Guilty Pleas To Avoid Public Awareness
The recent quiet guilty plea of an SNC Lavalin executive is an example of the newest way to keep the public in the dark.
The CBC’s Elizabeth Thompson reported that Normand Morin, former vice-president of Lavalin pled guilty to five charges of contravening Canada’s election financing rules in an elaborate scheme of payoffs to Canadian political entities. The irony is that by pleading guilty the details of the scheme and the identity of the other persons involved will be kept from the public’s knowledge. This is the latest trend of secrecy so many illegal dealings can take place without accountability. And this is not an isolated event.
In the field of road safety and collision analysis similar acts are occurring on a daily basis. Trials are avoided not because someone is actually guilty of all accusations but because there is an advantage to be gained. The accused gains a advantage of leniency for cooperating with the crown. But unnamed entities who are also guilty gain an advantage by remaining hidden from the public. Prosecutors use the excuse of an accused’s cooperation as a reason to remove more serious charges without the public’s awareness of possible inner dealings. The accused gains a benefit, the un-named guilty parties gain a benefit because they remain unidentified but accountability for illegal acts suffers.
In the up-coming sentencing of Jaskirat Singh Sidhu a similar action is threatening to unfold. Mr. Sidhu was the truck driver who allegedly drove through a stop sign colliding with the bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos hockey team on April 6, 2018 at the intersection of Highways 35 and 335 in Saskatchewan. Mr. Sidhu pleaded no contest to the 16 counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death and other charges. By doing so the report of the investigating RCMP remains unavailable to public scrutiny and it may never see the light of day. That report would provide the grounds upon which the criminal charges were laid. But those grounds may not be reasonable as evidenced from other independent investigations. As reported by others the Saskatchewan transportation department failed to provide an adequate intersection sight triangle that might have allowed both drivers to avoid the collision. So the deaths might never have occurred even though Mr. Sidhu may have made an error. The importance of this failure has been down-played in reports by most news media. So the public may never know.
As indicated in the article by Elizabeth Thompson “Disclosure blocked by guilty plea”, crown prosecutors say that information about guilt cannot be released once the accused has plea guilty. Other reasons mentioned in the Lavalin case included the fact that other potentially guilty persons “were no longer with the company and the company cooperated with the investigation”.
Pleading guilty as a mechanism to avoid accountability needs to be placed on the public’s radar.
Humboldt Broncos Multi-Fatal Bus Crash Was Likely Influenced by Lack of Proper Intersection Visibility
In a companion article (“Issues of Concern With Respect to the McElhanney Report on the Safety of the Humboldt Broncos Collision Site”) that has been posted on the Articles page of this Gorski Consulting website we have explained how the Saskatchewan Department of Transportation was likely partially at fault for the cause of the Humboldt Broncos multi-fatal bus crash on April 6, 2018 in north-eastern Saskatchewan. What has not been properly reported is that a required line of sight called an “intersection sight triangle” was not afforded to both drivers such they could not see each other in sufficient time and distance to avoid the collision. As stated by authoritative organizations such as the Transportation Association of Canada (TAC):
“From each approach to an intersection, sufficient sight distance along each intersection leg to allow vehicle operators to see approaching vehicles in time to avoid collision is required.”
The lack of proper reporting on this issue has led many Canadians to be misled about how and why the Humboldt Broncos collision occurred. Gorski Consulting has highlighted the fact that information from the police investigation of the collision has not been released even though over nine months have passed since the collision date. It is this essential information that needs to be revealed so that a proper assessment of the collision cause can be made.
Fatal Result in Rollover on Highway 6 Should Not Be Expected
The OPP released the photograph shown below of an SUV that rolled over on Highway 6 in Flamborough earlier today.
This is a classic example of a rollover that should not have resulted in fatal injuries. While we cannot see the other side of the vehicle and sometimes photographers purposely hide vehicle damage, what is visible shows evidence of a simple rollover. Simple rollovers are those that do not involve major deceleration that might occur from the impact of an wall, tree, another vehicle, etc. Such additional impacts would be recognized by the presence of crush to the vehicle. The only noticeable crush might exist at the front bumper which is missing. But that damage is minor. The minimal buckling at the front centre of the roof does not indicate a major force as such a roof is very soft and easily crushed in that manner. None of the roof pillars have been displaced and the occupant compartment retains essentially the same volume as it would prior to impact. The air bag curtains have deployed providing a further benefit to the driver’s survival and reducing the opportunity for ejection.
Simple rollovers will generate deceleration of about 0.4 to 0.6 g. When you brake your vehicle to its maximum on a dry pavement your vehicle slows down at a rate of about 0.7 g. So the slowing of a vehicle in a simple rollover is less than from maximum braking. You should not expect to sustain fatal injuries from braking so you should question why such injuries must exist in a simple rollover.
So overall, from what can be seen in this photo, the fatally injured occupant should have survived. We can never know what additional factors may be at play. Certainly anything that intruded into where the occupant was located could have a role to play. And lack of seat belt use would also be a consideration. But overall a further explanation should be provided as to why this person came to such an unfortunate circumstance.
Humboldt Broncos Tragedy Doubled By Silence
It is vitally important to understand what factors led to the tragic deaths and injuries in the Humboldt Broncos bus crash in the Canadian Province of Saskatchewan on April 7, 2018.
Previous collisions are an early warning that, if ignored, lead to current ones. And current collisions are a resetting of the alarm for future crashes. To date the Humboldt Bronco alarm has been turned off and the public has been told to get back to work. It is the public’s obligation to ask what set off the alarm in the first place. With the guilty plea of the truck driver who struck the Broncos bus those factors that were instrumental in the crash may never be made public. That secrecy becomes the enabler that allows dangerous conditions to exist.
