Ontario’s new Police Act bill has been passed but it is uncertain whether its changes will be beneficial. Increasing the power of certain oversight bodies does not necessarily increase the benefits to society when monitoring and evaluating police actions. The question still boils down to an improvement in justice to all, including the police.

Ontario’s new Police Act bill has reportedly been passed and this marks a major overhaul that has not taken place in over 25 years. What it means exactly is not clear. While certain bodies such as police chiefs, the Special Investigations Unit and the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIRPD) may have greater power, that does not necessarily translate to greater justice and fairness which must be the ultimate goal of any changes. The importance of transparency was discussed in a report by Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Michael Tulloch but it is not clear how this transparency will be improved by the new bill. Will justice be seen to be done or will the public be asked to continue to stumble in the dark while improper decisions are withheld from their evaluation?

Why bother with more studies and statistics and data and ….We are all experts on why pedestrian collisions and their associated injuries and fatalities are on the increase. And there lies  the problem. We always knew what the problem was and we were just waiting for something to back up our preconceived conclusions. This is good science and policy.

Why are police and news media not informing the public that the harpooning of the vehicle by a guardrail where a fatality occurred earlier this morning is not an acceptable consequence?

Police and news media seem to be avoiding the obvious as a vehicle was reportedly harpooned by a guardrail in the northbound lanes of Hwy 400 north of Toronto, Ontario earlier this morning, February 25, 2018. OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt was quoted as saying that the vehicle “slammed into a guardrail”. That is a creative phrasing of the obvious fact that guardrails are meant to deflect the travel direction of  a striking vehicle while reducing the vehicle’s speed in a gradual manner. How can the harpooning of the vehicle be called “slamming” as this provides a very obvious misinformation that a penetration of the vehicle occurred.

Yet this is the closest that anyone else has come to saying anything about what transpired as all news agencies appear to be silent on this issue. Where is the informative, investigative journalism that shouts out “Hey wait a minute, this is not supposed happen. How did this occur? Why did this occur?” This was a 19-year-old occupant of a vehicle that had a lifetime to live, and perished under questionable circumstances, does no one care about that?

Oddly, we had just completed posting the news item below regarding the dangers of harpooning when reports of the current tragedy came to light. However the harpooning of a vehicle by a guardrail when the impact appears to be along the length of the rail is quite peculiar. There have been numerous incidents of reported harpooning of vehicles when the end of the rail is struck and this was discussed on this webpage a couple of days ago with respect to the ET-Plus guardrail terminals.

But that does not appear to be the case in the present instance as photos of the guardrail in the present case appear to show that the rail separated somewhere along its length. This would normally suggest that there was a weak point in the anchorage of the rail, possibly where two lengths of rail are joined together. However this is all speculation as there have been no reasonable photos of the rail where it separated and there is no opportunity  for anyone to examine it close up before it was repaired. This is a troubling situation as any defect of the guardrail could be hidden from public knowledge.

This impact damage to the east railing at Wharncliffe Road and Horton Street in London in February, 2018 has not raised any safety eyebrows.

Gorski Consulting has made several references to the dangers of roadside rails that, upon impact, create an exposed end of the rail that can harpoon a striking vehicle. This danger was highlighted in a 1989 research paper co-authored by Zygmunt. M. Gorski and the University of Western Ontario Accident Research Team. Warnings were also provided of the exposed ends of such a rail that continues to exist on the busy Oxford Street at its intersection with Quebec Street in London.

This view of the exposed end of the railing at Oxford and Quebec Streets from October , 2016, remains unchanged to the present day.

We have previously discussed the harpooning of a vehicle by such a railing from an impact in February of 2016 at the intersection of Wharncliffe Road and Horton Street.

View of the undamaged east railing at Wharncliffe and Horton with the impacted west railing in the background (Feb., 2016)

While the possibility of harpooning of an occupant of a vehicle is not frequent it only needs to be demonstrated that its effects can be extreme, as shown in a figure taken from our 1989 research paper shown below.

View showing the passenger and the metal bar that pierced his chest. Likely this person survived but the consequences could easily have been fatal.

As we have essentially no influence on those who install and maintain these systems all we can do is warn the public through this website.

