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.
Politicians And Speed Cameras In Ontario
As of November 14, 2025 the installation of speed cameras has been banned due to legislation enacted by Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford. The reason for the legislation was to stop Ontario municipalities from using the cameras as a “cash grab”, or a way of generating money for the municipalities rather than for the purpose of improving road safety.
In London Ontario news media reported that seven speed cameras generated $500,000 in ticket revenue in 2024, however the City of London only received $105,000 in its share of that revenue. But no one has been curious enough to ask, who received the other $395,000? What no one wants to talk about is that those speed cameras are owned by an unnamed private firm. And therein lies the problem. Ford appears to have been aware of the money that was being generated from speed cameras or he would not have called them a “cash grab”. But why has so much money been generated? Obviously from motor vehicles being driven over the speed limit.
But no one has asked, and no one has said, what threshold has been set for defining a vehicle as speeding. Is the threshold 2 km/h above the speed limit? Is it 5? Is it 10? It would seem obvious that the lower the threshold the more speeders are found and the more money is generated. So was Premier Ford aware of this? Very likely. And that is why he threw out the baby with the bath water by outlawing speed cameras?
This is a remake of the comedic movie “Dumb and Dumber”. Municipal politicians abuse speed camera procedures and Ford does the dumper thing of removing speed cameras altogether. But this is not a comedy, and it is not funny. The result that these politicians have created is that average citizens will be killed.
Ford’s claim that “traffic calming measures such as speed bumps, raised crosswalks, signage, roundabouts and increased police enforcement” can effectively replace speed cameras is an outright lie. At Gorski Consulting we are aware of that fact because we have conducted detailed studies of how collisions occur, something that few persons done, not even police.
For example speed bumps affect all drivers using a roadway and they are effective is bringing down the average speed on a roadway. And most persons think that reducing the average speed is what is important. But that is not true. What is important is detecting the criminal drivers at the very top of the speeding pyramid. It is the few drivers who travel at very high speeds and have no regard to any meaning of safety that are the true danger. And these drivers will not be stopped or detected by speed bumps. This was made clear a few years ago on Wilson Ave in central west London, Ontario.
On May 29, 2021 an article was posted on the Gorski Consulting website entitled “Speed Bump Aggressiveness As Part Of Collision Cause Analysis”. In that article we described an incident as follows:
“At approximately 0330 hours on Sunday, October 26, 2019, a Mercedes vehicle was northbound on Wilson Ave, just west of downtown in London, Ontario. Upon approaching the T-intersection with Blackfriars Street the vehicle went out of control. It knocked down two utility poles, then struck a commercial building on the west side of Wilson, it was then deflected and impacted a residential house on the opposite side of the T-intersection. News media reporting on the collision described the site as a “war zone”. A woman sleeping in the struck residence was lucky to escape injury as a neighbour reported that ‘Her head was a couple of feet from where the car stopped'”.
This “war zone” was created on a roadway containing four speed bumps. Our further comments in our website article are noted below:
“Further examinations revealed that there were four speed bumps located along the approximate 725 metre length of Wilson Ave from Dundas Street through to Blackfriars Street. It could not be expected that a northbound driver could be oblivious to the presence of all these speed bumps even though some of the warning signs might have been blocked from view. However there was no information made available whether the collision-involved Mercedes travelled the full length of Wilson or if perhaps the vehicle turned onto Wilson from one of the crossroads. Thus it is possible that the driver might have experienced a couple, or even just one of the speed bumps before experiencing the loss of control.”
“There is no question that the collision-involved Mercedes was travelling very quickly, and likely at highway speed along a narrow residential street posted with a maximum speed limit of just 50 km/h. So why did this occur? If the driver was familiar with the roadway then he/she should have been aware of the presence of the speed bumps. And one would expect that any driver would find it uncomfortable to travel over a speed bump at highway speed. Any driver can appreciate that a speed bump is designed to discourage high speeds and that driving over a speed bump at high speed should have a major effect on the motion of the vehicle and its control.”
Premier Ford is informing the public that collisions like these just don’t exist. Or he may say that the speed bumps did their job correctly by causing the offending driver to crash. However this collision could easily have caused a fatality, or more, if there were persons present in the path of the Mercedes when it went out of control.
