News About Road Rage More Important Than Inappropriate Barrier Crossing?
It was recently reported that the female driver of a Tesla car was found guilty of being involved in a road rage incident on Highway 400 near Simcoe Road 89 north of Toronto. Alicia Beerdat reportedly pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death after she interfered with a Chevrolet Equinox that attempted to pass her using the left shoulder of the “fast lane”. It was described that both drivers had been weaving and interfering with each other prior to the final result when the Equinox travelled through the median barrier and was struck by a pick-up truck travelling in the other direction.
It is revealing how the results of collisions are often described with incomplete focus on the factors that matter. While it is important to inform the public about incidents of road rage, other issues, such as suspect road barrier performance, is also important. No one has mentioned that the concrete barrier shown in the above photo is there to protect from vehicles crossing into the opposing lanes of a major expressway such as Highway 400. The barrier is designed to deflect an impacting vehicle and keep it scraping along the barrier until the vehicle comes to a gradual stop. We ought to know that some large and tall vehicles can sometimes tip over such a barrier and rollover but even then there is substantial contact with the barrier. Thus occupants of heavy trucks and large buses are in danger when this occurs. Such bad results are rarely discussed.
However a Chevrolet Equinox is not a large or tall vehicle. A barrier like this was likely tested with this type of vehicle in mind. So what happened? This is something that official news media ought to be aware of, they should question police investigators and this should be reported to the public.
Speed Camera Removal Produces Large Increase In Speeding in Ontario
The reality is that politicians in Ontario kill people. There may not be a direct line of bread crumbs leading from a disastrous policy to a deadly result and this is why many citizens do not make that connection.
The Ford government in Ontario prohibited automated speed enforcement in November, 2025. Doug Ford claimed that the use of speed cameras was a “cash grab” by Ontario’s municipalities and this resonated well with many motorists who were charged with speeding. In fact Ford’s comments might not have been far from the truth as municipalities entered into relationships with private firms which owned the speed cameras and money was made by both the municipalities and those private firms. And if the threshold for speeding was kept at just barely over the speed limit a lot of average citizens could be caught. And this meant a lot of money paid to both the municipalities and the private firms. And there was no accountability for such actions as municipalities could do whatever they wanted. And in the same way there has been no accountability in the Ford government when they removed speed cameras altogether. The result is that average citizens were victimized by their municipal politicians and then they were victimized again by the Ford government. At no point was there a thought put to protecting the public.
A few months after speed cameras were removed a number of news media articles began popping up demonstrating that speeding was increasing. Parkside Drive in Toronto was a particularly thorny issue as speed cameras continued to be vandalized by persons unknown and police were never able to capture the perpetrators. Then, in the spring of 2026 news media began reporting that speeding along Parkside Drive “…surged more than 200 percent following the Ford government’s removal of its automated speed enforcement program”. A report discussed in June of 2026 also showed that in 101 of the 104 locations examined in Toronto operating speeds increased after speed cameras were removed. Then again in September of 2026 it was reported that the number of vehicles travelling at least 20 km/h above the posted speed on Parkside Drive rose by more than 500% compared to the previous year when speed cameras were still operating.
However this was not just a Toronto phenomenon. In the City of Ottawa for example, City Staff reported that speeding was up in school zones after photo radar cameras were removed.
After decades of detailed analysis of individual collisions Gorski Consulting recognizes that how and why persons are injured and killed in transportation incidents is complicated by the many factors that come into play. And speed is only one of those many factors. In our experience those factors were encapsulated by researchers many years ago by the term “HVE”: the Human, the Vehicle, and the Environment. However, speed in not an insignificant factor. Regrettably, politicians in Ontario have placed its citizens in more dangerous conditions because of their policies and their refusal to be transparent with the public about their decisions and what are likely to be the results of those decisions. Current political policy in Ontario is a like a runaway railway train that is difficult for any individual or group to control or stop.
Cyclist collision on Dundas East of Maitland In London Ontario
Another serious cyclist collision occurred in London, Ontario at approximately 1600 hours on September 17, 2026. No information has been released about how the collision occurred and this is typical of what has been occurring in London for many years whenever a cyclist is seriously injured or killed.
What little information has been released indicates that an adult male cyclist sustained “critical” injuries. Although a single photo was produced on the local CTV News website nothing was written about what was visible in the photo except that it showed the “crash seen”. Looking closely at the photo one could see a cycle lying on its side in the area shown in the recreated photo above. It also showed a stake truck that was stopped in the eastbound lane of Dundas Street perhaps 20 metres past the rest position of the cycle. There are some obvious concerns about this scenario.
The site contained a “protected” cycling lane. Typically a cyclist would be expected to ride within that protected cycling lane. So if the cyclist was in the lane how could he be struck by the eastbound stake truck? One might consider that perhaps the stake truck somehow rode over the barrier and struck the cyclist. But that does not appear to be the case. I attended the collision site and looked closely at the various concrete blocks and the vertical, green delineators and there was no evidence that the truck entered the cycling lane.
There was a single faint tire mark visible on one of the concrete blocks which was closest to the intersection with Maitland Street and this area is shown in the two photos below.
It is unknown whether this evidence is related the collision but it is the only evidence of contact to the concrete blocks throughout the nearby area.
The remnants of a large blood stain was visible in the cycling lane just east of the cycle. This is shown below.
The existence of such large areas of blood does not typically identify the location where a person was struck. Instead it typically identifies where the person came to rest. Examination of the eastbound lane designated for motor vehicle travel did not reveal any evidence to determine where the cyclist was struck and this is not unusual. A close examination of the striking stake truck and the damage to the cycle would need to be performed to provide further information about how the collision occurred. Information about the specific injuries sustained by the cyclist would also help to identify how the collision occurred.
