Wortley at Mountsfield Traffic Study – Volume & Speed Results From first Video Session
Recently Gorski Consulting was approached by a local group of residents with a request for a traffic safety study for their area. Their concern was with respect to the intersection of Wortley Road and Mountsfield Drive and specifically a newly-installed pedestrian crossing that may not be providing the safety for the children attending the nearby Mountsfield Public School. Safety concerns have been expressed by residents in other neighbourhoods in London and this provides an opportunity to demonstrate what can be done to conduct a proper, objective, safety study. As such Gorski Consulting agreed to become involved.
The Wortley-Mountsfield Traffic Study was previously introduced in a Gorski Consulting website article (“Wortley at Mountsfield Traffic Study – Introduction”) posted on this Gorski Consulting site on July 6, 2026. There we described the six camera locations and the two 50-metre segments along Wortley Road in which speed documentations were accomplished. The focus of the study was with respect to a painted pedestrian crossing that was installed across Wortley just north of the intersection with Mountsfield Drive.
The present article will describe the findings from the observations of motor vehicle traffic volume and speeds from the June 15, 2026 video session which took place approximately between 1503 and 1617 hours. A future article will then describe the findings of the pedestrian and cyclist observations from that same session. A second video session was also conducted on the morning of June 22, 2026 and discussion of those results will be posted in a future article.
Motor Vehicle Traffic Volume & Speeds From June 15, 2026 Video Session
A total 546 motor vehicles were documented travelling north and south along Wortley Road between 1503 and 1617 hours in the vicinity of the T-intersection with Mountsfield Drive. 317 of those observations were of southbound vehicles whereas 229 were northbound.
Although there are slight variations at various schools in London, typically, grade school children are released from school at approximately 1520 to 1525 hrs. Mountsfield Public School is located about 150 metres east of the intersection of Wortley and Mountsfield. So it would not be surprising that school children would begin to arrive at the intersection shortly after this time. This is confirmed in our video observations. Of the total 156 pedestrians/cyclists that were observed throughout the full video session, 108 of those reached the pedestrian crosswalk in the vicinity of 1527 and 1535 hours, or within a time span of only 8 minutes.
The video session took place over a time of 74 minutes and therefore, an observation of 546 motor vehicles would lead to an average of 7.38 vehicles per minute. An examination of the motor vehicle traffic showed that 48 southbound and 36 northbound motor vehicles passed by the pedestrian crossing in that 8 minute time span, or an average of 10.5 vehicles per minute. Therefore, the results show that, at the time that children arrived at the pedestrian crossing at a high volume, motor vehicle observations also increased to a higher volume.
The speed of motor vehicles also presents a useful observation. Over the full video session the average speed of vehicles was documented along two segments of Wortley Road: 1.) between 50 metres north up the pedestrian crossing; 2.) at 50 metres south up to the pedestrian crossing. The video camera at the pedestrian crossing stopped recording at 1600 hours, so speeds up to that time could be obtained over the two segments but for the remaining time of about 17 minutes speeds could only be obtained over the full, 100-metre distance. The posted speed limit for Wortley Road in this vicinity was 40 km/h. At the two road segments the following average speeds were observed:
Southbound Vehicles: 50m N to pedestrian crossing = 40.03 km/h, pedestrian crossing to 50m S = 39.14 km/h.
Southbound Vehicles (1600 to 1617 hours): 50m N to 50m S = 41.8 km/h.
Northbound vehicles: 50m N to pedestrian crossing = 39.74 km/h, pedestrian crossing to 50m S = 38.73 km/h.
Northbound Vehicles (1600 to 1617 hours): 44.49 km/h.
In contrast to the above data, we can examine the speed of vehicles during the 8 minutes between 1527 and 1535 hours and this shown below:
Southbound Vehicles: 50m N to pedestrian crossing = 27.22 km/h, pedestrian crossing to 50m S = 31.08 km/h.
Northbound Vehicles: 50m N to pedestrian crossing = 33.64 km/h, pedestrian crossing to 50m S = 24.75 km/h.
