Lack of Proper Sight Lines At Humboldt Broncos Site Being Ignored
There is no question that Jaskirat Singh’s mistake of driving his truck through a stop sign was a major causal factor in the deaths of the multiple occupants of the Humboldt Broncos bus on a Saskatchewan intersection on 6 April of 2018. That point has been the focus of almost all discussion about the tragedy. What is remarkable is how an equally important causal factor has been ignored.
The intersection sight lines were clearly inadequate. A simple reference to any roadway design manual would illuminate that point. It is also undeniable that, if the sight lines had been as recommended then a collision would likely have been avoided, even though Singh’s truck travelled through the stop sign. These facts are clear.
The Saskatchewan Ministry of Transportation employs educated specialists in transportation safety like any other government agencies. Undoubtedly they would have been aware of the standards regarding intersection sight lines. They most certainly would have been aware that the sight lines at the Humboldt Broncos intersection were improper. Yet they did nothing to correct that defect.
So here lies the paradox: There has been a year’s worth of demonizing Mr. Singh for the mistake he made. Yet the conscious decision made by unknown persons with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Transportation not to correct the safety hazard at the Humboldt Broncos intersection has been meet with silence. So why is it that one individual whose actions caused multiple fatalities receives an eight year prison sentence, yet another individual whose actions also caused multiple fatalities is not even identified? Is it because those unidentified persons in the Saskatchewan Ministry of Transportation are employed by a powerful agency that is part of the Saskatchewan government? There is no other explanation that can explain these unjust circumstances.
Automatic Emergency Braking Voluntarily Installed By Manufacturers
Federal Safety Agencies claim that is it is faster to get Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) installed voluntarily than by being forced by legislation.
Could this fatal rear-end impact of two trucks on Highway 401 near Chatham earlier this month have been avoided if trucks were equipped with Automatic Emergency Braking?
According to a 2015 voluntary agreement among twenty manufacturers, ten of those manufacturers installed AEB technology in more than half of the vehicles that were manufactured between September, 2017 and end of August, 2018. Tesla has reported that all of its vehicles are equipped with the technology. Yet some manufacturers have fallen far behind. Ford, Mitsubishi and Porsche equip less than 10% of their vehicles with AEB and General Motors is only at 24%.
There is still no word about equipping large trucks with AEB. Such an installation would be expected to see the largest benefit. Given the difficulties that large trucks have in braking compared to light vehicles, and given the number of instances on major expressways where heavy trucks end up crashing into stopped vehicles, it would be expected that AEB could be very effective in reducing major, fatality producing collisions.
Although the technology is in its early stages it could be that AEB might make a very large improvement in road safety. What remains are questions about its ability to reliably detect instances where automatic braking is required. We may not see those instances of technology failure until enough vehicles are so equipped and instances of its use are better known. There are well known previous instances where tweaking of a safety feature was required after it had enveloped a large percentage of the vehicle population. The most notable is the required depowering of airbags in the late 1990s where many fatalities occurred before changes could be made. Hopefully such a problem will not recur with AEB.
Vehicle In Ditch Causes Massive Police Reaction
There must be some further reason why a massive police presence was required when a vehicle was found stopped in a Highway 3 ditch near Windsor yesterday.
The Windsor Star newspaper reported that two occupants fled after their vehicle “rollover” in a ditch of Highway 3 near Walker Road near Windsor, Ontario. The newspaper showed that a massive presence of police, including search dogs and an emergency response team, was engaged in locating the fleeing persons.
The problem is that photos of the vehicle did not show that it had rolled over. There was no damage to the typical areas of the vehicle that would signify such a rollover. If a rollover occurred it would have to be a very minor, low-speed incident. If such a massive response was needed for every situation where a single vehicle travelled into a ditch we would certainly run out of police to handle any other incident.
It would seem that the reason for the large police response was something beyond the simple traffic mishap. But that fact has not been disclosed.
Vehicle Fire Warning Continues
Gorski Consulting has posted a number of warnings about the apparent increase in the numbers of fires occurring in motor vehicle collisions, or sometimes when vehicles are not even being driven. The latest incident on King Street in Toronto had significant consequences as a driver sustained life-threatening, burn injuries.
This was a photo posted on Twitter by @mrriecker showing the vehicle that caught fire after striking a light standard on King Street in Toronto
The collision reportedly occurred at 0630 hours this morning, March 17, 2017 when the front end off a Nissan Altima struck a light standard. The driver became trapped in the vehicle as it caught fire. There were conflicting reports that police were able to pull the male driver out of the vehicle while other reports indicated that the male was already out of the vehicle by the time police arrived.