Speed cameras cannot stop these types of collisions, however they can document a speeding vehicle before a collision is created. A speed camera may not necessarily identify the specific driver doing the speeding but it will identify the vehicle and this is a large step toward identifying the driver. Unless the vehicle has been stolen police can narrow the possibilities of who was driving and that makes a big difference in a police investigation.
It is not clear what the Premier was thinking of when he referred to “raised crosswalks” as being an effective safety technology. Anyone who has substantial experience in collision reconstruction would know that it takes a lot of force to stop or change the direction of a typical motor vehicle that has gone out of control. Much consideration has been taken in collision reconstruction circles whereby we discuss the speed at which a vehicle might mount a typical concrete curb or how much speed is lost by a vehicle striking such a curb. A raised crosswalk is typically a shallow change in elevation which has very little effect on the motion of a heavy vehicle.
And the installation of roundabouts is a Ludacris road safety solution as roundabouts cannot be installed everywhere that there might be a speeding problem. Roundabouts are installed at intersections not in the middle of a long segment of roadway where speeding is often observed.
And finally, the idea that Premier Ford thinks he can simply increase the amount of police enforcement is just juvenile. Increasing police enforcement costs money. It costs money because you have to hire additional police officers so that they can conduct the enforcement. Police forces are already stretched to difficult limits in detailing with major crimes. Is Premier Ford going to remove police investigators of a murder and send them onto the roadside, to stand there for numerous hours, so that a few speeders can be caught?
How did Ontario get to this position where one individual can put the safety of millions of citizens in jeopardy, over such a poorly thought out idea as removing speed cameras throughout Ontario? Any expert with any degree of integrity would state clearly that this is a bad idea. And many have done so. Various individuals and organizations have said so. But, like a runaway railway train, nothing has stopped Premier Ford’s folly.
In our view the solution is clear. Speed cameras must exist on Ontario’s roadways. But they cannot be operated for profit by third party companies who share their profit with a municipality. The threshold for capturing speeding drivers must be set higher than what has been done in the past, even though no one has said what that threshold was and that information has been kept unethically secret. Speed cameras can be used to document drivers who are travelling over a speed limit and that data should be kept to identify drivers who continually travel over the speed limit. Such a data file should be simple to create. Software can be developed to identify those vehicles that continually travel over the speed limit and the owners of those vehicles can be dealt with in the appropriate manner. However ticketing drivers who speed should be done at a higher threshold.
Testing by Gorski Consulting has shown what percentages of speeders travel at 10 or 20 km/h above the speed limit and it is certain that most municipalities have similar data. At most sites the average speed is often 10 km/h above the speed limit. Although this matter has not been thought out, it is possible that thresholds of 20 km/h could be used to ticket drivers in those instances where speed camera data is used. Data from Gorski Consulting studies suggest that these thresholds would capture about the top 10 percent of speeders. This would disqualify a large percentage of the population of speeders from being ticketed. And this would not make a large profit for the companies operating the cameras or for the municipalities where those cameras are used. Municipalities should be combining their resources to purchase and operate their own speed cameras without the involvement of a third party company that is there to generate a profit.
Missing Fatality – But Still No Useful Details Revealed
It was reported by news media that on Saturday, November 1, 2025, at approximately 0420 hours a fatal collision occurred between two vehicles near the intersection of Chinguacousy Road and Queen Street in Brampton, Ontario. Initially it was announced that one of the drivers was killed.
Then on Tuesday, November 4th, news media reported that a second person, 20-year-old female, was also was killed. However no further information was provided.
Then on Wednesday, November 5th news media reported that the second victim had been reported missing by family members and her “last known location, confirmed through a shared tracking app, was the crash site“. Police reportedly returned to the crash site and to the towing compound where they discovered the remains of the female in the rear passenger compartment of the involved Honda Civic.
News media indicated that the Peel Regional Police spokesperson indicated that “In the hours after the collision” police were notified about the missing person. But how many hours were involved. Two hours, 12 hours, 24 hours? Such a comment is of little assistance in understanding the scenario.
A police spokesperson told news media that the deceased passenger of the Honda Civic was difficult to find because the vehicle was deformed. That explanation may be sufficient for many who are not experienced in examining collision-damaged vehicles. But it is not sufficient for someone with that experience.
I am someone who has conducted numerous detailed examinations of crushed vehicles following a collision. Most of these examinations were done at a time when no one heard of a laser scanner and there was no software available to obtain measurements directly from photographs. There were no event data recorders and no downloads from various onboard infotainment modules. Back then it was all about paying attention to physical evidence, documenting it and interpreting it. Such activities involved many hours of direct contact with a collision-involved vehicle.
