Mr . BARNARD . Thank you very much , Mr . Menkes . Mr . Menkes , how did you come about doing this study ?

Mr . MENKES . I was at Mr . Scanlon ' s office on a totally different and unrelated matter shortly before the McKinley trial . And he asked me what I knew about three - wheel vehicles , and I said , “ Not much . ” And he said , “ Well , think about it a little bit . I have a trial coming up in a couple of months , and I would like to know whether or not you have any opinions that would be relevant . ” And that is when I did the things that you have just seen . I have embellished them a little bit for this purpose . And very shortly I was in the courtroom .

Mr . BARNARD . Mr . Menkes , have there been other studies made , to your knowledge , that would substantiate what you have said or studies which find other views ?

Mr . MENKES . I believe that there is at least one that I know of . There is an expert in the country whose name is Jeffrey Houston . He is out in Iowa . And he had a student who wrote a Ph . D . thesis in 1984 on the dynamics of three - wheel vehicles . I can provide you with a specific reference if you would like . I haven ' t seen the thesis , but I am told it deals with these things .

Mr . BARNARD . Staff , if you would , let us get a copy of that for the record .

Do you know whether or not that study corresponds with the findings that you have made ?

Mr . MENKES . I do not know . I haven ' t seen it , but I know what Dr . Houston thinks , and I believe that there is general corrobora tion with what I have said .

Incidentally , the best source for confirmation as to what I have said is in the Honda manual itself .

Mr . BARNARD . Well , that was a question I wanted to ask you , then . That is , if you have found this information , and you believe it to be accurate , and certainly I am not one to doubt it , did the man ufacturers have this same information available , or should they have had this same information before they would market this ve hicle ?

Mr . MENKES . I believe so . I may say that the manuals do reflect cautionary notes of various kinds . But there is this impression , and I think this is deliberate . There are no statements in the manual that say , for example , don ' t drive more than x number of miles an hour when going around this kind of a turn . It is left to the opera tor to determine his or her own safe boundaries for operation .

Mr . BARNARD . In other words , what you would say is that you would have to have some unusual skill to operate this vehicle safely ?

Mr . MENKES . That is my belief . And it is not only skill , it is a matter of extremely rapid reflexes . I told you at the beginning that you have got to respond to critical situations very fast . That , in fact , is what happened with Mr . McKinley . He came across a situa tion he couldn ' t contend with . You heard him say that he tried to turn uphill when he was traversing a side slope . That happens to be the worst thing he could do .

Mr . BARNARD . Well , what if it were prescribed that there would be something like , as we talked before , governors or other types of