Unexplained Fatality in Minor Frontal Impact in Brampton
This photo taken by Riziero Vertolli shows the results of a minor frontal impact in Brampton that resulted in the driver’s death.
No explanation has been provided as to why a 53-year-old Brampton man died as a result of a minor frontal impact with a small wall on Garryoaks Drive in Brampton, Ontario this morning. Official news agencies indicate that police have not determined what caused the collision. But clearly the cause of the collision should not be as important as why the death occurred. Police were quoted as saying that the driver may have suffered a medical episode but there was no explanation as to what evidence led to that assumption.
It was only yesterday that a Brampton resident, Jason Ramkishun, was found dead in a car that exited the road and came to rest in a ditch. It was revealed that he sustained a gun shot wound. Surely further information as to how the most recent death occurred would be warranted. While gunshot wounds may not exist, deaths that are not consistent with the severity of a collision should not be dismissed.
Questionable Life-Threatening Injuries in Several Collisions In Past 24-Hours
This vehicle is an example of reported, life-threatening injuries that should not be expected.
Some collisions in the past 24-hours have reportedly resulted in life-threatening injuries that should not be expected.
As an analyst under contract to Transport Canada I studied the mechanisms by which persons sustained their injuries in motor vehicle collisions for 10 years. I was exposed to the detailed injury data of those who sustained fatal or serious injuries. My duties included documentation of vehicle interiors via measurements and photographs and then matching the list of injuries to their sources. Additionally, collision severity was also documented through detailed measurements of the extent of vehicle crush. Through these studies I am able to detect when the reported severity of injuries do not match with the expected severity of a collision. In the past 24 hours several collisions have occurred that do not match what should be expected given the severity of the collisions visible in photographs accompanied in the reports of those collisions.
An example is the vehicle shown above in which an occupant reportedly sustained life-threatening injuries. The collision was investigated by Haldimand OPP and reportedly occurred on Kohler Road. Threats to the safety of vehicle occupants can come from several factors and some can include the frailty of the individual. Thus age or poor health are two factors than can change the survivability outcome of an injured party. However life-threatening injuries are commonly known and reported based on the specific injury. For example the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) has been a widely known coding scheme that defines what injuries should be reported as serious, severe and critical. The rationale why police would report certain injuries as “life threatening” has to be based on some acceptable logic that is compatible with traditional standards such as the AIS. Therefore one has to assume that these reports are, to some degree, accurate and not misleading. Assuming so, life-threatening injuries would not be expected in the type of damage exhibited by the vehicle shown in the above photo.
In older times when vehicle safety systems were not as advanced, the failure to wear a seat-belt, along with the non-existence of air bags meant that a driver could be unlucky enough to sustain life-threatening injuries in this type of collision. This is partly due to the fact that additional damage might exist on the underside of the vehicle that is not visible and could relate to an increase in the level of severity. However the pictured vehicle is of a modern vintage, undoubtedly equipped with a variety of air bags and other interior enhancements. There should be little reason to expect that life-threatening injuries should occur in this collision severity. However there is an exception.
Late air bag deployment and an out-of-position (OOP) occupant have been known to create increased levels of injury in collisions of a minor severity. This is another one of those issues that is suppressed from public knowledge. Again, the reasoning of many is that the public need not know of these problems as such bad publicity is damaging toward the reputation of a safety feature that has been successful in preventing injury and death in so many instances. And this is the suspected issue in several other collisions that have occurred in the past 24 hours.
Another collision was reported on the OPP Twitter account which occurred near Puslinch, north of Hamilton, Ontario, as shown in the photo below.
While the view of this vehicle in not complete, it does not demonstrate a collision severity where life-threatening injuries should be expected.
Once again, there could be damage along the underside of the vehicle which could increase the collision severity. In contrast, the hood of the vehicle is relatively undeformed, there is no displacement of the A-pillars and there is no evidence of structural intrusion into the occupant space. These facts suggest a lower collision severity.
A third example (no photos available) is a collision involving an SUV that rear-ended a Mississauga Transit bus on Bloor Street just after midnight today. The SUV was blocked from view by a tarp and the collision could be of higher severity than the other two mentioned above. Even so, it would appear that we are dealing with a “barrier impact”, a description that is well-known in the collision-safety research community. A “barrier impact” is one that is comparable to the standard tests of government agencies that accelerate a vehicle into an immovable barrier to study its performance for safety compliance testing. Barrier impacts have classic characteristics and vehicles are designed specifically to obtain a “pass” on such tests so that they receive government approval for distribution in the host country. Because of the large distance of crushable structure that is available in such barrier impacts a lot can be done to protect the occupant from harm. So when it is reported that a male sustained fatal injuries in this barrier impact the alarm bells should ring. A properly seat-belted occupant with the modern features of multiple bags and other advancements means that it becomes difficult to cause fatal injuries to an otherwise health occupant who is of average, adult age and size. So what happened?
