Preparations for Bicycle Testing on East London Bike Path
Overall view of site of new bicycling path where testing will be conducted.
Gorski Consulting is conducting a variety of testing involving bicycling on vertical alignments on roadways and bicycling paths. Testing is being prepared along a new section of a bicycling path completed in the summer of 2018 in east London, as shown in the above graphic of London, Ontario.
The graphic below shows the general alignment of the new path which is approximately 1 kilometer long and extends southward from Trafalgar Road in Kiwanis Park.
View of approximate alignment of the bicycling path that commences southward from Trafalgar Road in east London, crosses the Canadian National railway line and connects with a pre-existing section of path.
The graphic below is a Google Maps image looking south from the bridge at Trafalgar Road that crosses Pottersburg Creek. This view was taken in July, 2016, before the construction of the path was begun.
View looking south at the north end of the bicycling path at Trafalgar Road in July, 2016, before the path construction was begun.
It has been observed that steep vertical alignments of roadways and bicycling paths pose a challenge to cyclists. Data is needed to examine how cyclists travel up and down such alignments and what safety hazards may develop. In preparation for this study the 1 kilometer section of the new path has been marked at 25 metre intervals, north and south of the Canadian National Railway bridge which is approximately in the middle of the new path. This new bridge was chosen as the starting point of testing because of its high altitude. Riders would be descending from the bridge whether travelling north or south.
The photo below shows a view of the CN railway bridge looking south. A typical marker showing “25” metres is with reference to the north end of the bridge.
View looking south from 25 metres north of the CN railway bridge.
The photo below shows the bridge from the south side, looking north, or opposite to the view shown above.
View looking north from 25 metres south of the CN railway bridge.
The photo below shows the section of the bicycle path looking south from 25 metres south of the CN railway bridge. The downgrade along with a sweeping left curve provide some challenging conditions where cycling speeds are likely to be elevated.
Looking south from 25 metres south of the CN Bridge the bicycle trail takes a significant downgrade as well as a sweeping left curve.
The photo below shows a view looking south from 75 metres north of the CN railway bridge. Again riders experience a significant downgrade while traveling toward the camera and this will create significant speeds of bicyclists.
View looking south from 75 metres north of the CN railway bridge.
A particular concern and interest relates to the conditions of the new path as cyclists travel northward from the CN railway bridge and toward the underpass at Trafalgar Road.
The photo below shows the downgrade of the path at 75 metres north of the railway bridge. The path meanders in the background and reaches the Trafalgar Road underpass at approximately 300 metres north of the CN railway bridge.
View looking north along the descent from 75 metres north of the CN railway bridge.
Elevated speeds of bicyclists are expected as they continue to travel northward along the downgrade. As shown in the photo below the path levels off near the 200 metre location north of the CN bridge and then it makes a right turn to travel toward the Trafalgar Road underpass in the background. Even though there is a leveling off of the downgrade it is expected that cyclists will still be travelling at an elevated speed in this zone.
View looking north at 200 metres north of the CN railway bridge.
As shown below, the path makes a right turn toward a bridge that crosses Pottersburg Creek just before making a dramatic left turn to go into the underpass of Trafalgar Road. The downslope is increased slightly in the vicinity of the bridge and this should make the left turn challenging at the expected higher cyclist speeds.
View looking north from 275 metres north of the CN railway bridge.
The photo below shows how the path comes to a “T” terminal point and riders must turn sharply to the left to go down into the Trafalgar Road underpass.
View looking north at the north end of the bridge over Pottersburg Creek. The “300” metre marker can be seen in the background where the path makes a sudden left turn to go down into the underpass at Trafalgar Road.
The change in direction of the path for northbound cyclists into the underpass is challenging due to the downgrade along with other factors. The photo below shows some of the problems. The line of sight to travel into the underpass is very limited.
View looking north at the Trafalgar underpass.
The photo below shows the extent of the downgrade, curvature and the lack of sight lines for northbound cyclists travelling toward the camera. Persons walking within the underpass will not be seen and corrections by northbound cyclists could direct them into the railing at elevated speed.
View looking south from the Trafalgar underpass.
The photo below provides an overall view of the bike path as it approaches Trafalgar Road and the “T” terminal of the path.
View looking south from the Trafalgar Road bridge showing the bridge crossing Pottersburg Creek and the “T” terminal point where northbound cyclists must make a sharp left turn to go into the underpass.
These photos provide some of the reasons why Gorski Consulting has chosen this site to conduct the bicycling testing which we hope will be discussed in further news items and articles on the Gorski Consulting website.