Gorski Consulting has monitored the developments relating to the controversy surrounding the ET-Plus guardrail terminal manufactured by Trinity Highway Products of Dallas Texas since the summer of 2014. At the time we became aware of allegations that the ET-Plus could be defective and dangerous we began conducting surveys of the installations in Southern Ontario and subsequently we examined a number of ET-Plus terminals that were damaged from vehicle impacts. All this has been reported in a number of articles that have been uploaded to this website.

As the saying goes, we have no horse in this race. It is of no particular interest to us whether anyone is found at fault for anything. The closest we came to placing our boots on one side of the fence or the other is that we were contacted by McKenzie Lake, which instigated the Canadian class action law suit against Trinity, and we were asked to document the dimensions of several ET-Plus terminals in the Stratford, Ontario area. We were also contacted by Global News in Toronto where a TV segment was prepared to be aired on their “16X9” documentary series that focused on the ET-Plus. In fact the footage that Global news shot during our meeting and field exercise was never aired on their program: another lost moment of fame, if one cared about that. The point is that we have treated this controversy no differently than any other allegation, civil suit or criminal matter: we simply told the truth based on observable fact.

Our field studies demonstrated that, regardless of whether  there were some secret alterations to the design of the ET-Plus that were not revealed by Trinity to the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, there were some results in the in-service functioning of the system that raised our concerns. The ET-Plus was not functioning in the manner in which it was shown to function in controlled testing. In a large number of instances, upon impact, the rear end of the ET-Plus terminal was deforming the top of the guardrail before the rail had a chance to reach the throat of the terminal and this prevented the rail from passing through the terminal as demonstrated in the controlled testing. In fact we do not know if this was the mechanism that caused the result, it is just a suspicion, and other factors could also be at play. But whatever factors were at play the bottom line is that the terminal was not functioning as it was claimed to function.

Sure enough, other products that exist on the roadside might also not function in the manner they are illuminated to perform in controlled testing. Who knows? Certainly we do not have the resources to study all of the roadside structures and this is a major point. No one knows, and no one is in a position to know, except those specific entities with deep pockets who have the resources to know. Trinity Highway Products has the deep pockets to know however they are not the only ones. The U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) should have infinitely deep pockets because, like any government agency, they simply reach their hands into everyone’s pockets, regardless of whether those pockets are deep. So did the FHWA administration know what they were required to know?

It has been indicated that a jury’s verdict in favour of Mr. Joshua Harmon, and against Trinity, was overturned by a higher U.S. court citing the fact that the FHWA had “approved” the installation of the ET-Plus on U.S. highways. Thus because of this tacit approval blame could not be placed on Trinity. In our view this reasoning should be of grave concern. It was the FHWA which failed to conduct proper evaluations, including in-service documentations of the ET-Plus, which led to the uncertainty about this structure’s adequate performance. Not until many years later, after Mr. Harmon had commenced his legal actions, did FHWA begin to search for performance data from other entities – data that they should have had if they were the agency responsible for determining which roadside structures would be safely installed on U.S. highways. Even upon request of that data it was clear to us that this data was insufficient and thus this led to a selected group of experts to claim that there was no indication that the ET-Plus was any more dangerous than any other roadside structure.

This is a common fact about data and research. Many official agencies sponsor research not to uncover a specific problem, but rather to create confusing data that, upon analysis, reveals that nothing can be concluded. It is a true tragedy when these actions result in the needless loss of innocent lives.

What remains is that perhaps thousands of installations of ET-Plus terminals remain on North American highways without any proper determination whether they will needlessly injure and influence the death of future road users. If those installations are, in fact, no less dangerous than any others then Trinity has also suffered because there has been an obvious decrease in the number of installations of ET-Plus terminals throughout most jurisdictions. Was this done because of the legal issues? Was it done because those jurisdictions found out that there were safety problems but decided not to reveal them for fear of being sued? No one will know.

In the end this does nothing to provide a proper justice to those road users who have sustained major injuries or to the families and friends of those who have lost their lives. The need, that should be obvious to everyone, is that a proper documentation of instances involving impacts of ET-Plus terminals must be conducted and made public and that has not occurred.