Secrecy & Misinformation Are Unrecognized Causes of Future Collisions
With the warp speed of vast quantities of information passing through the public’s day it becomes difficult to detect a bit of information that is important and even more difficult for the public to perceive that importance. This fact is very real with respect to information involving collisions on our transportation systems.
Each day information about the latest collisions has to compete with an enticing focus on sports figures or movie stars by official media who are interested in stealing the public’s attention from another media competitor. Half-truths (or half lies) become strong magnets pulling the public toward some preconceived viewpoints that are often not based on reality, but based on what the public wants to hear/read/see.
In this realm information about the causes of important transportation collisions become hidden, sometimes purposely, or the information becomes misrepresented, sometimes purposely.
An example of this is exhibited in a collision that reportedly occurred in Toronto, Ontario in the early morning of November 28, 2025 on Hwy 427 near Rathburn Road. It was reported that a single vehicle struck a guardrail and the alone driver sustained “life-threatening” injuries. This injury information was later down-graded to “life-altering” injuries. There are several problems with these descriptions.
Firstly, the reason why guardrails exist is so that they reduce the severity of collisions and therefore reduce the severity of their consequences. When a guardrail is struck we cannot expect every unpredictable collision to be altered in a perfect manner. Roadways are designed and vehicles are manufactured to reduce the consequences of a large percentage of guardrail collisions. But sometimes something happens that did not go according to plan. And when something unexpected happens it needs to be identified so something can be adjusted to prevent, or reduce, the consequences of the next, future, mishap.
The word “identified” cannot be used narrowly in the sense that identification is made by a very few officials and no one else needs to know. That should be recognized as an obvious recipe for disaster. Because we ought to know that persons placed in a position of power and responsibility will want to hide from that accountability, universally, not just in transportation incidents. In a properly functioning society checks need to exist to minimize the chances that persons with responsibility for something are not able to hide their responsibility. Otherwise something dangerous can continue to exist, becomes uncorrected, and another tragedy occurs because that danger did not become identified and was not corrected. This reasoning should not be difficult to comprehend.
So why did the driver in the present collision sustain unexpectedly serious, or life altering, injuries after the impact of a guardrail? We do not want to single out the CP24 News article as it is just standard for how matters are reported generally across Ontario. But we see the following segment from the article where the investigating officer is interviewed by the CP24 News reporter:
“So right now, we’re dealing with a motor vehicle collision. It’s just a single motor vehicle collision. So that’s one vehicle,” said OPP Const. Taylor Konkle. “What happened? It was traveling southbound in the Express at approximately four o’clock in the morning, and it struck the left side guardrail.”
And that’s it. No further information. Nothing about why or how the vehicle hit the guardrail. Nothing about how the driver managed to sustain those serious injuries. But we know from many pervious collisions that guardrails can be too low and this can alter the way a vehicle strikes it. Also the guardrail may not have been maintained properly such that certain bolts, brackets or previous damage could have altered the way the system performed. And it is also not uncommon for an impact to be reported as a guardrail impact whereas the impact could actually be with the beginning of the rail, or the guardrail “terminal” or some other energy attenuating device. But no photos were provided of the collision scene so no one can be certain what happened.
A second issue relates to the manner in which injury information is purposely kept secret, thus preventing the general public from knowing how they might be exposed to a similar, sometimes fatal, fate. Using vague terminology such as “life-threatening ” or “life-altering” prevents anyone from hypothesizing how an injury might have occurred and whether the injury outcome could be acceptable or not.
Injury outcomes from real-life collisions have been scientifically documented and studied for decades by North American agencies such as NHTSA and Transport Canada. Thus, if someone is given a reasonably precise description of a certain collision the expected injuries can be known. NHTSA, for example, has stored the results of over 139,000 collision analyses in their NASS database since 1979. The NASS program has recently been replaced by the CISS program which provides similar collision summaries. So given a scenario where a light-duty vehicle strikes a guardrail, databases such as NASS or CISS provide the specific injuries that occurred in those real-life collisions.
Comparing those injuries in the NASS-CISS collisions to the one involving the present collision one can confirm if something occurred that was unusual and unacceptable. But without a proper description of the collision or a proper injury description such a comparison cannot be made. This is a failure in the way we operate in the Province of Ontario.