Vehicle fires have been occurring with unusual regularity lately and in most cases occupants have been able to escape burning vehicle without too much harm. The present incident demonstrates that this luck cannot continue. There must be more done to understand why and how these fires start when the circumstances often do not warrant such consequences. Both Canadian and U.S. safety standards require a certain degree of fire prevention after a vehicle has been involved in high severity impact. It is clear that the severity of collisions in which fires are occurring is lower than what the standards require.
Arizona Concludes Median Barrier Less Safe Than No Barrier
An Assistant Director of Transportation for Arizona, Steve Boschen, believes Interstate I-10 near Tuscon “…is actually much safer without barriers”. He states further:
“If there is an incident, the vehicle has a better chance at stopping once it hits the dirt median. We know that barriers are hazards. There are four times as many fatalities with a barrier than without them”.
As a result Arizona will not be installing barriers on the Interstate when they complete widening the highway between Tuscon and Casa Grande later this year. Decisions like these have implications toward the installation of the median barrier on Highway 401 between London and Chatham in the Canadian Province of Ontario.
Boschen’s conclusion comes despite comments from a local news reporter, Heather Smathers, of the Casa Grande Dispatch newspaper, who claims that “The exact numbers of cross-median crashes …is somewhat hard to quantify”. This belief is echoed by a traffic safety engineer with the Arizona Transportation Department, Kerry Wilcoxon, who explains that Arizona crash reports account for the first harmful event such as speed control and if that speed control occurred before the median cross-over then the incident is not recorded as a crash.
GoogleMaps images show that in the 95 kilometre distance between Tucson and Casa Grande Interstate 10 contains a cable barrier in the first 45 kilometres westward from Tucson. In this distance the median is only about 8 to 10 metres wide. Then the barrier stops abruptly. It is not clear whether this cable barrier is being removed during the widening of the highway.
Location of Arizona Interstate I-10 between Phoenix and Tuscon.
View looking west along Arizona Interstate I-10 where the cable barrier suddenly terminates at a location approximately halfway between Tuscon and Casa Grande.
The median width west of Tuscon is comparable to the 8-metre-wide median that used to exist in the 1980s along the stretch of Highway 401 between London and Woodstock before a concrete Jersey barrier was installed. In the 1980s there was considerable controversy with respect to the number median cross-over fatalities that were occurring and this resulted in an inquest in 1989 and the subsequent building of the median barrier.Much of Highway 401 between London and Tilbury, commonly referred to as “Carnage Alley” has a median width of approximately 12 metres. Yet the Ontario government is installing a high tension cable barrier along this 118 kilometre distance while also giving verbal assurance that a full, concrete barrier will be installed in the near future.
The news article written by Smathers referred to a 2017 research study by a graduate student from the University of Iowa who found that “…median cables reduced fatal crashes by 51.3 percent, however, the overall crash rate increased by 80.4 percent, driven ‘by an increase in property-damage-only crashes'”. However those conclusions may not consider that, reported property-damage-only increased because there was an impact to the barrier and therefore damage was caused that needed to be reported. However it is well-known that many property damage collisions do not become reported when they do not involve damage to public property. In fact a nine-year study by Gorski Consulting at a specific site in London, Ontario has shown that over 80% of collisions, which are predominantly single-vehicle, loss-of-control incidents, do not become reported to official agencies such as police. In many instances, if a vehicle is still driveable, the driver will simply drive away. Thus what may be happening with the Arizona data is that property damage collisions are not actually increasing in numbers, they are just being reported at a higher percentage because drivers cannot just driveway without leaving the tell-tale signs of a collision because damage has been caused to the cable barrier.
The negative opinions of administrative officials from the Arizona Department of Transportation regarding median barriers should raise some concern. It is not clear whether they understand how the data they rely upon was collected and how various conclusions from investigations along with the coding conventions for reporting collisions can lead to erroneous conclusions. In some areas of Interstate I-10, for example, the median about 84 feet, or over 25 metres. With such wide medians there is a lessened opportunity for cross-median fatalities for the obvious reason that the median is too wide. Furthermore, when concluding that there are four times as many fatalities with barriers as there are without, a bazaar comment in itself, there is no clarification that all roadside barriers are not the same. Such that an impact to the guardrail barrier or its terminal could be coded the same as an impact to a cable barrier or a concrete Jersey barrier. Certainly if the bazaar conclusion that barriers “cause” four times more fatalities were true why would roadway authorities worldwide be installing expensive barrier systems? It is these kinds of unusual comments that need to be exposed to the public that is not capable of discerning what information is fake and what is real.
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