Car Found In Niagara River But No News About Condition of Driver
Why is there no information about the status of the driver found in a submerged car in the Niagara River?
It should not be surprising that no one outside of readers of the St Catharines newspaper would be aware that a person was found inside a submerged car in the Niagara River on the afternoon of Friday, February 9th, 2018. Certainly there was no other mention of the fact in any other news outlets. But even the newspaper could not inform anyone of the status of the occupant. “When, how, why and where the car entered the water remains under investigation by police”, as was noted in the newspaper article. As per past history it is unlikely that the public will ever be told about any “when, how, why or how” relating to this incident.
With the narrowing of news sources to just a few, the loss of professional journalists, and the inability to investigate but simply parrot what little information is provided by primary investigators, society is at a critical edge of being grossly misinformed about issues of major importance. Lack of information about road motor vehicle collisions and deaths is only the tip of the iceberg but it is indicative of the general need for the public to be properly and truthfully informed.
OPP Police Cruiser And ATV Collision in Lambton County – Nothing of Substance In Opening of Constable Sean Coughlan’s Trial
It is a controversial matter whenever Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) is up against a police constable and the news media know that such a story is capable of bringing new readers/viewers in the shrinking news media market.
The story is that OPP Constable Sean Coughlan has been charged by the SIU with criminal negligence and perjury with respect to a collision that occurred on June 22, 2016 “on a Dawn-Euphemia road in the southeast corner of Lambton County”. Although several news agencies have reported this story no one has actually mentioned the specific roadway where the collision occurred. Also, there appeared to be no mention by the various news organizations that the collision occurred in the few days after its occurrence.
Reporting on the opening day of the trial provided minimal, objective information about what actually transpired. Evidently an ATV rider, Edward Labadie, 25, of Bothwell, Ontario might have been pursued by Constable Coughlan in his cruiser and the specifics of this may be revealed in later days of the trial. It would appear that Constable Coughlan’s version of the event will be that the ATV rider lost control of his vehicle of his own accord resulting in Labadie’s serious head injuries. The alternative view that will likely be posed by the SIU is that Constable Coughlan was somehow involved in causing the crash and that he later perjured himself in failing to report how the events actually unfolded. Is that what will be presented in the future days of the trial? Who knows. Whenever trial proceedings occur there is often a slow release of murky details that lead readers/viewers of news information to speculate and assume. The title of the news article coming from Neil Bowen of the Sarnia Observer Newspaper read “Father of injured ATV rider suggests OPP cruiser hit son’s vehicle” and the article quoted the father, Chad Tunks, as saying his son looked “beaten up” suggesting in the minds of readers that the injuries were related to the police doing the beating and not due to a collision. These are large accusations.
Mr. Tunks also reported seeing skid marks at the accident location suggesting that they were related to the police cruiser during the accident. Meanwhile the defense lawyer, Phillip Millar, told Tunks that those skid marks were created by police during testing following the collision. These facts would appear to be simple to prove or disprove. OPP continually conduct post-collision skid-testing at accident sites to determine the co-efficient of friction of a road surface. A simple photograph of the marks could very quickly confirm which interpretation is correct.
Not unexpectedly, there was information from witnesses who will claim that the cruiser was as close as one or two car lengths behind the ATV to as far apart as two minutes of driving time. Discrepancies like these could be explainable if the observations were made at different times along the progress of the incident. But too often the courts continue to attribute too much importance to the comments of such witnesses without recognizing that independent objective facts are needed to support such comments before they should be believed.
There was mention made of blood alcohol testing and the belief by police that Labadie had been drinking and was possibly impaired at the time of the crash because of slurred speech and an alcohol odour. The apparently damaging consequence to that interpretation is that the blood sample “showed a zero blood-alcohol level”. Even though the sample was taken about two-and-a-half hours after the accident the highest reading that could possibly exist from elimination rates would be about 45 milligrams as testified by forensic toxicologist Marie Elliot. So there is some explaining required as to how police could make the impairment conclusion. A person who sustains facial fractures that ultimately result in significant brain injury is likely to exhibit slurred speech yet such conclusions about impairment have been made on previous occasions without any apparent recognition of the paradox.
A point that appears disturbing is that it was Labadie’s father, Chad Tunks, who reported the incident to the SIU and therefore it would be believed that police themselves did not report the incident to the SIU. The reasons why this occurred may or may not be publicly revealed but the lack of reporting of incidents must remain a concern outside of this particular incident.
