OPP Conduct Focused Patrols on Hwy 401 Near Chatham Resulting in 629 Charges
Reports indicate that the Ontario Provincial Police have been focused on the area of Highway 401 near construction zones between London and Chatham. 629 charges have been laid since June of 2018 including 469 for speeding.
One of the complaints of unsafe actions included late merging of vehicles where a lane is closed. The London Free Press quoted Constable Jay Denorer on this issue:
“A lot of times, coming down to one lane, people will start passing on the shoulder (of the road) to try and get in front of somebody,” he said. Noting there is ample notification of construction zones ahead, Denorer said “there’s no reason for it, it’s just people being impatient.”
Yet there could be other reasons.
In the past year or two there has been considerable publicity focused on drivers needing to adopt a new merging technique called the “Zipper Merge” when approaching a closed lane. The approach was supported in the State of Minnesota as well as by research from Germany and the Virginia Transportation Research Council. The City of London has also promoted the Zipper Merge as described on its website:
“The zipper merge is a late merge strategy where all available lanes of traffic are used right up to the lane closure. Drivers then alternate into the open lane. The zipper merge strategy is most effective when there are high traffic volumes on the road, combined with low average speeds due to congestion.”
On Hwy 401 this late merge while approaching a construction zone is safe because of a relatively low traffic volume.
There is plenty of room to complete this late merge because the traffic volume is low.
While it is believed that persons who approach a closed lane late are doing so to pass other traffic, that conclusion may not be clear when drivers are following the instructions of the Zipper Merge. Confusion and misunderstandings can occur when lane changes need to be made at the last instant without clear guidance as to what speeds are appropriate and which driver has the official right to cross in front of another. These misunderstandings can be sorted out when merging occurs earlier before the situation turns into an emergency.
With respect to speeding, the 469 charges laid by the OPP since June may need to be put into perspective. Recent observations by Gorski Consulting of traffic along Highway 401 between London and Chatham have shown that not a single vehicle was found to be travelling at, or below, the speed limit of 100 km/h. The typical traffic volume along this section of the highway might be in the range of 50,000 vehicles per day. Assuming 5 months of focused patrolling, or about 150 days, this would mean that there were a total of 7.5 million official speeders on Highway 401 but only 469 were charged. One could conclude that the probability of being charged for speeding would be about 0.006 percent!
Is this “99 km/h” speed understood to be speeding? If it was not in a construction zone the OPP might interpret that it is not. But who knows?
Everyone understands that the official speed limit of 100 km/h is not the practical speed limit that is enforced. Observations suggest that the enforced speed limit may be something in the range of 120 km/h, but only the OPP know for sure. But what speed is being enforced within a construction zone? If the speed limit is 80 km/h do the OPP only charge drivers who are travelling at 100 km/h or higher? There would appear to be some confusion surrounding this point.
Compulsory Truck Driver Training – An Effective Way of Improving Trucking Safety?
Traffic fatalities have gone on the upswing again in the past couple of years after many decades of decreases. However in the U.S. early estimates for traffic fatalities for 2017 indicate that a slight decrease of about 0.8 percent is expected in comparision to 2016 data. Despite this good news there is a gloomy statistic: “Fatalities in crashes involving at least one large truck are projected to increase by 10 precent” (NHTSA ,Traffic Safety Facts, May, 2018).
In the Province of Ontario mandatory truck driver training commenced in July of 2017. Such training costs approximately $10,000 and must be completed before an applicant can arrange for a Ministry driver’s test to obtain a license (Class A) to drive typical, air-brake-equipped, Class 8, tractor-trailer type trucks. Due to the horrific crash of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team bus in Saskatchewan earlier this year there have been calls for similar mandatory training across Canada.
The belief that such mandatory truck driver training is required must be based on a reasonable expectation that the training will reduce the number and/or severity of truck crashes. It must overcome the counter argument that driver training may only provide a means by which prospective drivers can perform on the “stage of evaluation” while their true nature will be revealed once they obtain a full license and no longer need to continue that performance. Time may tell which holds true, or whether the truth is a combination of both.
In the meantime, Gorski Consulting is gathering data on the actions of truck drivers via videotaped observations on Highway 401, which is the main expressway that travels through the southern portion of the Province of Ontario. Depending on the location along the highway, heavy truck traffic can be in the range of 40 to 50 percent. This makes for a good opportunity to determine what improvements may been needed to reduce those deadly increases of 10 percent in heavy truck fatalities.
Hwy 401 – What is More Dangerous Speed or Difference In Speed?
A Gorski Consulting study shows that despite some trucks travelling at 105 km/h in the fast lane, the average speed of other vehicles on Highway 401 was 118 km/h.
High speed can be dangerous, but is it more dangerous than a difference in speed? That is one of the questions that can be explored through the analysis of traffic motions on major expressways such as Highway 401 in southern Ontario.
Observations by Gorski Consulting this fall have explored the speed and difference in speed of traffic along Highway 401 in southwestern Ontario. Observations by Gorski Consulting indicate that this expressway may carry anywhere between 42 and 48 percent of heavy truck traffic such as 18-wheeler tractor-trailers, truck trains and intercity buses. The Province of Ontario has created legislation that has reduced the maximum capable speed of heavy trucks to about 105 km/h. Observations by Gorski Consulting confirm that indeed almost all heavy trucks travel along Highway 401 at about 105 km/h. There is a conflict however when these large, slow-moving vehicles interact with much faster traffic that may be difficult for truck drivers to see and can accelerate out of blind spots into locations that truck drivers do not expect.