These are just several examples of collisions where more information is needed to confirm that all is as it should be. Unexpected and unreasonable levels of injury should not be left to pass by without further attention, investigation and knowledge of the voting public.
Fire at 2-Vehicle Collision Is A Warning Of Future Tragedy
The fact that 5 people escaped a vehicle fire with only minor injuries is not something we should cheer. It is only a matter of time when such an incident with become a future tragedy. The above photo taken by Spencer Taylor shows how a fire engulfed both vehicles after they collided at the intersection of Ron McNeil Line and Highbury Avenue just north east of St Thomas, Ontario this morning. The fact that all persons involved sustained only minor injuries indicates that the collision severity was not so great that a fire should have been inevitable. Therefore why did the fire occur? This is not something that police should take lightly. Transport Canada should be notified and a further investigation should be carried out before another fire results in more serious consequences.
Questionable Impact Performance of ET-Plus Guardrail Terminal Near Strathroy Ontario
The purpose for the installation of a guardrail and its terminal is so that it will prevent impacts with dangerous objects such as the struck tree in the background.
Once again an ET-Plus terminal manufactured by Trinity Highway Products of Dallas Texas has demonstrated its questionable safety performance. Yesterday morning, Tuesday, November 6, 2018 police reported that a car was westbound on Calvert Drive, south-west of Strathroy, Ontario. The female driver lost control of her car. The car crossed on the the south roadside where it reportedly hit a “guardrail” and then struck a tree. The female driver sustained life-threatening injuries. Given that guardrails are supposed to prevent impacts such as trees we decided to investigate. Furthermore, given the imprecision of descriptions by news media I was suspicious whether a guardrail was struck or whether the terminal of the guardrail was the actual point of impact.
I attended the collision site this afternoon, November 7th. My suspicions were confirmed, as shown in the above photo, that it was indeed the terminal of the guardrail that was struck and not the guardrail itself. Furthermore, the terminal was an ET-Plus which has had a considerable history controversy surrounding its performance. This continues to be my experience from examining a number of impacts over the past 4 years. There continue to be incidents of jamming of the terminal on the rail and thus preventing it from dissipating the collision energy in the manner it was designed to do.
In this latest incident the guardrail became jammed within the channel of the terminal, like it has done in a number of previous incidents I have examined. The photo below shows what happened in the present case as the ET-Plus terminal rotated past 90 degrees and thus made it impossible for the rail to pass through its throat. Only a very small length of the rail can be seen extruded from the throat of the terminal and this occurred before the system became jammed.
This metal rail is supposed to be squeezed through the throat of the terminal and come out in a flattened and curled shape. This is the process by which the kinetic energy of the striking vehicle is dissipated. Instead terminal has rotated to beyond 90 degrees with respect to the length of the rail and it became impossible for the rail to pass through the terminal.
If the terminal had performed properly a substantial amount of kinetic energy possessed by the vehicle would have been dissipated and thus the speed of the vehicle would have been reduced. Thus even if the car passed through the barrier the severity of the impact with the tree would have been lessened. The extent of damage to the tree can be seen the photo below.
Judging by the extent of damage visible at the tree, the female driver’s injuries were likely caused from this impact, more so than from impacting the ET-Plus terminal.Overall there continues to be evidence of questionable impact performance of ET-Plus terminals.
Lest We Forget: 6 Seat-Belted Dead, 3 Un-Belted Survive
In 1976 the Province of Ontario enacted legislation requiring the use of seat-belts. On a wintery April in 1979, a church-going family of six adults put on their seat-belts and set out in their Oldsmobile on Highway 2 west of Woodstock, Ontario. They became involved in a head-on crash with a Chevrolet Impala occupied by three males who were not wearing seat-belts. The result? All the six seat-belted family members were killed. The three, un-belted males survived.
When I began my work as an accident investigator with the University of Western Ontario Multi-Disciplinary Accident Research Team in the fall of 1980, I observed a filing cabinet containing previous investigations. One thick file was marked “Governors Road”. Highway 2 was known as Governors Road. As I came through discussions with team members the details of the bazaar and tragic case came forward. Even though every file was no less tragic, some were not as bazaar.