Otherwise it appears that the OPP have not distanced themselves from Constable Coughlan and, at face value, it would appear that they may be supporting his version of the incident. If so then it lays the framework for a conflict between the OPP and SIU which is more disturbing. Whether Constable Coughlan’s cruiser rear-ended the ATV, as suggested in opening information by Edward Labadie, should be a simple matter to prove or disprove but the details of the problem may become apparent as the trial continues. However the facts unfold it would appear that either the OPP or the SIU have a misunderstanding of the evidence.
Questionable Vehicle Fires That No One Is Willing To Question
In the past 10 days there have been a number of questionable reports of vehicle fires that remain unexplained.
In a CBC News article from Carp, Ontario, a community located near Ottawa, a body was found inside a vehicle “that caught fire” on May 2, 2018. The very limited information was that arson and criminal investigators were looking into the case.
In an incident on Maple Grove Road in Cambridge, Ontario, on May 3, 2018, a crash involving a transport truck resulted in the truck being “engulfed in flames moments after the collision”. The driver of a car that had collided with the truck was trapped in his vehicle was luckily extricated by fire crews but was in critical condition. It was not made known whether the injuries to the trapped car driver were related to the impact or to the subsequent fire. The obvious issue is that the trapped driver would have been burned to death and further information should have been revealed on the issue.
In a fatal collision on Oxford Township Road 3 on the eastern outskirts of Woodstock, Ontario, a 19-year-old male driver of a 2007 Ford Fusion was reportedly ejected in a head on crash and was died. However the second vehicle, a 2011 Chevrolet Camaro reportedly caught fire and its driver had to be pulled from the vehicle by a passerby. The point is that in major collisions such as these persons can become trapped and cannot be extricated without the help of emergency personnel. So even though this appeared to be a minor fire event it could have been deadly to that Camaro driver.
In another fire reported by the London Free Press on May 8, 2018, a Ford Freestyle van was reportedly parked on Dundas Street near Adelaide Street when it suddenly caught fire while its occupants were shopping. The comment in the story was that the cause of the fire was unknown. Again, what if the fire had occurred in other circumstances where the van was occupied or if restrained children were inside? Such an event could have resulted in very tragic consequences but little attention was paid to it.
In another incident reported on May 11, 2018, CP24 News in Toronto reported that three vehicles were involved in a fire outside a company office. The only comment from police was that the fire was “not believed to be suspicious”. So does that suggest that if the fire was caused by a deliberate act we should worry but because it may not have been deliberate we should move on with our lives? Certainly further information should have been pursed as to how this fire started when it was not suspicious.
In a CBC News article authored by Susan Burgess, thousands of 2008-209 Mercedes Benz Smartcars will be recalled as a result of an number of fires originating at an insulating mat. One of those fires was experienced by Valerie Hovinga Bisset of Elmira, Ontario. The CBC article claimed:
“While Hovinga Bisset reported her fire to Transport Canada, the department declined to inspect her car, yet concluded it was not the result of a safety defect.”
Our observations suggest that the incidence of vehicle fires, whether as the result of collisions or otherwise, appear to be on the increase without much attention being paid to the fact. Every vehicle fire whether it involves the injury of a person or not, should be documented as it could relate to an pattern that might involve similar vehicles. With the decline of formal journalism in the public domain there is a serious concern that investigative journalism is not being fully involved in examining such issues.
Humboldt Broncos – Many Jump Onto Their Wagon
A photo taken by CBC news reportedly shows the Peterebilt truck involved in the Humboldt Broncos collision parked in a towing compound. Why is there no evidence of direct damage to this truck?
A photo taken by Jason Warick of CBC news provides the first available view of the struck side of the Peterbilt road tractor that was involved in the Humboldt Broncos collision last week. There appears to be absolutely no crush to the front or left side of this truck that can be related to the disintegration of the front end of the bus. In fact, the lack of damage is so obvious that it leads to the likely conclusion that this portion of the truck combination was not directly struck and that the front of bus may have made initial contact somewhere to the rear of the road tractor. This fact could have been resolved had police allowed some basic photos to be released before speculation mounted. The problem occurs repeatedly when officials insist on keeping almost every fact about major events like these secret while blaming the public and news media for jumping to conclusions.