Officials with the obligation to explain why a collision occurred, and why an injury or death occurred, have developed policies citing privacy legislation so that they do not have to be accountable to the public. Secrecy and misinformation are the basis on which many future collisions are caused because we fail to identify and correct the causes of the collisions of the present. There are examples of societies in other parts of the world that operate in short-sighted benefit for the few in detriment to their societies as a whole. We have an opportunity to understand and act so accountability does not become some theoretical concept, but that it is a true reality.
Visibility Limitation Of A 20-Seater School Bus
Several previous articles has been posted on this Gorski Consulting website discussing driver visibility obstructions on school buses. Those are noted below.
School Bus Fatal Impact of Pedestrian in Toronto – Another Visibility Issue? Posted: November 8, 2024.
Left-Turning School Bus Causes Pedestrian Fatality in St Thomas Ontario. Posted: February 15, 2024.
School Bus Visibility Obstruction Could Kill You. Posted: February 17, 2023.
Roof Pillars Can Be A visibility Obstruction. Posted: July 19, 2007.
The reason for posting these articles is because few pedestrians, cyclists, or other vulnerable micro-mobility riders understand the danger that exists when they cross in front of a school bus. The left-front of a typical school bus contains several objects that make it difficult for a bus driver to see past them. While it is the responsibility of the school bus driver to recognize these dangers it is also helpful if those persons close to the school understand what the driver has to cope with.
In the image above we have shown the driver’s view from a typical, 20-seater, school bus. This bus would be the smallest of the many one might see in southern Ontario. However similar difficulties exist for school buses of all sizes. The view being shown is at a typical unban intersection where the school bus has come to a stop and pedestrians begin crossing in front of the bus from left to right. There is a pedestrian visible crossing just to the left the convex mirror. This convex mirror is anchored to the left front of the bus, as shown in the example photo of a bus exterior below.
Note that the pedestrian is not walking within the lines of the pedestrian crossing and there is no other pedestrian visible. The next photo shows the scenario just a few seconds later as a second pedestrian emerges into view.
Note that the second pedestrian was there all along but his presence was blocked from view. And this is a very typical problem. It exhibits itself many times when school buses are making left turns and the bus drivers do not detect that a pedestrian is walking within the pedestrian crossing to the left of the bus. Regrettably several pedestrians have been killed in southern Ontario in recent years in this type of scenario.
What needs to be changed is the way we hide the causes of collisions such that pedestrians do not become aware of a safety problem and it recurs for no logical reason. Fatal collisions involving left-turning school buses are often reported in very general turns without educating any one about the specific dangers.
Will Court Accept That 129 km/h Collision Caused No Injury?
The criminal trial of Bahaa Ali has reached the end of its evidence and final submissions by the crown and defense have also been completed. The verdict of Justice Barbara MacFarlane will reportedly be handed down on February 3, 2026.
The bazaar reports about this collision were previously discussed in a Gorski Consulting website article of October 11, 2025.
For those not following the calamity, this collision involved the death of 68-year-old, Joan Clubb, who was a passenger in a Hyundai car when it was struck in its right side by the front end of an eastbound Mercedes that was travelling on Southdale Road at the intersection with White Oak Road in London, Ontario, on November 3, 2020. The alleged driver of the Mercedes, Bahaa Ali, was charged with dangerous driving causing death. For an unexplained reason the trial of this matter did not take place until almost five years had passed. Clubb was reportedly alert after the collision and communicated with paramedics but then, without explanation, died.
The wording used by CTV news media to describe the events is perplexing. News media reported that “hours later” police took a closer look into the crash. “Eventually” police charged Ali with dangerous driving.
Police took a closer look hours later? What does that mean? Did they not look closely at the collision in the typical time frame that police conduct an investigation? And what does the word “eventually” mean? Did it take a “more than typical” delay before those charges were laid? And where did news media get this information about these delays? Were explanations given at trial? None of this has reached the public.
The base of the discussions centre around Bahaa Ali claiming that he was not the driver of the Mercedes. He claimed that he received a telephone call from his brother Muhannad that he was involved in a collision and Bahaa rushed to the site before police arrived. He then tricked police by claiming he was the driver. And this is the type of “he said this and they said that” kind of evidence that permeates the proceedings. While the testimony of the two brothers may be difficult to believe, the manner in which the police investigation unfolded is also difficult to comprehend.