Snake Hill in London Ontario May Bite Future Cyclists
London politicians may have misunderstood the future bite of this snake.
A well-meaning decision to re-align the difficult curves of “Snake Hill” along the west portion of Commissioners Road in London, Ontario may lead to dangerous conditions for cyclists riding on the steep downgrade that City staff and politicians may have under-estimated. The decision to make the re-alignment will not cause actual work to begin until 15 to 20 years in the future so there should be some leeway to consider what problems may be created.
While the actual re-alignment of the road is a separate matter, City staff and politicians appear to have agreed that, once the road is re-aligned the original road will remain to be turned into a multi-use path for cyclists and pedestrians. And this is the main concern: the safety of the cyclists.
A Google Maps view of the west portion of Commissioners Road in London referred to as “Snake Hill”. The steepness of its vertical slopes is not represented in this aerial view.
The London Free Press quoted several residents in their article on the proposed changes. The general consensus is that the 11.8 percent slope of the hill is a safety problem and the realignment will improve the slope making it more gradual. Many vehicles such as transit buses, truck and emergency vehicles have been prevented from using the curve because of the safety concerns. And cyclists must avoid the curve for similar reasons. So everyone is quoted as being happy with the progress of improving the curve.
What has not been discussed is what will happen when the original and dangerous roadway is turned into a pathway for exclusive use by cyclists and pedestrians. While the average slope was estimated at 11.8 percent, there are undoubtedly smaller segments that are steeper than that average. The slope was deemed to be a safety hazard for motorized vehicles even though drivers of such vehicles can place their transmissions into a lower gear and thus neutralize the effects of gravity to some degree.
But bicycles do not have a lower gear on downslopes. The gears that bikes have change the effort required to pedal up slopes, not down slopes. Other than braking there is nothing that a cyclist can do to prevent gravity from increasing the speed of a cycle. As an example, recent bicycle testing conducted on a less steep hill in London (Meadowlily Road in east London) showed that at an average downslope of just 6.5 percent a cycle, commencing from a stopped position, would cause a bicycle to reach speeds in the order of 45 km/h in 400 metres from coasting alone. What speed could be attained if a cyclist approached the Snake Hill curve at a typical speed of 18 to 20 km/h and then performed a small amount of pedaling before recognizing the extent of the slope?
The problem for cyclists is exacerbated because a cycle is very dependent on the conditions of the surface on which it travels to maintain control of the cycle. And this is crucial on a steep downslope that might be misjudged. Road surface conditions such as water, dirt or sand or any degree of roughness or patching of the pavement could mean that a cyclist could be destabilized. Also braking would be compromised because there is a danger in braking a cycling while travelling over such surface conditions that is not shared by a 4-wheeled motor vehicle.
So if the slopes of Snake Hill were dangerous to the motor vehicle driving public, why is it OK to cause cyclists to use it when they are in even greater danger than motor vehicle drivers? Hopefully someone will think about his before many meaningful shovels are but in the earth.
Successful Impact of Roadside Barrier But Driver Still Sustains Serious Injury
This OPP photo is an example of an impact to a guardrail terminal where substantial energy was dissipated in a controlled manner.
There are not very many success stories being observed when it comes to vehicle impacts with guardrail terminals. Yesterday the Ontario Provincial Police uploaded a photo on their twitter account showing a potentially successful impact. The problem is, the driver still sustained serious injuries.
What is visible in the OPP photo is that the barrier bar has been split into individual sections and these sections have deformed into individual, curled ribbons. This is the type of deformation that causes the kinetic energy of an impacting vehicle to be dissipated in a controlled manner. Although there is damage to the front end of the vehicle that damage is moderate as exemplified by the lack of crush to the hood, no significant deformation around the left front wheel well, and the A-pillars are in their pre-crash state. So both the exterior of the vehicle and the barrier would appear to have done their job in working together to dissipate energy in a controlled manner. Such a combined dissipation means that the vehicle decelerates over a longer time and distance and therefore there is greater opportunity for the safety systems in the vehicle interior to perform in further reducing the severity of the forces exerted on the driver’s body.
So there is a little bit of mystery as to why the 81-year-old female driver of this vehicle sustained serious injury. It is not unusual to note that as persons age they are more frail and are prong to higher severities of injury than a younger person. But even so the severity of the forces that should have been exerted in this crash would be quite low provided that the interactions with the seat-belt and air bag systems were as expected.