The comments I will make at the end of this article will be supported by the detailed discussion of my past collision reconstruction activities and what should be involved in a truly scientific investigation and analysis.
Historical Collision Reconstruction With Physical Evidence
As part of my duties with the University of Western Ontario Multi-Disciplinary research team commencing over 40 years ago, I was out, essentially every day, for 10 years, rain, snow or sunshine conducting vehicle and site examinations. Typically I had just barely enough time in a day to conduct two vehicle examinations and then a collision site. Many a day in January, when the sun would set before 1730 hours I barely had enough time to get to the collision site and take some useful photos before it became too dark to do so. But the vehicle examinations were extensive.
As part of my duties I had to measure the crush on each vehicle. For a collision such as the one being described by Peel police it was required that I place a “measurement Jig” or rectangle made up of heavy posts and a elastic shock cord (the type used in boating) around the vehicle and then take measurements from the rectangle to the crushed metal. These methods were for the purpose of determining the kinetic energy dissipated in the collision and thus to determine a “change-in-velocity resulting from an impact. But my methods went several steps beyond what was required. Not only did I measure the crush but I also took measurements to determine the crushed shape of the vehicle and I also identified and measured specific imprints called “points of mutual contact”. It was this method that allowed for a detailed scale diagram to be completed of each collision-involved vehicle. Such details could also be used to study how the striking vehicles interacted with each other during the contact phase and it also enabled a study of the differences in similar collisions. As mentioned before, all this work occurred long before anyone heard of a laser scanner or software programs used to develop 3-dimensional models of damaged vehicles.
As an example, the crush patterns of vehicles involved in severe head-on collisions were explored with large scale diagrams as shown in some of the figures below.
With respect to angle collisions, such as the one investigated by the Peel Regional Police, similar methods were employed. A large scale diagram could be created from measurements taken at a collision site. In the days before total stations and laser scanners such details were not easy to develop with accuracy. However, with some thoughtful effort procedures were developed whereby redundant measurements were taken to remove the distortion that is created from reliance on just a single measurement. Although not as precise as the current “toys” used by experts, these methods enabled measurements to be within about an inch or two from a true distance. The current “toys” can provide a measurement within thousands of an inch from a true distance but, unless you work for NASA and are developing a spaceship, such precision becomes pointless.
With respect to the interior of vehicles reference lines were also erected using perpendicular shock cords attached to select portions of the vehicle structure. For example a lateral cord could be attached between a vehicle’s two B-pillars. Again, measurements were then taken of existing evidence, such as occupant contact points, to those reference lines and then these data could be transferred onto scale diagrams.
In some instances where gouges were created on a roadway, a vehicle could be tipped onto its side and detailed measurements could be made with reference to certain structural landmarks of the vehicle such as the centre of a bumper or to the wheels. Once again, shock cords could be attached to these structures and the markings on the underside of the vehicle could be measured to those cords. In this way markings on the underside of vehicle could be matched directly to the pattern of gouges on the road surface and thus this was definitive proof of a point of impact and where a vehicle was located at that point of impact.
By these methods the mapped interior could be combined with the scale diagram of the vehicle exterior and the mapped markings on the underside of a vehicle could also be combined that the diagram of the vehicle exterior. When done correctly the vehicle interior, the vehicle exterior and the collision site could all be combined in reasonably detailed scale diagrams.
An Example of a Higher Severity Angle Collision
With respect to higher-severity, angle collisions such as the one investigated by the Peel Regional Police the following figures below provide some details about how these collisions were investigated and analysed.
The image below shows some of the measurements that were taken to enable the creation of a scale diagram of the damaged Parisienne. A location of a single “point of mutual contact” is shown here where a blue license plate transfer was caused by the front end of the striking Chevrolet Chevette.
The next figures show views of the striking vehicle, a small Chevrolet Corvette.
As discussed earlier, a reference rectangle was carefully created around the damaged vehicle so that detailed measurements could be obtained of its shape, as well as the crush.
Once the scale diagrams of the vehicles were created they were brought together to consider how they made contact and how their motions progressed through to the point of separation, as shown below.
Through the use of scale diagrams the vehicle motions could be determined from the physical evidence and enhanced by the specific evidence from the “points of mutual contact”.
