Ricky Nguyen

Mr. Ricky Nguyen, M.S., P.E., DFE, is a Senior Engineer at Exponent, Inc. in the Vehicle Engineering Practice. He is a registered professional mechanical engineer in three states (Arizona, California, and Colorado) and an ACTAR-accredited Traffic Crash Reconstructionist. He has over a decade of experience in the fields of Forensic Engineering and Vehicle Crash Reconstruction.

Mr. Nguyen has been involved in hundreds of investigations and analyses of incidents, including single and multi-vehicle crashes; workplace accidents; and incidents involving consumer products and industrial and construction machinery and equipment. Aspects of these investigations have included crash/incident reconstruction, failure analysis, safety engineering assessments, and product design and safety analysis. He has testified in deposition and trial as an expert in vehicle accident reconstruction.  

Mr. Nguyen utilizes engineering principles to reconstruct a wide range of traffic accidents, including high and low-speed motor vehicle crashes involving passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, motorcycles, off-road vehicles, trains, pedestrians, and bicycles. In conducting reconstruction analyses, Mr. Nguyen has determined and evaluated aspects and factors that may have contributed to the crash, including the speed of the vehicles involved, their time-space relationship in the environment, adverse roadway conditions, line-of-sight, nighttime visibility, compliance with state and federal traffic regulations, traffic signal timing, and crash avoidance. These investigations have also included evaluation of the performance of vehicle components and systems, such as brakes, tires, seat belts, airbags, engine, drivetrain, steering, and suspension. Mr. Nguyen is competent with the latest technologies, including retrieval and analysis of crash data from vehicle event data recorders, aerial drone imagery, 3D laser scanning, photogrammetry, videogrammetry, and computer simulation.  

In addition, Mr. Nguyen has reconstructed incidents involving a wide range of products, including consumer, industrial, and construction products and equipment such as window coverings, children's toys, above-ground pools, personal watercraft, sit-down and stand-up forklifts, pallet jacks, stationary and mobile cranes, aerial lifts, scissor-lifts, front-end loaders, excavators, skid steers, augers, wood chippers, horizontal boring machines, balers, and winches. 

Mr. Nguyen has been involved in product liability matters in which he has evaluated safety aspects of products and has assessed claims related to design defects. His assessment has included comparison of the subject product to manufacturer specifications, industry standards and practices, peer product design, and patents, and the technological feasibility of alternative designs.