This may be the manner in which news media have decided to approach the reporting by relying exclusively on what witnesses said. Anyone with any serious knowledge of collision reconstruction would understand that reliance on witness information is the last place to go as it can be unreliable. At no point have the CTV news reports identified the key, objective, evidence and investigative procedures that should have unfolded in a proper police investigation. This may be because the news reporters did not understand the technical evidence, but this cannot be unraveled without further disclosure.
There seems to be a continual reliance on imprecise terms in descriptions of evidence. As an example, the only technical analysis discussed in the case is that a crown video expert used some unexplained procedure to determine that the Mercedes was travelling at 129 km/h “as the Mercedes approached the intersection”. But that comment is very imprecise. Where was the Mercedes, specifically, when the analyst determined its speed? Because it is the specific location that is obviously important. It is obviously important because the damage on the two vehicles does not support that the Mercedes was travelling anywhere near 129 km/h when the impact occurred.
Since the damage evidence does not support an impact speed of 129 km/h, what does the objective evidence reveal about the actual impact speed? As was indicated in the initial Gorski Consulting website article of October 11, 2025, there should have been procedures initiated to determine that impact speed. The most obvious procedure in modern times is to conduct a download of the event data contained in the Mercedes event data recorder. This is a standard procedure in police investigations. Was such a download conducted? Either no, or the news media failed to properly inform the public that such data was obtained. Secondly, if such event data was not downloaded, or could not be downloaded, then the next option should have been to proceed with standard analyses that have been conducted for decades before event data was available. Those procedures involve a calculation of the momentum and kinetic energy of the collision.
From the momentum side, measurements should have been gathered to determine the precise distance that each vehicle travelled, how much resistance to that travel was created by matters such as sliding wheels or scraping metal on the pavement, or projecting over a curb. The angle of departure from impact by each vehicle would also be a required determination. Information such as the weight (mass) of each vehicle would be needed. Once such data is collected the momentum analysis can be performed as simply as using only a pencil, a sheet of paper, an engineer’s scale and a protractor. Using such simple instruments a graphic display of the momentum analysis is created. This can also be done using trigonometry. However most professional collision reconstructionists would use some kind of computer program for this analysis.
From the kinetic energy side the crush of each vehicle would need to be measured and data about the stiffness of the structures would be required. Information about the overlap of the two damage zones would need to be determined. This crush analysis is possible to do through hand calculations but it is tedious and ripe for error. That is why the analysis is often done using a computer reconstruction program such as CRASH.
Combining the analysis of momentum and energy, we can be assured that, when the momentum methods are performed correctly, they will result in a calculated change-in-velocity that is identical to what is calculated in the energy analysis. That is one of the ways in which we confirm that all has been done properly.
So, did police obtain the event data? And if not, did they conduct the momentum and energy analyses mentioned above? If they did this work properly they could have realized that the Mercedes was not travelling anywhere near the speed of 129 km/h at impact and that should have been revealed at trial. However, what was the judge provided for her consideration? Was the judge actually told that the physical evidence does not support a speed of 129 km/h at impact?
The reported bazaar proceedings continue with respect to collision severity and injury. We previously indicated that the collision severity was not sufficient to cause the death of the female passenger in the Hyundai. But even more strangely, nothing seemed to be determined by the police about what injuries should have occurred to a driver of the Mercedes and whether those injuries, or non-injuries were consistent with the observations of Bahaa Ali. If the Mercedes was indeed travelling at 129 km/h at impact what would be the severity of the change-in-velocity and what injuries should the driver have sustained?
And here is the other point: injury is not related to travel speed, it is related to change in travel speed, or change-in-velocity. Travel speed may have nothing to do with injury, expect that it has the potential of creating a collision severity that causes injury. Because at a higher travel speed the vehicle and occupant possess more kinetic energy which is dissipated in a collision. But the same collision severity could take place at a travel speed of 50 km/h as it would at 100 km/h.
