New Head-Up-Display On Windshields Is Not A Distraction?
What do we define as distraction? Is it additional information that is processed thus slowing a drivers perception/response to the outside environment? If so then more detailed information being displayed on windshields of new vehicles could be viewed as distractions.
New technology like advanced HUD sounds great but does it also bring with it new problems?
In a March, 2019 article by Dan Carney of the Automotive Engineering magazine discussing head-up-displays (HUD) the market for greater information being displayed on vehicle windshields revealed that more information of greater brightness is expected in the future.The article quoted other research sources that indicated the worldwide HUD market in 2017 was 2.9 billion and would rise to 18 billion by 2027. Improvements in the image quality and size being projected on windshields mean than more information will be able to be moved from the instrument cluster and onto the windshield. As noted in the article:
“Larger and brighter full-colour displays provide the opportunity to move more driver information off the instrument panel and onto the windscreen, where it can be seen more effortlessly by the driver. In addition to the typical digital speed reading, the HUD can convey data about the current speed limit, adaptive cruise control system’s status, indicate turn signal use, and flash collision-avoidance warnings. In manual-transmission-equipped sports cars, HUDs provide upshift lights light those in Formula 1 race cars.”
There can be a conflict between useful information and too much information, even when the information being displayed appears to be relevant to the driving task. When a driver needs to detect information about the exterior environment he/she does not need to know that the turn signal has been activated or other non-emergency information. While some information is nice to have, too much information can also distract the driver from detecting the most important information for the current scenario at hand. This can be no different than texting on a smartphone as some portion of the driver’s information processing is taken away from detecting the most relevant information.
City Using Deep Public Pockets In An Unreasonable Court Challenge
When you have unlimited tax dollars to pay the costs you can challenge court rulings all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). That is the knowledge that can be gained from the recently released judgment of the SCC involving the liability of the City of Hamilton with respect to a 2007 collision at the intersection of Upper Centennial Parkway and Green Mountain Road.
“Gentlemen, it is obvious that I have struck out, however, I am The Mighty Casey, and Article 56 of the Municipal rules governing baseball etiquette indicates that I get another try because I am so nice”
The subject collision involved a female driver, Dawn Safranyos, who attempted to make a left turn from westbound Green Mountain Road, onto southbound Upper Centennial Parkway. A northbound Chevrolet Cavalier driven by Daryl McHugh struck the Safranyhos vehicle in the intersection thus causing serious injuries to several child occupants. This collision occurred at approximately 0100 hours and therefore the darkness would have been a factor in Ms. Safranyos’ evaluation of where she should stop at the stop-sign-controlled intersection governing her direction of travel. A traffic stop bar (a wide, white painted line) is generally painted at such a location to guide drivers to the correct stop position where she could properly see approaching traffic on Upper Centennial Parkway. Because the City of Hamilton removed the stop bar Ms. Safraynos testified that she stopped at the stop sign, further back from where she would if the line had been present. This, along with the presence of a guardrail which partially obstructed her line of sight, were the key features of the site that led the trial judge to determine that the City of Hamilton was 25% at fault. Ms. Safranyhos was judged 50% at fault and Mr. McHugh was 25% at fault for the collision.
The Appeal Court enlightened the ongoings of the original trial which were not published. For example the trial judge observed that the City of Hamilton failed to deliver three key witnesses who were City officials that would have explained the intersection design and the City’s policies with respect to matters such as painting stop bars. The judge inferred that this was because, had those municipal officials testified at trial they would have prejudiced the City’s stance. If this tactic by the City appears unusual it is not. It is something that I have personally experienced while testifying at trial. In some instances a judge recognizes the tactic for what it is while in other very similar instances it is never addressed.
By common sense the City of Hamilton should have recognized that it shared some liability for the collison. The 25% determined by the trial judge should have been accepted and the matter should have been done with. But that was not the case. The City first appealed the matter to the Ontario Court of Appeal. The Appeal court judgment was written by Justice Paciocco. In the Appeal judgment the liability of the City of Hamilton was upheld whereas the liability of Mr. McHugh was dismissed. If I read the result correctly, If McHugh’s 25% was removed from the equation then the remaining liability was shared by the two remaining parties, Safranyhos and the City of Hamilton. So it would seem that the Appeal process would result in the City of Hamilton being responsible for more of the damages after the appeal than beforehand. Not satisfied the City of Hamilton then Appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, where it lost that appeal without explanation.