Computer reconstruction programs such as CRASH were used to examine the severity of the collision. CRASH focuses primarily on the circumstances at impact. However any software program creates a model of a collision that does not precisely replicate the details exhibited in the physical evidence. It is the scale diagrams and the “points of mutual contact” that anchor the model to the precise manner that the collision occurred. Alternatively in some instances the results from a CRASH analysis could reveal that the interpretation of the physical evidence was not consistent with the physics. This is how this combination is used through progressive adjustments until a result is reached which comes close to reality.
The continuation of the analysis with a simulation program such as SMAC is also enhanced when the model is anchored to the physical evidence that was identified. A simulation program like SMAC brings the striking vehicles from their point of contact through to their rest positions. When such a simulation is successful at replicating the vehicle paths to rest then that is a pretty good indicator that the reconstruction of a collision was performed correctly. When the simulation results are also consistent with a CRASH analysis and with the detailed physical evidence the results become fully reliable.
With respect to injury issues, a through examination of the interior of each vehicle was conducted. The figure below shows the results from an examination of the interior of the Chevette.
Typically measurements of various occupant contacts were taken along with detailed photos. These data could then be matched with medical information identifying the specific injuries of each occupant. Physical evidence from other sources such as loading marking on seatbelts could provide further information about the mechanisms that caused injuries and if some injuries were suspect.
Again such details cannot be obtained from a vehicle interior without spending considerable time being present inside the vehicle. This is not pleasant work and not for the squeamish. In all instances my work was carried out after the injured or deceased were removed from a vehicle. Yet in many instances my work would commence very shortly after a vehicle was removed from a collision site to a towing compound, sometimes only hours after the collision took place. Such a circumstance would not be much different from the required actions of a police reconstructionist who may not attend a collision until several hours had passed and some investigative activities would need to be completed at a towing yard.
Current methods of police investigation have been adjusted from these historic methods discussed above and this is revealing. Police may now use a laser scanner to document evidence and/or they may use a drone. They will also use hardware such as a Crash Data Retrieval kit to connect to a module which is an event data recorder to download crash data. They may also download crash photos from newer vehicles that store those images on a separate module. And they may interrogate infotainment data stored on in-vehicle communication devices. Such evidence is valuable and contributes to understanding some aspects of collision causation. However these activities become a negative when they take the investigator away from an examination and understanding of the physical evidence on the roadway and on the vehicle interior and exterior.
Working with physical evidence is a key component of any collision investigator’s toolbox. The detection of relevant physical evidence requires that the investigator have substantial experience from many years of contact with it. The ability to detect and identify relevant physical evidence is not a simple matter of reading a book or taking a short course. An effective investigator must be exposed to many instances where that evidence may vary from case to case. Multiple exposure to such evidence allows the investigator to observe how that evidence changes. And these multiple exposures allow the investigator to develop an understanding why that change exists and how it relates to previous observations of that evidence. However when persons in a position of power and limited accountability, take someone with limited experience, give someone a badge, uniform and title and suddenly designate someone an “expert”, bad results are bound to happen.
Comments On Peel Police Collision Investigation
The purpose for conducting a motor vehicle collision reconstruction is to identify factors that caused harm. In police circles that definition of harm is largely focused on driver behaviors and punishment for those behaviors. Such a focus is necessary and important but it is also narrow.
Injury is also an example of harm. It is also important. It is a benefit to society, that we attempt to prevent, or lessen, collision injuries including their consequences.
What should be concluded from the above discussion about historical methods of collision reconstruction is that, in order to conduct a properly scientific analysis of a collision, vehicle interiors must be included in that analysis and examined in detail. When a proper examination of the interior of a collision-involved vehicle is conducted there should be no reason for an injured occupant in that vehicle to be unidentified. What led to the lack of identification a a deceased inside a vehicle has not been explained. Beyond police, medical personnel and even fire department personnel have responsibilities for identifying occupants in a damaged vehicle and why their failures occurred also needs to be revealed. Up to now there has been no photo posted of a reasonable quality that could reveal the extent of damage to the Honda Civic and provide some explanation as to why no one detected the deceased passenger.
It has been a long-expressed concern on this Gorski Consulting website that police forces in general often fail to understand that they have an obligation to identify and report to the public whenever an incident exposes a danger to the public. That obligation should be obvious because often police are the only ones with the ability and authority to conduct a thorough investigation of an incident. Dangers related to motor vehicle collisions that are not publicly reported expose the public to future preventable incidents that could be life-threatening.