The bazaar happenings of the internet is that a lot of misinformation is spread like a wild fire. So many “experts” have been given the stage to claim that a heightened travel speed is dangerous and they go on to explain that, at a 50 km/h travel speed an occupant is expected to sustain a certain level of injury, and at a 60 km/h travel speed that occupant is expected to sustain an even higher severity of injury. All this is bogus, unscientific, misinformation. Travel speed has never been reliably related to injury. If this was true agencies such as NHTSA and Transport Canada would never have pursued attempts at detailing the change-in-velocity in a collision. Yet investigators at NHTSA and Transport Canada have performed such work for decades.
Occupant injury occurs when a vehicle sustains a change in its motion over a short time, not just because it is travelling at a constant, high speed.
In the late 1600s Sir Isaac Newton formulized his Three Laws of motion. The Third law expressed the concept that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. For the purposes of the present collision, when the Mercedes struck the Hyundai, the force exerted on the Hyundai was also equal and opposite to the force exerted on the Mercedes. If the force on the Hyundai was “tremendous” then the force on the Mercedes would also have to be “tremendous”. If there was sufficient force to cause the death of the Hyundai passenger should there also have been sufficient force to cause injury to the driver of the Mercedes? Barring the issue of lacking vehicle structure in a side impact of the Hyundai, what kind of injury should be expected to the driver of the Mercedes? No observable injury at all? NHTSA has provided objective answers to such questions from detailed studies as far back as 1979 in its NASS program. By the time NASS was finally replaced by the CISS program, well over 140,000 real-life collisions were documented and these cases could be accessed through the NHTSA website. Those cases contained details of change-in-velocity to involved vehicles and the resultant injuries sustained. Similar access is still possible in the CISS program. So if an analyst was not certain about how injuries were created or at what collision severity, one only needed to examine the NASS or CISS program cases. Was anyone in the current trial aware of this capability? Again, who knows?
The trial appears to have been focused on this debate about who was the driver. And this debate has been reported as a reliance on what witnesses have said and not on the objective evidence that would typically be obtained from a properly conducted investigation. There are well-known methods available for determining who was inside a vehicle when a collision occurred. For example, in the case of a driver, an examination of a deployed air bag can find DNA from the occupant. And patterns of injury would be created and these could be matched to contacts made with the vehicle interior. Clothing fibers can be gathered and compared to the clothing worn by an occupant. Restraint (seat-belt) systems can be examined for evidence of how the system was loaded and therefore what injuries could have occurred to that occupant. The most obvious fact is that when a shoulder belt is loaded it will create a narrow band of bruising on the left collarbone area of the driver, while that bruise will be on the right collarbone of a right-front occupant. It is such basic information that would be known to a collision reconstructionist who is familiar with the the physical evidence available in motor vehicle collisions. So the issue of who was the driver should not have been about what witnesses observed. It should have stemmed from evidence gathered by police in a proper investigation.
Nothing was said about whether the defendants retained an expert to counter the crown’s evidence, as little as the objective evidence was. And here lies another difficulty in our current criminal justice system. If you are rich and powerful you can hire lawyers, many lawyers if you wish. And you can also hire many experts to write and testify about all the good things you are. But if you a common labourer of the street you are out of luck. Lawyers cost thousands of dollars. Police documents cost thousands of dollars. And experts cost thousands of dollars. If you are a common bloke what is the likelihood that someone will uncover evidence to support you even when that evidence exists? As the saying goes: “slim or none, and slim just left town”.
Not unexpectedly the reporting of the lawyers’ closing arguments was full of, you guessed it, arguments. Not a single thread of useful evidence was contained in those reported arguments. The work of the crown’s video expert might have been correct but did anyone with any expertise actually review the work? Did anyone with any expertise report to the court about how speeds and general collision reconstruction matters are analyzed? Did anyone testify about injury and collision severity? What will the judge do when its comes to examining the question of high travel speed and injury? If Bahaa Ali exhibited no external indications of injury did police not scratch their heads and develop a thought cloud: “Hmm, 129 km/h and no injury, am I missing something here?” Will the judge similarly dismiss such as thought and move to other issues?
Indeed these are bazaar proceedings.
E-Scooters In London Ontario – Growing Pains Are Growing
If anyone looked it would not be difficult to detect that there are many more e-scooters being ridden in London, Ontario in the past couple of years. With their presence new safety problems emerge.