While I am not a legal expert I recognize the substantial costs that would be incurred by the City of Hamilton in the two Appeals that it lost. These costs are not borne by the City’s representatives, whether they be the staff or politicians. They are borne by the general taxpayers of Hamilton. What notice is made to the general taxpayers of the conclusions of these legal proceedings is likely to be very minimal. Although the Hamilton Spectator newspaper published an article about the matter it also published another article explaining that the latest tax hike would be 2.5%. No doubt the average taxpayer would pay attention to the second article because it is a direct reference to his/her pocketbook. But the taxpayer would be clueless to the implications of that first article.
The point is, certain deficiencies in roadways do not need to exist. They can be simply identified by conducting regular inspections of roads. Does the City of Hamilton conduct such regular inspections of their roadways? And if they do why were these problems, that became so costly to the City, not identified and corrected? In my experience the City of Hamilton is not an exceptional case. The very problem of identifying and correcting road safety hazards before they become deadly exists throughout Ontario and beyond.
Failure To Reveal Evidence Is The Secondary Humboldt Broncos Tragedy
Strong opinions have been expressed about fault and what requires changing as a result of the Humboldt Broncos tragedy. Yet there is an unexplainable unwillingness to recognize crucial evidence affecting the validity of those conclusions is still missing. Above all, the RCMP report of their investigation has never been made public. Yet it is only the RCMP who had exclusive access to the evidence that no one else could document or examine. If we truly want to make changes that are based on the objective evidence we need to examine the evidence ahead of time.
As an accident investigator, reconstructionist and road safety researcher for the past 38 years I can see there are many concerns about this tragedy. Having examined numerous expert reports and police investigations I am aware of how conclusions can become vastly astray of what they should be, even when they are drawn by seemingly reputable, educated and experienced individuals. My advice is that all involved, whether they be family, politicians, news media reporters or the general public, request that the report of the RCMP investigation be made public so that independent investigators, reconstructionists and researchers can examine the data and provide independent comments for all to evaluate. Not doing so makes the tragedy that much more tragic as lessons that could be gained from it will never be learned.
Police Nab One Tail-Gater But 87 Others Missed
A London Free Press website article discussed the OPP use of an aircraft to catch tailgating vehicles. A photo was displayed showing a tractor-trailer that was travelling along Highway 401 east of London, Ontario on the afternoon of Sunday, March 24, 2019. The truck was allegedly travelling at less that 10 metres (i.e. about 2 car lengths) behind another truck in the middle lane of the highway. It was noted that the offending trucker was charged with stunt driving. Such a charge caused a seven-day license suspension for the driver and an impoundment of the tractor-trailer. While the action of the tailgating truck driver was dangerous there is more to this issue.
What has not been discussed is how often this action of tailgating occurs on Highway 401. In the vicinity of where the charge was laid Highway 401 has a traffic volume (AADT) of over 70,000 vehicles per day and the numbers of vehicles performing these tailgating actions is so large there would not be enough OPP officers in the whole Province of Ontario to ticket them all. This comment is not made without supporting research.
Recently Gorski Consulting has been conducting traffic observations along Highway 401, including the incidence of tailgating. In a recent news item uploaded to the Gorski Consulting website (“Highway 401 Safety Issues – Gaps Between Vehicles”, December 16, 2018) data was presented from videotaping at four sites between London and Tilbury, Ontario. Part of the research involved documenting the time gap between the rear of a lead vehicle and the front end of a following vehicle as they passed a specific reference point on the Highway. Fifteen minutes of videotape was taken from each of the four sites and numbers of vehicles travelling at gaps of less than 2 seconds we counted. Out of 532 vehicles, 98 such vehicles, or about 18.4 %, were found to be travelling below the noted 2-second gap. If there were 70,000 vehicles passing the 400 metre distance were the observations were made then about 12,880 drivers would be driving at less than the 2-second gap each day. At a speed of 100 km/h a 2-second gap would be about 55 metres or over 10 car lengths. So it is substantially longer that the 2-car-length gap reported in the London Free Press article.
In order to come closer to the gap discussed in the article, the Gorski Consulting data was re-examined to select only those incidents where the gap was less than one second. Only 16 vehicles were found to be tailgating in this fashion, or about 3.0% of the observed vehicles. Never-the-less, this would mean, given a traffic volume of 70,000, that about 2100 such tailgaters would exist in that 400 metre distance, every day. This could be narrowed to at least 88 vehicles every hour. This represents a great many drivers who tailgate but are not nabbed by the OPP.