Collision dangers can come from a wide variety of sources and road safety researchers often us the acronym “HVE” to refer to those broad factors involving the Human, the Vehicle and the Environment. When police fail to inform the public that humans are increasingly speeding, drug impaired, inattentive etc. they are failing in their duty. When police fail to inform the public about the presence of a vehicle defect, a vehicle maintenance danger or any vehicle factor that may cause restricted visibility or attention then they fail in their duty. When police do not report incidents where improper roadway design, maintenance or signage have influenced a collision they have failed in their duty. These are exemplar components of HVE.
While the undetected body of the deceased in the present incident may be described to the public as an isolated matter in our view it is not isolated. It is a failing that has revealed itself in this one incident but it is also a failing that is more systemic. Police must change from their presently narrow focus on driver behavior modification to a wider focus on identifying and reporting all matters than may cause harm to the public. Such a wider focus will lessen the occasions where obvious duties, such as detecting the presence of the body of a deceased, fail to be achieved.
Advocates for Calmer Traffic in Old North (ACTION)
The Local CTV News website has reported that a new citizens’ group has been formed in Old North London called ACTION or Advocates for Calmer Traffic in Old North. The STV news article mentioned that ACTION was formed after a crossing guard collision occurred in early June, 2025 at the Old North intersection of Colborne and St James Streets. Gorski Consulting had been conducting a traffic study at that location a couple of years earlier with respect to a new cycling lane that was being developed along Colborne.
In fact Gorski Consulting was not aware of the crossing guard collision until the city councillor for the area, Sam Trosow, reported the creation of a Go Fund account for the crossing guard. The incidence of collisions in London, Ontario is monitored by Gorski Consulting on a regular basis but our records do not show that a news media article had ever been posted about the collision. To this day we still do not know the precise date of the collision or any details about how it happened. During our video sessions at the site in 2022-23 we regularly observed a crossing guard in the background, sitting on a chair, and we assume this may have been the same person who was injured.
CTV News posted the address of the website of ACTION which can be found at “oldnorthcommunity.ca”. It was noted on the site that a survey of 236 local residents had been conducted to obtain information about the concerns they had about traffic safety in their neighbourhood. A rally had also been organized by ACTION for November 6th however sufficient public notification of it was not available except for the CTV News article of the same date.
ACTION summarized the results of the resident concerns as follows:
- Pervasive Speeding and Aggressive Driver Behaviour.
- Disregard for Stop Signs & Confusing Intersections.
- The Human Cost: Grave Danger to Pedestrians and Children.
ACTION also posted the results of the survey as follows:
In conclusion ACTION posted the following comments with respect to the residents’ concerns:
“The collective public feedback paints an unambiguous picture of a community that feels it is under siege from dangerous traffic conditions.”
“The residents’ concerns are not minor or isolated; they describe systemic issues of excessive speeding, hazardous intersections defined by driver non-compliance and confusing design, and a direct and constant threat to the safety of children, pedestrians, and all road users.”
“The submissions reflect a profound loss of confidence in the current state of neighbourhood safety in Old North and serve as an urgent plea for immediate short-term interventions and longer-term planning.”
Gorski Consulting Studies in Old North London
Over the years Gorski Consulting has been involved in a number of traffic safety studies in the vicinity of London and surrounding areas in Southern Ontario. As a road safety researcher with the University of Western Ontario Multi-Disciplinary Accident Research Team (1980-90) Zygmunt Gorski carried out hundreds of investigations in South-Western Ontario in full-filling the requirements of a Transport Canada contract dealing with preventing injuries in transportation collisions. In subsequent activities as a collision reconstructionist for a forensic engineering firm (1990-95) as well as through similar work conducted in the newly-created Gorski Consulting (1995 to present) roadway safety issues had to be addressed as part of a comprehensive analysis of how individual collisions occurred. These activities were mainly retained by insurance and legal clients for resolution of claims in civil litigation although a smaller number of files also dealt with criminal matters.
As part of those activities a variety of procedures were developed to extract information from the sites where collisions occurred. A prominent methodology that was used in many collision assessments was the set-up of multiple video cameras to document typical patterns of vehicle motions and speed as well as to document traffic volumes. As Zygmunt Gorski began to pass through toward retirement the use of video documentations continued as activities passed from client-paid cases toward non-paid interest in road safety as a whole. In recent years a number of non-paid studies have been processed and reported on the Gorski Consulting website.