Recently local news media have reported that staff at the City of London believes it is “very important that as we gear up for the holiday season, that we advise these (scooters) are not suitable for children”. It was not made clear why it was so important to place an emphasis on parents and children. No data was revealed that children are the source of safety issues with respect to e-scooters.
Gorski Consulting has been monitoring the numbers of cyclists in London for a number of years and during that process riders of e-scooters have been observed but not necessarily documented. The rather small numbers of observations of e-scooters made by Gorski Consulting has not raised an alarm that many young children are riding e-scooters. Since it would be against the law for persons under the age of 16 to be riding an e-scooter, one needs to ponder if the City has a different definition of a child. By the time a “child” is 16, they are a teenager and they may have resources that could allow them to buy an e-scooter independent of their parent. So does it mean that there are substantial numbers of children below 16 years who are riding e-scooters? If so is that an enforcement problem?
It was reported that the City of London was preparing a flyer to be given out to school boards so the flyers could be sent to parents about the rules governing London’s e-scooter pilot project. As reported by CTV News those rules for riders are as follows:
- be at least 16 years old
- wear a helmet if they are 16 or 17 years old
- obey a speed limit of 24 km/h
- travel streets with a speed limit at or below 50 km/h, multi-use pathways, and bike lanes
- avoid sidewalks, hiking trails, Environmentally Significant Areas (ESAs)
Again, it is not clear why this flyer is focused on, and being delivered, to parents. It would seem that the City has data in their possession that a problem exists with respect to parents buying e-scooters for their children and that this is leading to important safety issues with e-scooters. But no data has been provided by the City.
The problem with this issue is much like the problem with cyclists. There is no publicly accessible data that can educate any member of the public about the numbers of injuries and how those injuries are occurring. The only information about cyclist collisions occurs when a cyclist is killed and an acknowledgement is made of the tragedy and then no further information is provided. How many cyclists are injured and how they sustained their injuries is a very dark, black hole in the London universe.
The Canadian Institute For Health Information (CIHI)
There is an agency that might have data about both cyclist and e-scooter injuries and that is the Canadian Institute For Health Information (CIHI). CIHI is reportedly funded by Health Canada as well as provincial governments, yet access to its information is restricted to select institutions. If a member of the public wanted to review the CIHI data a profile would need to be created and then access would be denied as noted in the CIHI text below:
“Creating a CIHI profile as an individual means that you are not affiliated with an organization and will not be authorized to access CIHI’s restricted products and services.”
The public’s ability to gain access to important information about cyclist and e-scooter injuries is haphazard at best and it depends on whether the CIHI is willing to publicly share it. Overall, CIHI appears to be using health information in their possession as a commodity that is restricted to paying users. Little effort is expended in truly informing the general public about issues essential to their protection from transportation hazards.
The CIHI has created new codes to be used to document incidents involving e-scooters. “U50.0” and “U51.0” are codes to be used to identify e-scooters although why two codes were necessary has not been explained. Views of the units referring to these codes have been copyrighted so these cannot be shown here.
Codes identifying e-bikes are “U50.3” and “U51.3”. Again no explanation is available why two codes have been necessary to reference the same type of unit. And again, because a view of this e-bike is copyright, it cannot be shown here.
CIHI Podcast on E-Scooters
However a recent podcast hosted by CIHI has provided some important information. On July 22, 2025 a podcast entitled “Deadly Impact: The Rise of E-scooter Injuries” was presented. It included an interview with a father, Chet Walker, whose 25-year-old son was killed in an e-scooter collision in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 2023. The podcast also involved two physicians, Dr. Brian Rowe from Edmonton and Dr. Daniel Rosenfield, from Toronto.
At the top of the broadcast the following was announced:
“Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information is showing a 22% increase in hospitalizations from e-scooter injuries across Canada.”
Some further reported findings are as follows.
Dr. Rowe indicated that about 17% of his cases involved a head injury.
Dr. Rosenfield indicated that 80% of the e-scooter riders were not wearing a helmet.
Dr. Rosenfield indicated that in his pediatric unit at Sickkids Hospital they saw 1 e-scooter injury in 2020, then 46 in 2024, and finally in the month of May, 2025 there was 16.