This reality is not convenient because in order to reduce these numbers police would have to employ vast numbers of cruisers stopped along the highway to catch a reasonable number of offenders. Yet it is known that conducting traffic stops along the busy Highway 401 is dangerous to police, and also to other road users if a chaotic event is created. Aerial patrols can only catch a limited number of offenders and there is still the issue that these offenders must be pulled over.
In this example from videotaping of westbound traffic on Highway 401 near Elgin Road, a transport truck is tailgating another truck in the right lane while a third truck is in the process of entering the lane from an on-ramp. The tailgating driver cannot see the truck entering the right until the truck in front changes lanes, as shown in the photo below.
Fortunately, this instance the tailgating truck was able to see the truck entering the right lane in time and a collision was avoided. However these are the kinds of complications that occur when visibility ahead in reduced by tailgating.
A solution is not easy or simple. However in order to consider some solutions, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, police and the public first need to recognize and acknowledge the extent of the problem. Publicizing that a single driver was nabbed and faces dire repercussions will not solve the problem when so many other offenders escape those repercussions. When many drivers travelling along Highway 401 are from out of the Province and many are from U.S. states, it is of minimal benefit to publish an article in a local news outlet about the fate of one driver as those out-of-town drivers will likely not even hear/read of the charges.
Yet the consequences of tailgating are major. Tailgating reduces the line of sight of drivers who cannot react to events that they cannot see. This may be one of the reasons why so many multi-vehicle, rear-end collisions occur, often with fatal results. Our society needs to spend more time discussing this difficult problem with a provision of cold hard facts.
Cycling in London Ontario: An Island In A Large Sea
Cycling is becoming ever more popular in Southern Ontario. In the City of London Ontario a multi-use trail system provides safe cycling from three connected prones of trail extending from downtown. One segment, approaching 10 kilometers in length, takes cyclists from downtown, westward along the Thames River to the City’s outer edge at Byron. Another arm travels from downtown eastward, another 10 kilometres, along the south branch of the Thames River to the Pottersburg area and then northward through Kiwanis Park. A third arm leaves downtown and takes the north branch of the Thames River to just past Highbury Avenue, a distance approaching 8 kilometres. The sum of the three arms of the trail system form a sideways “Y” where the junction is the downtown and lower leg of the “Y” in the westward route.
The “sideways Y” of the London Ontario bicycling trail system that generally follows the flow of the Thames River.
Cyclists wanting to ride the complete system of trails in one day have some difficulties. Supposing a starting position in either south-east, north-east, or west London, the inevitable problem occurs as a route must be found in east London that can connect between the end of the trail in Kiwanis Park at Dundas Street and the end of the trail at Highbury Avenue near the bridge over the north branch of the Thames River (i.e. between Pottersburg and Kilally in above map). By travelling through various subdivisions this meandering feat can be completed by those intimately familiar with the local roads. Those wishing some adventure, and the risk of death, may chose to take the straight-line distance of Highbury Ave. This route contains no provisions for cyclists yet offers a sufficiently narrow curb lane to allow various heavy trucks a good opportunity to crush any daring cyclist.
This northward view of Highbury is at the Florence Street intersection. Choosing to cycle along Highbury Ave to connect between the two ends of the multi-use cycling paths in east London means that riders must face narrow lanes, heavy trucks and poor road surface conditions.
Incidentally, just to the north of the Highbury Ave death zone is a newly constructed Fanshawe Park Road which contains wide lanes and a designated cycling lane, but then it connects with virtually nothing and certainly not with the well used multi-use trail system.
View looking east along Fanshawe Park Road approaching Highbury Ave. Although this roadway contains a wide cycling lane it is rarely used because it is not connected to anything.
This view of Fanshawe Park Road in winter conditions shows how the width of the cycling lane is narrowed by snow which is plowed onto it.
Much money in London is being spent piece-meal, creating short lengths of bike lanes along urban streets which do not connect to each other. Cyclists riding these short lengths of bike lanes eventually come to the end of the lane and then they are thrown into a roadway, that is narrow with a high traffic volume, in order to complete the intended journey. The result is that many cyclists give up and do not use these lanes.
In this southward view from July, 2018, on Highbury Ave near the bridge over the north branch of the Thames River, the bike lane simply ends in the background causing cyclists to ride on the busy curb lane where heavy truck traffic is common.