The fact still remains, why does the front of the Broncos bus appear to have disintegrated? Even if it becomes revealed that an engine control module on the truck was not equipped with an event data recorder, or even if that capability was shut off, as it often is, a speed analysis can still be conducted in the conventional way of a momentum analysis. It can be difficult to judge the distance that the truck travelled from impact to rest however the distance visible in the post-impact photos does not suggest an extreme distance and therefore it does not suggest that the truck was travelling at an extreme speed at the time of impact with respect to the reported 100 km/h posted maximum speed. And we still do not know about what decelerations might have occurred before the truck reached the impact. But the combined speeds of the truck and bus will need to be known to further evaluate why the bus structure disintegrated. We do not agree that the public should stop speculating. Speculation is the fire that burns the official’s butts and pressures them toward providing the objective information that might otherwise be left unreported.
Surprisingly there has actually been some beneficial questioning and analysis performed by some news agencies that rarely exists. Several news agencies have now focused on the issue of the blockage created by the trees at the south-east quadrant of the intersection and they have also raised awareness to the six persons who died at this intersection in a collision in 1997. It has been reported that both roadways were signed with maximum speeds of 100 km/h. At that speed a vehicle travels 27.8 metres every second or just over 83 metres in 3 seconds. It could be a simple process of starting from the intersection of the two roads move backwards 83 metres along each road and then make an observation whether a person standing at that location on the one road can see a person standing at that location on the other road. If the trees create a blockage of that line of sight then we suggest there is a problem. Even with a braking system that is fully functional, a truck can generally not attain a deceleration rate greater than 0.6 g during maximum braking. Thus the truck or bus could need almost 50 metres of maximum braking in order to come to stop, without including the usual delay of 0.5 seconds or more that is needed for the truck/bus to begin braking after the brake pedal is applied. If we add a 1.0 second perception-response delay (27.8 metres) to that 50 metres we already have a minimum distance of almost 78 metres to bring a truck or bus to a stop even in the most favourable scenarios. So where is the edge of the trees? Someone who lives near the site or any news reporter could easily measure the edge of the trees with respect to the perpendicular location of each roadway centre-line. But even this basic information is not available.
Despite not having any reasonable site measurements we have conducted an analysis of the above scenario using the general dimensions available from the Google Maps view of the site. We have taken the aerial view shown in our news posting of April 8th, 2018 and we have added the analysis as shown in the view below. Since no site measurements are available we simply used the Google measurement tool to obtain the distance from the centre of the intersection to the driveway of the residence south of the intersection and found that to be about 78 metres. This 78 metres is shorter than the 83 metres needed for a 3-second pre-impact observation time discussed above. Using a “circle” tool we created two circles with a diameter of 78 metres and placed their edges at the centre of the intersection. Therefore the opposing edge of each circle indicates a location 78 metres along each roadway. From this 78-metre-location we then drew a diagonal line between these two 78-metre points (in bright pink below) to show what the line of sight would be from this location. Clearly one can see that the actual line of sight is nowhere close to what it should be. The grouping trees is clearly blocking that line of sight from just 78 metres.
0.02 Over The Limit Confirms Why Hart Family Perished Over Cliff – “Supper’s Waitin’ at Home And I Gotta Get To It”
After much investigation it perhaps was not intentional that Jennifer Hart purposely accelerated over the cliff of the West Coast Highway near Westport California March 26, 2018 and killed all eight members of her family including herself. The obvious reason was because her blood alcohol level was 0.02 mg above the 0.08 mg threshold that defines someone as legally impaired in California. So the case is closed. Bobby and his wife Vicki Lawrence would be proud.
Humboldt Broncos Crash Site Questions Need To Be Answered
Important questions surrounding the site where at least 15 persons perished in a bus crash in central Saskatchewan need to be answered now before focus is turned away from this tragedy.
It is now known internationally that a bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos hockey team came into collision with a tractor-trailer at the intersection of Saskatchewan Highways 35 and 335 approximately 30 kilometres north of Tisdale, Saskatchewan on April 6, 2018. Of the 29 persons on-board the bus 15 have now been officially counted as deceased and the rest have been injured. The truck driver was reportedly uninjured.
While the families, friends and even strangers are shocked by the magnitude of this tragedy, focus has to be placed on the objective facts of how and why this occurred and essentially nothing of substance has been revealed. Even the general layout of the crash scene was not provided in any photos except for closer views of the two vehicles at their rest positions.