This is another example where further probing is needed to determine what the specific injuries were and if they are the type that can be deemed acceptable. As an example, rib fractures might take place which are adjacent to each other and, because there is more than one fracture it ups the severity level of injury according to scales such as the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS). Yet if the driver had weak bones due to arthritis those injuries might be deemed understandable if they are not comminuted or displaced.
It is explanations such as these that can inform the public of the status of the safety systems around them and whether they are performing properly.
Were Six Fatalities in Jasper Alberta Crash Fire-Related?
This Lamborghini fire on Lakeshore Blvd in Toronto was photographed by Koohyar Deylamsalehi. What if an occupant was trapped in the vehicle and could not escape? Do we have an obligation to take active steps to prevent it happening in the future?
Remorse over a tragedy does not mean that we fail to inquire how and why the tragedy occurred. For the most obvious reason that we need to ensure that we have done all we can to prevent a similar happening in the future.
Thus it is necessary to determine why six persons perished in a head-on crash on Highway 93 near Jasper, Alberta on Tuesday, August 7, 2018. It was reported that a northbound van was carrying five family members including Nick Copeland and Angela Elkins who both perished. A head-on collision occurred with an unidentified southbound vehicle in which four of the occupants also perished. A comment mentioned in a CBC news article indicated “Both vehicles caught fire”.
Head-on collisions can be tremendously severe. In the most severe cases, which are extremely rare, two vehicles could potentially strike each other at speeds approaching 100 km/h. If the impact is “central”, or the opposing forces are directed at each vehicle’s centre-of-gravity, it is possible that all the pre-crash speed of each vehicle could be lost from the impact itself with no additional post-impact travel. This is the most severe possibility but it rarely occurs. In reality there is almost never such a central impact and some post-impact travel occurs meaning that not all of the vehicles’ speeds are lost in the impact itself. In fact, a majority of head-on collisions involve substantial post-impact motions meaning that a collision is rarely as severe as it potentially could be.
In terms of occupant protection vehicle manufacturers had made tremendous strides in making vehicles safer for occupants in a head-on collisions. The design of the vehicle’s structure is such that it dissipates the most kinetic energy, but importantly, in a controlled manner, while taking into account the percentages of collision severity a vehicle is likely to be involved in. Vehicle interiors have progressed through numerous improvements that also attempt to provide a controlled ride-down of the occupant’s body in the very limited time of just over a 1/10 of a second in which many severe head-on collisions occur. Not only does this controlled ride down involve air bags and seat belts but there is an understanding that knee bolsters, collapsing of steering columns and design of seats can all work together as a system to provide that controlled ride-down. We only need to look at the simple fact that in the mid-1970s there were approximately 7400 fatalities in motor vehicle collisions in Canada while in recent years that has now dropped to slightly under 2000.
Despite all this good news, advanced technology can still be defeated when something intrudes during the crash into the occupant compartment. It has been a long-standing fact that structural intrusion has been correlated with increased injury thus much effort has been placed on making sure that structural parts of the vehicle do not intrude the occupant space. Unfortunately there are two other types of intrusions that are not commonly understood as intrusions. Those being from water and from fire.
Water intrusion is what happens when occupants of a vehicle escape the severity of a crash but then the vehicle plunges into a body of water. It is not uncommon for vehicles to roll and come to rest upside down thus making even a very shallow depth of water life-threatening.
The other intrusion, fire, can also be as lethal. While attempting to protect vehicle occupants via crushing and dislocation of the vehicle body manufacturers have created the situation where this crushing and dislocation causes the doors of a vehicle to become jammed and/or certain portions of the vehicle entrap certain portions of an occupant’s body such as the lower legs. This entrapment can be acceptable in most cases when the alternative is the transfer of kinetic energy to the occupant’s body from the impact which leads to increased levels of injury. However when a fire erupts the situation is obviously problematic. Without an easy way to escape a vehicle the occupants who might have survived a severe crash may now become burned alive. This is not a pleasant topic of discussion and this is why it is not discussed.
In many ways when we avoid a topic that is unpleasant to us we can create the environment which prolongs its existence. In many instances when a fire is the cause of a crash victim’s death or injury it is not mentioned. No one questions the investigators whether the fire was preventable or whether there was some mechanism or factor that could have been changed to prevent the occurrence. Also no one questions what actions have been put forth to document the results and keep track of them much like we would do when we suspect a typical vehicle defect.
It would not make sense for example, to note that a wheel fell off a vehicle prior to a crash and do nothing even though one has observed that three previous crashes with the same vehicle also involved pre-crash wheel separations. In those instances the data is documented and further investigations are carried out to correct the problem. This process should not change simply because the defect could be a pre-mature fire and it has resulted in ugly consequences that we do not what to discuss. All motor vehicles deaths are ugly incidents. We have an obligation to investigate them properly and to take action to reduce them and their consequences.
