]That is correct.

[00:11:08]Um and what you know is that Rebecca Grossman's vehicle hit both Mark and Jacob Iskander going about 73 mph at the intersection.

[00:11:23]Any videos of that intersection?

[00:11:26]And with respect to the inspection and your participation of this, how, if at all, did it inform your opinions in this case?

[00:11:35]Well, the the main reason for the inspection was to to try to get another download off the the event data recorder EDR.

[00:11:43]Um and then it's always good to first hand to see the damage patterns on the vehicle. That's the smaller wrinkles in body panels and so forth that are difficult to really notice in in the photographs taken by others. So, to get a hands-on look at that and then also the like I said, our main focus that day was to get to the the black box.

[00:12:06]And so, is there any doubt in your mind that the EDR data that you got and used, if you downloaded, is there any doubt in your mind that it's actually the data from our crash?

[00:12:20]Uh no, I believe it is from ours.

[00:12:27]So, good. That's it.

[00:12:29]All right.

[00:12:31]We're going to break for the day.

[00:12:33]Do not talk about the case amongst yourselves or with anyone else.

[00:12:38]See you back here at 9:15.