London’s city administration has also not dealt well with the issue of rail trails, unlike other more cycle-friendly cities. A large spiderweb of cycling rail trails has been growing in Southern Ontario that is based on the system of abandoned railway lines. The focal point of this spiderweb would likely be the City of Branford. From Brantford a cyclist need not travel along any roads with motorized traffic. Riding the rail trails cyclists in Downtown Brantford can travel to Cambridge, a one-way distance of about 19 kilometres. They can also take a southerly trail that takes them through Waterford and then Simcoe and finally to the shore of Lake Erie at Port Dover. Meanwhile the same rail trail connects from Simcoe to Delhi. Leaving downtown Brantford in another direction can take cyclists through Jerseyville and into Hamilton Ontario. Thus Brantford is very much the nucleus of southern Ontario’s rail trail system.
Other well established rail trails exist in areas like Elora where cyclists can ride all the way into Mississauga. Here one can also connect with a Caledon trail that runs south from The Forks of the Credit.
This view is an example of a rail trail located near Elora, Ontario, taken in July, 2018.
Another 200- kilometre trail forms a loop in the Niagara region encompassing cities like St Catharines, Thorold, Welland, Port Colborne, Fort Erie, Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Rail trails also exist the the Windsor-Essex area. A trail runs from Leamington into Windsor ( about 42 kilometres one way) and this is intersected with a trail that runs from Essex to Amherstburg (about 27 kilometres one way).
Riding on a rail trail can be a social event. In this example a rider stops to fire up a portable propane cooking stove on the Chrysler trail between Leamington and Windsor.
Meals are easily made on the side of a rail trail and then the riders go on their way.
Further to the north a trail runs from Goderich toward Millbank, Elmira and ends up in Guelph. A one-way distance of about 118 kilometres.
Thus numerous rail trails exist that connect many communities and cities around London, Ontario. Yet London remains as the lonely island with no rail trails that connect it with anything else. An abandoned rail line existed on the west side of the City that travelled to Grand Bend. But the land along that trail has been sold off, no longer leaving an opportunity to form that connection. Even the small community of Grand Bend has a modest length of trail that leads southward into Pinery Provincial Park. A possible rail trail connection could be established between London and St Thomas and possibly leading into Port Stanley but that has never been pursued.
The bottom line is that, although London has a reasonably good trail system within the City that follows the Thames River, it remains a barren island when it comes to connections with other cities and communities in Southern Ontario. Anyone in London wishing to pursue a longer cycling ride must take the risk of riding on roadways leading out of the City that are not designed to accommodate both cyclists and motorized traffic.
Gorski Consulting has conducted numerous collision assignments in the past involving cyclists and the dangers of travelling on such unsupported roadways is well known. A principal problem is that the lower volume roads that cyclists would normally choose are also those with the lowest standard of design. Lanes are narrower. Sight lines of shorter. The road surface is often a tar and chip which is more prone to heaving and changes in friction. Because these roads are less travelled drivers do not expect as many vehicles to exist and they particularly do not expect the presence of cyclists who are even less common.
A northbound cyclist riding on Wonderland Road near Medway Road north of the City of London, Ontario on August 2, 2016. This ride could have been accomplished in safety on a rail trail if an abandoned rail line to Grand Bend had not been sold off.
Knowing the meandering paths of cyclists, it is not uncommon to see cycles moving left and right in a lateral range of half a metre. These motions may occur to avoid various road edge irregularities or simply due to a lack of attention while maintaining their balance. Combining this with similar lateral movements of motorized vehicles it is inevitable that conflicts would occur between the right edges of a motor vehicle and the left side of a cycle and cyclist. When contact occurs it is often that the left edge of a handlebar is the first portion of the cycle that is struck. This causes a very violent, clockwise rotation of the handlebars. Because the cyclist is holding the handlebar this leads to a similar, violent rotation of the upper body of the cyclist and this pulls the cyclist’s head toward the side of the striking motor vehicle. This is why it is so critical that a cyclist wear a proper cycling helmet. While it is true that even the best cycling helmet cannot prevent a cyclist’s death when a head impact is made to one of the motor vehicle’s roof pillars, the benefit, never-the-less, is large and the percentage of cyclists surviving such head impacts is vastly improved versus no helmet. Even so such an impact, although survived, results in major head injuries that are often life-changing. Thus much like the collisions of motorcyclists, the riders of bicycles almost always sustain major injuries when struck by motor vehicles. Therefore the best option is to simply avoid cycling on roadways where there are motor vehicles and riding on rail trails is ideal.
There could be a great benefit to society if we could reduce the number of severe cyclist injuries, and their associated large health costs, by taking cyclists away from highway-speed traffic and putting them on rail trails. For riders in the vicinity of the City of London that prospect is unlikely in the near future.
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