Dr, Rowe provided an example of case that he handled at his hospital in Edmonton:
“I was working a late evening, and a patient came in by ambulance from a crash scene. And he was accompanied by his colleague, friend, who was e-scootering with him. And they were riding along, and he hit a pothole. And I don’t know if you’ve ever driven in Edmonton, but we are the world’s capital of potholes. And he got launched off his e-scooter, riding at about 15 to 20 kilometres an hour down a slight incline. And he landed on the cement. And so he had a head and neck injury.“
Dr. Rowe also talked about rider inexperience:
“We don’t know the role of inexperience. Daniel, I don’t know if SickKids does interviews on the people that get injured, but we don’t get that opportunity. So we don’t know if it’s expert riders or inexperienced. But my own anecdotal evidence is that people just don’t have experience with that kind of power.
And the private e-scooters, the ones that are personally owned, they go much faster than the rentals. The rentals have a gauge on them; they can’t go over a certain kilometre-per-hour speed. But the private ones pass you on the road in your car. So these are like motorcycles, quite frankly.”
Dr. Rosenfield also expressed his experience about privately owned e-scooters:
“…the Ontario legislation across the province says they all have to be maxed at 24 kilometres an hour. And we absolutely know that’s objectively not the case. If you just go on Google and, like, buy e-scooter, they’ll proudly advertise that they go to 40 to 50 kilometres an hour with nothing kind of standing in that way.
Some of the companies who are more responsible put a speed limiter, but those can be easily jailbroken by going on ChatGPT and asking, how do I jailbreak an e-scooter speed limiter.“
Dr. Rosenfield also provided some information about child injuries involving e-scooter, that there are two peaks of injury with respect to age:
“We’ve seen a bimodal, so 2 spikes of injuries. There’s a spike at the main one at age 10 to 12, and then there’s also one in the 4 to 6 range. And those aren’t kids who are scooting themselves, those are passengers.”
Dr. Rosenfield also commented about passengers riding on e-scooters:
“And I can’t harp enough on passengers and e-scooters are a bad combination in both kids and adults, and Brian can speak to adults. But when you see the little kid riding with their parent, what I will tell you that these scooters are not designed for passengers. It totally throws off their weighting, and it makes it a much, much, much higher risk to crash, irrespective of engaging with traffic and other things like that.”
Dr. Rowe provided his comments on e-scooter passengers:
“We did observations last summer and this summer, and about 5% of all of the devices that we saw had passengers. And it’s children and it’s women. So sometimes, an adult woman holds on to their partner from behind but, most of the time, they’re functioning as an airbag. Right? They’re in front of the partner.”
The fact that helmets could help in a number of injury incidents with e-scooters was confirmed by Dr. Rowe:
“I think there’s robust evidence to indicate that helmets prevent serious face and head injuries. I mean, that’s — if you get run over by a truck, the helmet’s probably not going to help you. But if you’ve — it’s infrequent.
What more commonly happens is you get launched off these things and you, as you’re landing, even if you don’t hit your head directly, the momentum is going to cause your head to be injured.
So those kinds of injuries, if you have a helmet, that’s going to prevent a lot of injuries to the brain. And we’ve seen this time and time again with bicycles. The helmet is cracked in half. It’s actually split in half, and the person walks out.
Another person who slips on some gravel doing tricks, not even going fast, hits their head, no helmet, they’re admitted to hospital, they need a blood clot evacuated from their head. A helmet would have completely eliminated that risk.
So helmets work. There’s no question of that.“
Dr. Rosenfield then talked more generally about a lack of reliable data regarding e-scooters:
“So we were used to being a complete vacuum of data where you just, you would know what happened when you talked to them, but that didn’t get documented in the chart. It didn’t get coded. It didn’t get all the way up to CIHI.
Now people are writing it in the electronic medical record. The electronic medical record is reviewed by either a computer or a person or both, and we’re able to actually pull out that data. So we are able to get a little bit of a better picture.
The vast majority of our collisions are falls from the scooter themselves, so about three-quarters. But almost a quarter, actually, collisions are with a vehicle, and about 8 to 10% were kids struck by scooters, by people on scooters. And we actually have that level of granularity because our surveillance system actually gets a little bit of what we call a narrative around what happened. So people are now documenting in their notes e-scooters much more diligently than they used to.