In the present case the crash on Highway 93 near Jasper has all the indications that the four occupants of the unidentified vehicle that collided with the van may have sustained their fatal injuries due to the fire, or at least the fire contributed to the deaths. The possibility should be confirmed or denied. This issue is being ignored by the news media and it should not be ignored. When we bring that fact to light a momentum and awareness is developed that leads to change. Failing to create that momentum and awareness we become the instruments that prevent change from occurring.
How Many Wettlaufers Are There Flying Under The Fatality Causation Radar?
Elizabeth Wettlaufer was a nurse in Ontario who was convicted of a number of homicides in nursing homes. It has recently been revealed that her acts could have been detected if coroner’s inquests were held to examine the deaths that appeared suspicious. However, Ontario’s chief coroner, Dr. Dirk Huyer testified at Wettlaufer’s trial that budget cuts had resulted in reductions in the number of inquests from 3300 in 2007 to only 927 in 2015. It was not so much that budget cuts occurred but that those cuts and the decrease in oversight was not revealed to the general public. This issue is not only relevant to possible murders in nursing homes. It is relevant to all incidents of death in Ontario.
With respect to motor vehicle traffic fatalities there has been a continual lack of reporting of important facts about how persons have come to their deaths. Scant information is revealed by police and official news media report those facts often without any further investigation or questioning. An obvious problem is that many news organizations are seeing declines in ad revenue and therefore cuts have to be made. Numerous small and independent news gathering organizations have been shut down resulting in only a few mega-media reporting the same news story in almost every local establishment under their umbrella. The lack of independent reporting is an obvious concern when there is a need to question the cause of a death.
In recent months a small and independent newspaper, the Aylmer Express, attempted to gain further information into the July, 2017 death of a driver where it was deemed that he committed suicide when he drove off a cliff and into Lake Erie. The facts were not exactly clear as the OPP were also following the vehicle just before the collision. Additionally, a checkerboard sign which ought to be posted at the end of a road did not appear to exist where the vehicle left the road. These were serious matters that the Aylmer Express journalists attempted to clarify. However when the journalists passed through a police road closure they were arrested. A trial of the journalists was reportedly to take place this week but no news has emerged.
Even this weekend there have been several questionable traffic deaths that needed further explanation. CP24 News in Toronto is typically a more reliable source of many traffic fatalities in the Toronto area. However they reported yesterday, August 5th, 2018, that a fatal collision had occurred on McLaughlin Road North between Old School Road and Mayfield Road in Caledon but that police had not released any details about the crash and the area was closed off by police barricades. However, Gord Edick of Global News, was able to reach the site and a photograph was shown in a Global News article showing a vehicle stopped on the shoulder of a road and it was obvious that the vehicle had been totally consumed by a fire. It was reported that “human remains” were found in the vehicle. The photograph showed evidence of some possible minor damage to the rear of the vehicle but this could provide no explanation why such minor damage should cause the start of a fire or why the occupant of the vehicle was not able to escape the fire.
In another weekend incident, three fatalities occurred when it was reported that an SUV attempted to make a left turn and was struck by Corvette at the intersection of Highway 50 and Countryside Drive near Brampton/Vaughan. The SUV then struck a pole with its left side. Two children, aged 7 and 12 were killed along with a 47-year-old female driver. Photos suggested that two impacts occurred to the SUV that were of substantial severity. Such facts are not common. Additionally those who are familiar with the sources of severe and fatal injuries would know that children in the noted age groups are not as well protected because of their growing out of child seats and booster cushions while also suffering from poor seat belt geometry that is often designed form adult bodies. When children of this age group sustain fatal injuries under collision circumstances like these further questions should be asked because we want to reduce the likelihood that these tragedies will not repeat themselves.
These are examples of “Elizabeth Wettlaufers” in the world of traffic fatalities. They are hidden causes of a death. How many of these Elizabeth Wettlaufers exist in the realm of traffic deaths? Are some of these actual homicides? Are they due to some form of motor vehicle defect? Are there other traffic fatalities out there that are related to other unknown sources? Independent investigations of death have been reduced. While basic reporting is parroted by news media from information provided by police, little or no, actual, additional investigation is conducted by news gathering organizations. This is a recipe for the continuance of “Elizabeth Wettlaufer Causes of Death” that could remain hidden with little public knowledge of the facts.
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