Observations by Gorski Consulting were taken of traffic at one location just west of London, Ontario in the median lane of Highway 401. The median lane is the one closest to the centre median and is generally understood to carry the fastest-moving traffic. When all the traffic is considered the average speed of vehicles in the median lane was 115.9 km/h. However this lane was also populated by a number of slow-moving, heavy trucks. When the speed of those heavy trucks is removed from the data we are left with an average speed of 118.0 km/h. One might wonder what the average speed of non-trucks would be if those heavy trucks were not present.
It is not an accident that policy-makers in the Province made this decision to limit the speed of heavy trucks. They likely observed that mixing these “moving barriers” with unacceptably fast-moving traffic would create exactly what has been observed: the heavy trucks cause the speed of other vehicles to become slower. A further complication exists which explains the additional importance of using these moving barriers for speed control. It is that stopping speeders on this very busy highway is very dangerous for police.
Although legislation was introduced (“The Move Over Law”) requiring motorists to slow down and steer away from stopped emergency vehicles this may not be as safe as expected. Vehicles travelling at a constant speed without lane changes reduces the number of conflicts that lead to crashes. Requiring drivers to make lane changes and speed changes creates the conflicts that lead to crashes. This is not a good idea in the vicinity of vulnerable emergency personnel who cannot always keep an eye out for every vehicle that passes by. Thus the well-intended law may make the safety problem worse. Thus using heavy trucks to control traffic rather than placing police in dangerous situations makes some sense. Yet this decision does not come without some drawbacks.
The difference in speed of heavy trucks and other traffic creates its own conflicts. Drivers of non-truck vehicles who are rarely controlled by police end up travelling at unusually high speeds. When they catch up to slow-moving heavy trucks they can slow down rapidly and/or change lanes. These quick actions cannot be detected very well by truck drivers whose ability to avoid conflicts is already limited by their inability to change speeds or change lanes. These conflicts may be the origins of many collisions but are difficult to detect because there is no physical evidence left of these conflicts. Thus it becomes important to study vehicle motions along Highway 401 to capture those near-miss incidents that cannot be captured through standard police reports from collision investigations.
Gorski Consulting continues this work. There will be further reports made in the near future about the findings gathered from these studies.
Toronto Bus Pole Impact Demonstrates General Weakness of Bus Structures
The impact of a pole by a TTC bus in Toronto yesterday afternoon reflects the general weakness of bus structures. The Humboldt Broncos bus crash in Saskatchewan earlier this year demonstrated how catestrophic bus crashes can be because of the potentially large number of occupants who are not afforded the general safety protections available in modern passenger cars and light trucks.
Generally, buses are much more massive than typical passenger cars, Pick-up trucks or passenger vans. As such, as they gain speed, they possess a much larger kinetic energy. When an impact occurs that kinetic energy needs to be disposed of, or dissipated, in order for the bus to stop. In the Toronto crash some of the kinetic energy of the bus might have been lost during any pre-impact braking and swerving by the bus driver in order to evade the pedestrian that reportedly walked/run onto the road. Given the typical city speeds of such buses we would not be looking at a high-speed event even if no pre-crash braking occurred. But even though a relatively low speed was involved when the bus struck the pole, there would still be much more kinetic energy simply because of the large mass of the bus.
Looking at the bus damage, there was a typical, narrow loading of its structure due to the narrowness of the pole. So we would expect the pole to penetrate the bus to some degree. On the other hand, the pole was merely bent slightly from its vertical position and this also demonstrates the relatively small force that was applied. Issac Newton’s Third Law demonstrated that, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Therefore the force on the pole was equal to the force on the bus. So we can generally conclude that the force exerted on the bus was “not large”. Yet there was substantial crush and intrusion into the interior.
It is not meant to single out the particular manufacturer of the TTC. However, in general, it needs to be appreciated that bus structures are generally weak in proportion to their mass. This results in substantial disintegrations, separations and failures of the structure whenever a bus crash of substantial speed is involved. This is not good news when combined with the possibility that a bus could be loaded with several dozen passengers. This is not an easy problem to solve and therefore it is rarely discussed. However the tragic results of collisons such as the one involving the Humboldt Broncos is a reminder that this problem needs to be at the forefront of the public asking officials what improvements can be reasonably made.
Highway 401 Speeds Reduced by Interference of Speed-Governed Heavy Trucks
When slow-moving, heavy trucks block the highway all traffic slows down. But does that mean that safety improves?
The above photo is a frame capture from one of the video cameras used in a study of traffic conditions on Highway 401 by Gorski Consulting. When heavy truck speeds are limited to a maximum of 105 km/h this can cause all traffic to slow down because those trucks block the passage of faster moving vehicles. That was likely a decision made by Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation to reduce speeds without using police to enforce speed limits. Is this method of speed control a good idea? What happens when slow-moving trucks interact with fast-moving cars? Do conflicts develop? These are some of the questions that may be answered in the detailed study by Gorski Consulting that is presently on-going. Some results from the study will be revealed as soon as they become available.
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