I certainly support the addition of e-scooters to all existing injury prevention databases, surveillance networks, et cetera, and should be explicitly looked at, especially given what we’re seeing. I think this is a very hot-topic issue right now, and I think it will be for the foreseeable future. I’ll be curious what the next 5 years look like, given this was not on the radar 5 years ago.“
Gorski Consulting Data & Viewpoint
Gorski Consulting has been involved in documenting the characteristics of cyclists riding adjacent to roadways in London Ontario. Studies have also been carried out at specific locations for various traffic studies and along pathways such as the Thames Valley Parkway. As a result many observations have been made of e-bikes. Although some e-scooters have been observed, and some have been photographed, no official study of them has been engaged. A greater focus on documenting e-scooters has begun starting in the fall of 2025.
As examples the following images show riders of e-scooters documented in the fall of 2025 along the roadways of London Ontario.
In this very small sample of 21 images we observed that 7 riders were wearing helmets while one rider was wearing a hoodie and the view from the back could not distinguish if a helmet was worn. Regardless, at least 33% of the riders were wearing helmets. This is a lower rate compared to the much larger sample of cyclist observations, but again, this is a very small sample. Three of the riders were observed to be wearing full-face helmets.
We also note that 7 of the riders were observed either riding, or stopped, on a sidewalk. Again, this is a smaller percentage compared to cyclists, but then this is a very small sample.
In many of the views riders were not observed to be wearing high-visibility clothing nor any lighting. This is an important safety observation. On occasions both cyclists and riders of e-scooters have been observed in night-time conditions with essentially no lighting and wearing black clothing. Photos of such persons are difficult to create for obvious reasons. At the same time there is a sizeable percentage of these riders who scoff at the suggestion that they should be forced to be visible. Instead some riders argue that maybe motor vehicles should be painted with “high viz” colours insisting that motor vehicle drivers are at fault for rider injuries. There is no broad brush that can encapsulate every person and every scenario. However it is our belief that many riders are unaware of the safe issues and implications because official agencies keep information about rider injuries and collisions an illogical secret.
Road Safety In Localized Winter Weather
Not uncommon, London, Ontario has seen a couple of intense weather systems in November, 2025 called “snow squalls” which provide an example of a localized road safety problem that may not be recognized by persons living outside the area.
It is frequently encountered that various “experts” give their advice about how to avoid collisions. When it comes to snowfall and winter road conditions advisements such as “If you see snow, go slow” are popular and they seem to make common sense. And when drivers are involved in collisions many persons express their opinions that those drivers are obviously stupid, or similar expressions. And when large numbers of collisions occur in wintery weather it seems logical that drivers become “stupider” under those conditions, and then smarter again when winter weather conditions are gone. That unscientific logic is popular, but not logical.
While there are many collisions, and many complex causes of those collisions, many do not want to accept that winter weather creates scenarios that are sometimes difficult to predict. Even in a short amount of driving experience a person can recognize that a smooth and dry road surface can provide a good level of safety because a driver can slow down or stop quickly without losing control of their vehicle. And it is also appreciated that snowy or icy road surfaces provide the direct opposite. And it seems like a simple matter of just identifying if you are riding on a smooth and dry surface or snowy, icy surface. And if drivers are unable to recognize the difference then they are “stupid”.
Through our many years of collision reconstruction we are aware that these simple conclusions are far from accurate. In-between those extremes of dry and icy surfaces there is a continuum where road surface condition changes become difficult to detect. As an example, the photo below was taken this morning, November 17th, on a roadway in London where traffic had beaten down the snowfall and created a hard-packed surface. Looking at that surface we might observe that it is shiny. But is the surface like a sheet of ice, or is it just wet, hardpacked snow?
An icy road surface could have a coefficient of friction of about .05, whereas the hardpacked wet surface could have a value of about .4. If you were travelling on an icy surface at 35 km/h it would take you about 100 metres (about 20 car lengths) to come to a stop. Yet on the hardpacked wet surface you might stop in about 13 metres (just over 2 car lengths). What if you were travelling at 35 km/h, approaching a busy intersection, and you applied heavy braking, but you slid into the intersection and were struck in your driver’s side by the front of a large transport truck? Looking down from Cloud #9 you would be able to hear all those experts claiming that you were stupid for travelling so fast on this obviously icy surface. And maybe some of those experts might experience the same predicament but it would be too late to change their mind because they would be sitting beside you on Cloud #9.