Progressively it became clear that the two vehicles were involved in a crash at the intersection of two highways, Saskatchewan Highways 35 and 335. Study of the vehicle final rest positions indicates that the truck travelled further from the intersection than the bus and given the truck’s rest position the most likely scenario is that it was westbound on Highway 335 and passed through the stop sign for its direction of travel. Similarly, the most probable travel direction for the bus would be northbound on Highway 35 and this would be consistent with its reported travel destination of Nipawin where a hockey was to take place that evening.
The Google Maps view below shows a general view of the scenario as presently believed to be accurate according to Gorski Consulting analysis.
Preliminary opinion of the collision scenario as assessed by Gorski Consulting.
If these facts are accurate then one must study the grouping of trees and brush on the south-east quadrant of the intersection to determine whether their blockage of the line of sight was inappropriate. Generally, this appropriateness is defined by establishing a “visibility triangle” created by the expected approach speeds of the vehicles and ensuring that the vegetation is cut back within the defined triangle. This issue may be discussed at another time.
What raises some questions is what has been found from a Google Maps view of the site shown in May of 2013.
Shown below is a Google Maps Street View image looking south-east of the intersection at an area of the east roadside, just south of the intersection. Two facts become apparent.
View looking south-east at the intersection of Saskatchewan Highways 35 and 335.
Number one, note that there is a flashing beacon attached to the post which holds the stop sign in the foreground. Such flashing beacons do not exist at every intersection. They become installed because someone has made a decision the traffic situation required the installation of this beacon. We ask readers to consider what traffic situations would have to exist that the installation of this beacon was required?
Number two, note in the background of the above photo that there is a grouping of white crosses erected on the east roadside of Highway 35. The image below provides a better view of those crosses.
View of the grouping of 5 or 6 crosses erected on the east roadside of Highway 35 just south of the intersection of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash.
Our question is: Why do these crosses exist? What is typically implied by the erection of such crosses?
We will not provide any further comment at this time.
UPDATE: April 8, 2018; 1740 Hours
It has taken us aback as there was actually an analytical media article provided by the National Post newspaper “Staff” with photos of the site attributed to Jonathan Hayward of the Canadian Press posted earlier this afternoon that provided similar comments about the findings at the intersection as we posted here. While sarcasm seems inappropriate in the wake of this terrible tragedy it is all we can muster when we observe the lack of inquiry into how this collision occurred and why it occurred.
The National Post filled in some blanks that we could not fill with respect to the crosses at the southeast quadrant of the intersection. The National Post indicated that the crosses related to the deaths of 6 persons in 1997.
The National Post article focused readers attention to the grouping of trees at the southeast quadrant and referred to the “limiting of visibility on both approaches to the intersection”.
The National Post article also focused its readers to the flashing beacons above the stop signs while also not commenting further.
What we are also impressed about is the National Post staff actually focused it readers on a troubling fact that we also observed but had not yet mentioned. The front of the bus was essentially “obliterated”, the term used by the Staff. What an incredible observation from journalists who are not experts in crash reconstruction. Furthermore this “Staff” also showed a closer view of the front end of the truck demonstrating that there was almost no crush at its front end and the driver was reportedly not physically injured. These are incredible observations that are educational to the National Post’s readers and we are amazed that this was actually posted.
Now, further about this issue of structural integrity that the National Post introduced. When two vehicles collide the force between them is shared. This is a re-phrasing of Newton’s 2nd law of motion. Those shared forces are equal and opposite. So the impact force that the truck experienced is also the impact force that the bus experienced. Does something not look right here? Look at the photos of the damage to the front end of the bus and look at the front end of the truck. The front end of the truck looks essentially undamaged, while the bus front end has been obliterated. Does that make any sense? Would you like to be the occupant of the vehicle that became obliterated? So where are the questions from the rest of the world, other than the National Post. Why is only one, single, news entity on this planet was able to form these important observations?
As we indicated earlier, there are important questions that need to be answered in this terrible crash. And there have been numerous important questions that needed to be answered in many previous incidents that we have tried to illuminate many times before, but never quite as horrific as in the present case. While we spill our sorrow can we also not act to undercover why these innocent persons had to die? Is that too much to ask of all of us?
Bus structures have been failing on numerous occasions without anyone saying a word of concern. Our failure to act on those previous occasions may well have contributed to the present tragedy.
But we need more facts. And we should demand more facts. We need to know how much of the damage seen on the bus is related to emergency personnel work to free and triage the occupants. But this stone must not be left unturned.
Thank you National Post Staff for being the only ones to turn on a light in this very dark room.