Interest in the traffic of the Old North neighbourhood occurred initially as a result of one of the key road safety developments occurring from reactions to climate change and the need to transport persons by mass transit, cycling and walking. As a cycling enthusiast Zygmunt Gorski was interested in the safety of cyclists which was expected to become more prominent as more cyclists were likely to inhabit public road systems. A variety of cyclist documentations were engaged particularly commencing in 2018. A common complaint from cyclists was that they felt unsafe and that more infrastructure was needed in the way of protected cycling lanes. However it became clear as more data was gathered that cycling safety was not just a matter of creating more cycling lanes. Never-the-less in 2022 comments were made by some residents in the Old North community that a new, painted cycling lane along Colborne Street was insufficient and that a protected cycling lane was needed. This discussion caught our interest and we decided to proceed with an objective study.
It was somewhat of coincidence that the site where a study of the cycling path was chosen was near the intersection of Colborne Street and St James Street. Yet this was determined to be most appropriate because of the reduced influences of roadway features that could affect the assessment of the safety of the painted cycling path. So in 2022 Gorski Consulting commenced a number of video sessions at the site before the cycling lane was completed and then similar video was captured after the cycling lane was completed in 2023. Throughout this process a number of website articles were posted on the Gorski Consulting site describing the procedures and their results.
It did not become fully clear that residents in Old North were concerned about safety in their neighbourhood until the collision involving the crossing guard occurred reportedly in June of 2025. The city councillor representing the area, Sam Trosow, was aware of the research study of Gorski Consulting at the Colborne-St James site. As residents became more vocal Mr. Trosow arranged a meeting to discuss road safety in Old North. He invited a presentative of the London City Police, one from the City’s transportation department, a doctor from the City’s hospital emergency department and Zygmunt Gorski was also asked to participate. The meeting took place on July 23rd, 2025 at the parish hall of the St. John the Evangelist Church at 280 St. James Street in Old North. The meeting was well-attended as the hall was full by the time it commenced. Articles were posted on the Gorski Consulting website discussing preparatory facts about road safety and then a follow-up article was also posted after the meeting. While not of direct interest in the Gorski Consulting study, the motor vehicle traffic at the Colborne-St James intersection was captured in the background of video cameras in several of the video sessions. Thus additional analysis of that traffic was discussed. One of the findings from the Colborne-St James study was that drivers appeared to be confused about who had the right-of-way. This was likely because many intersections in the area were posted with 4-way stop signs and many drivers did not appear to be aware of the two-way stop signs at Colborne and St James. While it may appear odd that drivers were so non-observant this is just a reflection of the numerous previous instances at many other locations where objective data demonstrated that drivers, in general, do not pay attention to signage as much as roadway engineers expect them to.
Following the safety meeting, Mr. Trosow contacted Gorski Consulting with respect to concerns expressed by another group of residents from Old North with respect to traffic at the intersection of Wellington Street and Regent Street. A video survey of traffic conditions was conducted and this was compared to data provided to Mr. Trosow from the City’s transportation department. This intersection was serviced by 2-way stop signs however the traffic study showed that the stop sign should have been placed for Wellington Street rather than the busier roadway of Regent. Again it was noted that drivers appeared to be confused about who had the right-of-way. This became of greater concern at this intersection because Wellington Street was unusually wide because of the existence of a decorative centre median. Details about this issue were discussed in a subsequent article on the Gorski Consulting website in late August, 2025.
And in the fall of 2025 another group of residents contacted Gorski Consulting with respect to their concerns about traffic safety at the intersection of Richmond Street and Epworth Ave. Once again Gorski Consulting attended the location on four different dates where video documentation was carried out to explore the problems. Meetings with the group of residents were conducted and the preliminaries from the traffic study were posted in a Gorski Consulting website article.
ACTION And The Path Forward
Groups interested in the safety of their local communities can be the impetus for their road safety education. The unfortunate reality in the London region is that the essential objective data that is needed to properly evaluate that safety is not publicly available.
The Human, Vehicle & Environment
Understanding road safety must come from an initial recognition that it is influenced by diverse factors. A common acknowledgement in road safety research is that three broad areas of influence need to be considered; The human, the vehicle and the environment, or HVE. This acronym has been well-known in road safety research for decades. The details for these influences cannot be discussed here due to the extended verbiage that would lose the attention of almost all readers.