There are many instances where long-distance drivers passing through an area experience a change in weather conditions such as a snow squall. While driving for many hours they might experience dry road conditions turning into a wet surface and then progressing into a semi-snow, slush, and then progressing toward the wetness turning into ice. Looking down at the road surface a driver cannot readily appreciate whether the shiny surface is indicative of wetness or icy-ness. And the difference in tire force can be huge.
Similar results occur when snowfall exists on roadsides and a strong wind blows snow onto the road in a narrow band creating a snowdrift. A driver approaching such an accumulation of snow is often unaware of what kind of conditions exist. While snow may be visible on the road from a long distance it cannot be known if the snow is just an inch deep or several inches deep. And again this matters. An inch of snow may be inconsequential. Six inches of snow may cause a loss-of-control and a precarious consequence.
The point of this elongated discussion is that cute rhymes about seeing snow and going slow are of little help in informing drivers of what they should know. Drivers should be informed that they will have difficulty in judging the characteristics of road surfaces and misjudgment could mean death. So explanations and examples can help.
Sudden snow squalls can create a winter wonderland that is pretty to see but causes unique road safety problems.
Transient safety problems that can be created during snow squalls when intense snowfall adheres to everything, including important signage. In the example shown below, from the morning of November 17th, snow has attached itself to a cycling lane sign, a stop sign, and a pedestrian crossing sign. Not a matter to be considered lightly. However if a collision occurred would an investigator capture this happening, or could the snow fall off the signage before it is detected?
In other instances snow plowing is often a point of contention with drivers. When roads are not plowed drivers want to know why. However the nature of snow squalls is that they change direction often just by a few kilometres. And if one drove a few kilometres to the east or west of London on November 17th one would suddenly come across bare pavement. So it is sometimes difficult for the Transportation Department in the City of London to know how much snow has fallen and where.
When roads are not plowed additional problems occur that may not be obvious. While a large percentage of vehicles have the same track width they travel within the wheel tracks of similar vehicles. But when a larger vehicle is present, such as a truck or bus, the wider track width means that the wheels no longer fit in the typical wheel tracks of beaten snow. This means that the wheels of these larger vehicles end up plowing through the deep snow that has not been pressed down by previous traffic. This causes the snow to be thrown up and to the sides, and in to the lanes of opposing traffic. Drivers in those opposing lanes can suddenly become blinded by a wave of snow thrown into their windshield.
And as a final example, sudden snow squalls not only disrupt the plans of motor vehicle drivers but also those who heroically attempt to use active transportation to combat climate change. Under normal circumstances the efficiency of cycling can be greatly admired as much cargo can be carried in a cargo bike or hauled with a mini-trailer attached to its rear. Sudden snow squalls create conditions that make this efficiency difficult to attain.
In the following photos an example of a cyclist is shown hauling a mini-trailer on Hale Street in east London. The rider has been travelling southbound on a fairly level surface but then approaches the upgrade toward the elevated roundabout at Trafalgar. He stops, dismounts and then begins to walk his bike into the roadside snow.
We then observe that the cargo the cyclist was hauling in the mini-trailer stands up, and its a boy. The progress up the slope becomes easier when the cargo itself can carry itself. But many times the cargo is just stagnant cargo and more difficult to deal with.
The dilemma here is that the cyclist could be tempted to push his bike back onto the bare road surface where travelling up the slope would be easier. But he and his passenger are also not wearing helmets. They are not wearing any bright or reflective clothing and neither the bike nor the trailer is equipped with a light.
This is how cyclists can become involved in a collision. And regrettably, without thinking about their additional safety measures they become partially at fault for their consequence.
Examples like the ones shown in this article are common events that weather creates whenever a sudden snow storm brews. They are special in the vicinity of London and southwestern Ontario when a narrow band of snow, a snow squall, develops and concentrates a large amount of snow in a narrow area of only a few kilometres in width. Shifting winds mean that the squalls also shift location such that it is difficult to predict a squall’s location or where it will move, making road safety a particularly difficult matter.
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