Even in the short year or so that I was working with the team it became clear that the wearing of seat-belts was a great benefit when involved in a major collision. So how could it be that six persons who were wearing their seat-belts could be killed and, in the same collision, three persons who were not wearing their seat-belts survived? It was perplexing.
What became revealed is that the family of six had a religious belief that their seat-belts would protect them. They had a religious belief that the government that legislated seat-belts must be obeyed. So they religiously put on their seat-belts over their winter coats. In those days the rear seat contained lap belts only. Similarly, the centre seating position of the front seat also contained a lap belt. Autopies revealed that the family members sustained fatal, abdominal injuries from their lap belts. And so began my education about seat-belts and blind faith.
Through the decades I came to understand what I originally understood. Seat-belts save lives. Through the decades they have saved thousands of lives in Ontario alone. But we need to understand the ferociousness with which major collisions occur and the tremendous forces that need to be dealt with in a split second. More importantly, we need to understand that the wearing of a seat-belt can kill you when you do not think about what you are doing.
Every winter Canadians put on their winter coats, jump in their motor vehicle, put on their seat-belts and rush to some important location. But they do not recognize, nor has anyone told them, how important it is to focus on the proper wearing of their seat-belts. Even the modern, three-point belt with a pre-tensioner and accompanied by a multitude of air bags may not protect you from fatal seat-belt injuries if you do not think about what you are doing.
In earlier times one might have heard the comment that one should leave a slight bit of slack in the adjusted position of the torso (shoulder) belt. Why? Because you do want your torso (chest, head) to become restrained before the legs and pelvis. Why? Because when your torso becomes restrained your lower body is not and as your lower body moves forward with respect to your upper body you “submarine” under your lap belt. In other words, the lap belt rides up onto your abdomen.
Let us be clear about the human abdomen. Looking from the front, there is nothing but soft tissue and vital organs. There is nothing but soft tissue until you reach your spine at the back of the abdomen. When major organs such as the liver, intestines, etc, receive a major force they rupture and tear. If you sustain such injuries in the rural environment you must get to an operating room in an extreme hurry and sometimes that is not possible. So you need to avoid those abdominal injuries.
Secondly, you need to understand that a lap belt was not meant to be placed on your abdomen. The lap belt was designed to be placed on the bony pelvis located just below the abdomen. So many times in my career the phrase “illiac crests” was ingrained in my head because this is where the lap belt must rest. It must rest below the crest of the bony ilium. If you place the lap belt above the bony illiac crests and you are involved in a major impact there is no engineering or medical miracle that can save you from major injury.
Thirdly, you need to understand that you cannot have slack in the lap belt, it must rest tightly against your body. Seat-belt slack will kill you. When your lap belt is slack you will submarine under your lap belt for the same reason as mentioned above, by allowing your lower body to move forward before your upper body. Modern engineering has helped with the equipping of “pre-tensioners” that will pull on the seat-belt webbing just before deceleration occurs and thus the slack is removed. But if you have misplaced your lap belt onto your abdomen beforehand, the pre-tensioner will not help you.
A critical point is that in wintertime occupants put their seat-belts over top of their heavy coats without thinking about the amount of slack that will be created. Think. When you put your seat-belt webbing over top of your heavy coat how much slack or your creating? How far is the webbing away from your body? You must unzip or unbutton your heavy coat and place it to the sides of your body and then you must pull on the webbing to bring it close to your skin, while also pushing it down so that it does not sit high onto your abdomen. This should be done every time you put on a seat-belt, even in summer conditions.
What is more important is that improper seat-belt use is more dangerous for children because children do not fit as well into the geometry of seat-belt systems made for adults. It took far too many years for booster cushions to become available and in those many years many children suffered fatal and major injuries. Even with booster cushions seat-belt placement and adjustment is crucial and parents need to understand this.
The phrase “Lest We Forget” was coined over the “war to end all wars” and Remembrance Day on November 11th in Canada is a time to reflect on the sacrifices of those millions who perished. Similarly, a vast number of motor vehicle occupants have perished. In many ways both sources of death have been needless. While it is important not to forget, we must also think about what it is that needs to be remembered. It needs to be remembered that each life is precious and it is critical to bring it to its natural, old age. Violent death of an otherwise healthy being is not natural, it is tragic, especially when it is unnecessary.
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