However, in considering the human, one must have an appreciation that our goal is to prevent, or lessen, the severity of injury. So we must have some idea of how injuries are generated, what injuries are more important than others, and what those mechanisms are that cause those injuries.
With respect to the human we must also have some idea of the limits of human functioning as well as how humans typically function. Without this consideration we can develop unreasonable expectations driver behavior that will never correct a safety problem.
We must also recognize that roadways cannot be created just for the transportation of the super-humans of our species. In any normal distribution of a population fifty percent will always be below that mean. Thus humans with less than ideal eyesight, those with disabilities that lessen their travel speed, humans that are too old or too young, must all be considered. After decades of political denial and refusal to help the financially disadvantaged and shutting down of mental health institutions a permanent population of unhoused persons now roam certain neighbourhoods of London. These persons become safety problems when they mingle in traffic while typical methods of communication and education fail to penetrate their need to be aware when their safety is jeopardized. These too cannot be ignored in any road safety plans.
With respect to the vehicle, we must understand the basic idea that we are becoming transported in a wider variety of implements. While decades earlier must persons were transported in private, light-duty passenger vehicles, the present, and future means that we will see persons being transported on a variety bicycles, e-bikes, e-scooters and creations that are yet to be introduced to the general market. More of us will likely be transported in some form of mass transit and this will mean the presence of more voluminous, more massive vehicles. And we will need to consider that technology is advancing rapidly such that the vehicles we see today will become controlled by modules and computers that may cause communication between vehicles as well as with the roadway.
And with respect to the environment we must understand that diverse influences such as weather play a role in road safety because it may influence matters like visibility of road signs, or the required intervals at which certain maintenance is required for the road system. The roadway itself can be extremely divergent. Not all roads are of the same character because of the date when they were created and what changes were progressively applied in attempts to match more current standards of design. Roadway width, slope, surface composition and a vast number of characteristics are controlled by various standards that are somewhat standardized across North America.
Often there is a balancing between efficient/capacity and road safety. A simple example is that a roadway that is clogged with traffic cannot efficiently distribute that traffic and this is a negative result. Yet because of the resultant low speed of vehicles safety may be improved because no one can drive fast enough to cause a collision of any large severity.
Conclusions Based On Unbiased Objective Data
So these are some of the issues related to HVE. Once it becomes appreciated that these influences exist the next step is to obtain objective data. What are the physical characteristics of the roadways in question? And how do those characteristics compare, or how are they different, from other roadways in other communities or jurisdictions. What is the traffic volume on the roadways and do those traffic counts actually tell you what you need to know? A traffic count on a lazy summer day in the centre of a larger community might be different from a count taken when some kind of seasonal event develops and traffic changes. What speeds are of concern and how do those speeds relate to the community’s safety? If speed data is available where was it taken and at what time, date or season? Is collision data available and how do those data compare to other communities of a similar character as the one in question. Many collisions are simply not registered in police data and not necessarily because they are trivial. Single vehicle loss-of-control events for example can be misrepresented in collision data as vehicles may leave a collision site if a vehicle is still drivable or if help summoned to tow a vehicle away before the incident is detected. How vulnerable are pedestrians, cyclists and similar groups on and adjacent to the roadways of the community? What are the important facts that need to be known in order to improve their level of safety? Access to objective data is what makes it possible to obtain answers to many of these questions.
Historically, the City of London Transportation Department and the City’s police have not be cooperative in disseminating the essential data necessary for citizens groups to understand how their roadways compare to the needs of other areas of the City. Clearly a lot of data is gathered and stored but never revealed. The CTV news article of November 6, 2025 mentioned that the City is “about to launch the Old North Traffic Management Study” and that they have hired a consultant to gather data and get feedback. However such actions rarely involved the sharing of details with local residents. Instead, general comments are often made along with conclusions that do little to educate and inform those citizens who need to know.
The members of the ACTION community group, as well as any and all citizen groups. need to press the City and police to be more cooperative in distributing the objective data that form the reasons for their actions or non-actions. Suggestions that providing such data to citizens’ groups will lead to a misunderstanding of it is not a reasonable rationale. In every matter of safety there have to be growing pains as persons unfamiliar with the issues are given instructions or conduct their own research on what is important. It gives insufficient respect to those who are exposed to such data for the first time to suggest that they will never comprehend its meaning.
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