What were the travel speeds of the vehicles on approach to the crash site? What was the speed of each vehicle at impact. What opportunity did each driver have to avoid the collision or lessen its severity? How much time did it require the truck to start from a stopped position and clear the intersection? How do other truck drivers pass through this intersection? What was the change-in-velocity of the bus and how does that match with the numbers of deaths and injuries? These are just some of the questions that need to be addressed.
Highway 401 – Adjustments to Data on Unintended Veering at Four Sites
Unintended veering out of a travel lane is rarely documented with sufficient precision. Yet this could be a cause of many collisions such as the multi-fatal collision on I-75 near Gainsville Florida that occurred on January 3, 2019. Using multiple, synchronized video cameras Gorski Consulting has documented such details at four sites along Highway 401 in Southwestern Ontario.
Example from the December 2, 2018 session showing a black car that has veered out of the westbound, right lane of Highway 401.
Preliminary data was provided in a news item posted on December 20, 2018 on this Gorski Consulting website. That data was based on videotaping at three sites. A second videotaping session was conducted at one of the sites (Westminster Drive) thus resulting in four sessions and three sites. The original table is reproduced below.
Since that posting a fifth videotaping session was conducted at a fourth site (Kenesserie Road). Additional processing of the data along with the addition of the fifth videotaping session has led to adjustments to the original table. These adjustments involved removal of some observations where the veering was simply too minimal. For example, the criterion for inclusion of a veering occurrence was with the observation of the right front tire and whether the full width of that tire was observed to move outside of the white-painted edge line of the lane. Upon closer viewing of the video we observed several instances where the veering did not reach that threshold. Thus those observations were excluded. This has resulted in the adjusted table of data below.
Not unexpectedly the observations of veering were dominated by large trucks. Of the total of 109 observations of veering, 88 involved large trucks. These vehicles are approximately 2.6 metres wide whereas typical passenger cars may only be about 1.8 metres in width while large Pick-up trucks and vans may have a width of 2.0 metres. The width of the lanes of Highway 401 are likely in the range of 3.7 to 4.0 metres. Considering these values it is easier for large trucks to veer out of a lane than smaller vehicles. Furthermore trucks hauling typical box, semi-trailers are often pushed by winds, further increasing the likelihood of such veering.
The original impetus to gathering this veering data was because, in our initial session at Westminster Drive on October 30, 2018, we were drawn to the number of vehicles that appeared to be veering to the right, out of the right lane. Now looking at the table above and comparing that session to the others, the percent of veering vehicles (2.13%) is higher than the others.
Another interesting result is that two sessions were conducted outside of the normal work week. The November 23rd session at Dillon Road was on the Friday of the US Thanksgiving Day weekend when most truckers would be spending the holidays at home. This session produced 1.62 percent veering.
The December 2, 2018 session at Westminster Drive occurred on a Sunday and it produced 1.32 percent veering, which is lower than the original session that occurred on a weekday. A further anomaly is that 50% of the veering observations (13) originated from non-trucks. This is much higher than in the other four sessions where non-trucks produced 2, 2, 4 and 0 % of the veering observations. While the number of data points is small it leads one to consider what might have caused this result other than random variance.
A factor to consider is the varying volume of heavy trucks in the five videotaping sessions. This variance in volume is shown in the table below.
It can be seen that the two non-working day sessions of November 23 and December 2, 2018 the percentage of heavy truck traffic was 25.8 and 20.6 respectively and this is far below the percentages for the other three sessions that occurred on working days. The average truck traffic percentage for those other three working day sessions (Westminster on Oct 30th = 40.4 %, Graham Road on November 5th = 48.6 % and Kenesserie Road on December 19th = 48.0 %) was 45.7%. In other words, the percentage of trucks during non-working days was about half of what it was during working days. If veering is more prominent with heavy trucks then it should affect the results of veering frequency between the non-working days and the working days.
So comparing the data between the two sessions at the Westminster site, the Oct 30th session was a working day whereas the Dec 2nd session was a non-working day. So we should expect to see less truck veering observations in the Dec 2nd session and this is what occurred. In the Oct 30th session there were 37 observations of veering trucks whereas in the Dec 2nd session there were only 13 such observations.
The explanation for the larger number of non-truck veering in the Dec 2nd session could be that there were substantially more non-trucks on the road. However it is too early to tell.
The seemingly larger number of veering trucks at the the Dillon Road session of November 23rd is not readily explainable at this time. That session was part of the Thanksgiving Day period and it can be seen that the percentage of trucks on the road was low (25.8%) and the overall travel volume was low (only 1234 vehicles). Again, these are very low numbers of data points and the results may simply be due to random variance. Never-the-less with further work and larger data some conclusions could be made in the future.
The procedures described here represent a methodology where details of vehicle motions can be documented and evaluated. The Ontario Ministry of Transportation has maintained a number of traffic counting stations for many years along Highway 401. These magnetic loop devices should be capable of providing 24-hr, 7-day-a-week data on traffic volumes, truck versus non-truck composition, gaps between traffic units and vehicle speeds. However it is highly unlikely that these stations would be capable of documenting the numbers of vehicles veering out of their lanes, how those veering actions take place and what circumstances exist before, during and after those veering actions. The methodology used by Gorski Consulting is capable of documenting such details and more. This may be particularly important when there is a need to understand how some types of collisions occur on the highway and this could lead to changes that could reduce the severity and frequency of those instances.
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