How accurate is eyewitness testimony?

Loftus and Palmer help explain the accuracy of eyewitness testimony and whether misleading questions can have a significant effect on distorting the accuracy of an eyewitnesses' immediate recall of an event. They conducted a lab experiment using 45 students, these students were then given a questionnaire based on the 7 films of different traffic accidents in which they had watched prior. The 45 students were split up into 5 sub-groups. On the questionnaire, of group 1, there was one critical question "How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?" The other 4 groups were given the same questionnaire, however the word "hit" in group 1s questionnaire was either changed to "smashed," "collided," "bumped," or "contacted" (each different word was given to each sub-group. Upon answering the questionnaire, the group given the word "smashed" estimated a speed of 40.8mph compared to the group given the word "contacted" with their estimated mean speed being only 31.8mph. This shows that misleading questions can have a significant effect on a witnesses' answer to a question.