Given these circumstances it would be important for police to provide an explanation as to how and why this collision occurred within the area where a protected cycling track was present. Such explanations have not been given by police in the past. This results in the occurrence of future collisions as both cyclists and drivers of motor vehicles are left in the dark.
AI, Radar, Lidar, Cameras Event Data REcorders – Collision Reconstruction is Changing Quickly
Independent and unbiased monitoring or road safety, like in any other field, is essential to a proper-functioning society. But as our world becomes more technologically complex, such monitoring becomes much more difficult.
Publicly funded road safety organizations such as the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) or Transport Canada’s Road Safety Branch were created in the late 1960’s and have provided meaningful evaluations along with safety standards that have protected road users throughout these decades. However recent advances in the sensing, monitoring and storing of vehicle performance on public roadways has increasingly become a proprietary matter only available to the manufacturers and their partners. The rulemaking in 2006 that required manufacturers to provide basic “event data” that they store on their various modules has become challenged as the functioning of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) is not made public.
Other manufacturers such as General Motors have recently (early September, 2026) announced that they will be expanding their use of in-vehicle cameras to improve vehicle security as well as to monitor in-vehicle passengers. A spokesperson for GM commented “We wanted to add flexibility to monitor the back seat without turning away from the road, which is dangerous”.
The operators of many commercial fleets in North America have also begun to enter into relationships with firms providing technologic that monitors driver actions and artificial intelligence (AI) to capture instances where driver behavior is wanting. Such systems store data about those instances that this can be used to coach drivers to improve their driving. Obviously there are privacy issues that accompany these developments.
And various other advancements have taken hold. Closed-circuit cameras (CCTV) and automated license plate recognition (ALPR) systems have become popular such that surveillance of the public’s behavior has increased. This concern has caused some jurisdictions, such as the State of Florida, to revoke licenses for these devices , commencing in early September , 2026, and require that the cameras be removed in 30 days. Various camera installations continue to exist in southern Ontario and, in fact, their installations are being expanded in locations such as the Waterloo region. Private firms such as Flock, Mio-vision and others have established relationships with many public jurisdictions.
For the purposes of collision reconstruction all these rapid developments have made the landscape far more complex. While data becomes increasingly stored in various ways, accessing that data is becoming more complex. Despite the claimed good efforts of NHTSA and Transport Canada, manufacturers have developed their own proprietary hardware to access data such that even very large entities such as police and government agencies must pay substantial money to keep up with purchases of the hardware. It can be said that the average vehicle owner has a “snowball’s chance in hell” of ever being able to independently retrieve the data existing on their own vehicle. Individual rights are good on paper, but they are fast becomes less useful than the paper they are written on.
E-bike & E-scooter Safety Information Non-Existant
In August, 2026 a number of news articles were posted on the internet talking about the large increase in injuries suffered by riders of e-bikes and e-scooters.
In London Ontario it was reported that the Children’s Hospital treated 22 children for e-scooter related injuries in between April and June of 2025. It was reported that this number rose to 58 for the same period in 2026.
In another report released by the Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program, 48 cases of serious injuries and death related to e-scooter and e-bike incidents were noted in 2025. Much of the concern was with how many of those cases involved children.
In Toronto Ontario police have reported that there were 514 collisions in 2026 involving micro-mobility devices such as bicycles, e-bikes, cargo bikes, mopeds and e-scooters. Two of those incidents involved fatal e-scooter collisions. In response to these numbers Toronto police went on a two-week enforcement campaign. They issued 1,277 tickets for vehicles parked in bike lanes and 324 tickets against riders of micro-mobility devices. The campaign ran from August 10 to 24 so now that it is over does that mean there will be no focused attention to this issue? It would seem that the only solution to be found is to give out tickets but these may only be a drop in the bucket as police have so many other matters to deal with.
The newly appointed “Mayor of Toronto”, Doug Ford, has now been given permission by his appointed Ontario Court of Appeal to remove a number of cycling lanes in Toronto. While a lower court determined that the removal of the cycling lanes was an infringement to cyclists’ constitutional right to be protected from harm the Court of Appeal determined there was no such harm that should prevent Ford from doing whatever he wants with cycling lanes.
Such cycling lanes are not just used by cyclists but by all users of micro-mobility devices. In its wisdom the Ontario Court of Appeal failed to acknowledge that, when cycling lanes are removed, this does not mean that cyclists will also be removed. In other words, many cyclists will still use the roadway where those lanes were removed. The misinformed logic is that cycling lanes can be moved to a less-busy road nearby and that cyclists will then ride along the newly created cycling lanes. This misinformed logic fails because it does not recognize that, unlike drivers of motor vehicles, cyclists are hampered when they must ride a further distance and thus expend more energy. It is not just a matter of more time, expended energy is a critical factor for cyclists. Thus it is a real danger that cyclists will continue riding where the cycling lane has been removed. But this real danger is also not appreciated by many cyclists because many are kept in the dark.
All involved parties, including the Ford government, are guilty of failing to educate cyclists, and all micro-mobility riders, of the dangers posed to them. As stated numerous times in Gorski Consulting website articles, collisions involving cyclists, and collisions involving all micro-mobility devices are rarely publicized. Even in major injury and fatal collisions only bare facts are released to the public. Such information is never sufficient to understand how and why a collision occurred and what actions motor vehicle drivers or riders of micro-mobility devices could have taken to avoid the collision.
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