The above data show that, during the 8 minutes between 1527 and 1535 hours, the average speed of all motor vehicles was substantially lower than the speed throughout the full 74 minutes of the video session. Given that there were substantially more pedestrians (children) in the vicinity, and given that there were also more motor vehicles passing through the area it would be reasonable to conclude that it was the congestion caused by all these observations that caused this reduction in vehicle speeds. And this is verified when reviewing the video and observing the incidents where motor vehicles had to slow down, or come to a stop, for pedestrians crossing at the pedestrian crossing.
Motor vehicle speeds were also affected by the number of turning vehicles. Most of this turning was in and out of Mountsfield Drive. Throughout the full 74 minutes of the video session there were 72 southbound vehicles and 59 northbound vehicles that performed some type of turning motion. Thus of the 546 vehicles 131 made a turning motion, or 24%.
In contrast, during the 8 minutes between 1527 and 1535 hours, 84 vehicles passed through the site. There were 48 northbound vehicles and 24 of those made a turning motion. There were 36 southbound vehicles and 17 of those made a turning motion. Or more generally, of the 84 vehicles that passed through the site in those 8 minutes, 41 of them made a turning motion, or 48.8% of that total.
Summary of Results
We can now summarize these findings. An 8 minute segment of the 74 minute video session, between 1527 and 1535 hours, experienced a substantial difference in the character of the traffic scenario. At the beginning of the 8 minutes children began arriving, approaching westbound on Mountsfield, and then they disbursed, primarily travelling northbound on the east sidewalk of Wortley Road. During this time more motor vehicles began travelling through the site and more vehicles performed turning motions. The average speed of motor vehicles dropped substantially during this period of congestion. These results are not surprising. Similar results would be expected in the vicinity of any school in London, Ontario.
An important question is whether the results from this study suggest that the Wortley-Mountsfield site contains conditions that are less safe than other sites in the City of London. The primary concern of residents was whether the newly installed pedestrian crossing was providing a benefit toward the safety of children and all else who might use it. The exploration of this issue will continue in another Gorski Consulting website article that will deal with pedestrian, cyclist and other micro-mobility motions observed during the June 15, 2026 video session.
Wortley at Mountsfield Traffic Study – Introduction
Gorski Consulting was recently contacted by a residents’ group that expressed concerns over the safety of a roadway near a school where a pedestrian crossing was recently installed in London, Ontario. The site was located at the intersection of Wortley Road and Mountsfield Drive in the “Old South” neighbourhood of London. (A video frame taken from our study is shown above.) The issue of child safety near school zones is important and therefore Gorski Consulting agreed to conduct a study of the safety issues at the intersection.
The Googlemaps image below shows the site of the study with respect to the central portion of London, Ontario and its downtown. The area slightly to the north is also known as “Wortley Village” and is one of the more desirable residential locations in the City.
A closer view of the Wortley-Mountsfield area is shown in another Googlemaps image shown below. This view shows the location of the Mountsfield Public School and the orange circle shows the location of the intersection where the traffic study was conducted.
The safety of the Wortley-Mountsfield intersection needed to be examined during a time when children were entering or exiting the nearby elementary school, Mountsfield Public School. However because we did not become aware of this request until June 10th, there was little time as the school year would come to an end by June 25th. Never-the-less, we were able to complete two video sessions at the site, one on the afternoon of June 15th and a second one on the morning of June 22, 2026.
In both sessions the video documentation was completed with the use of six, synchronized, video cameras. Three of the cameras (GoPros) were positioned facing across Wortley Road so that the speed of vehicles on Wortley could be captured along two, 50-metre, road segments. In the June 15th session, GoPro40 was placed on the west side of Wortley Road at the pedestrian crossing, as shown in the photo below.
The yellow fire hydrant visible in the above photo was used as the arbitrary “Zero Point” for positioning video cameras at 50-metre distances to the north and south of the fire hydrant. At a location 50-metres to the north of the fire hydrant we positioned GoPro29 on the west roadside, facing east, so that it would show a painted marker that we created on the east sidewalk. A view of GoPro 29 is shown in the photo below. Also visible is JVC4, a camera positioned to look southward toward Mountsfield Drive and the pedestrian crossing.
A similar arrangement existed at 50 metres south of the pedestrian crossing where GoPro39 pointed across Wortley at a paint marker while JVC1 was positioned pointing northward along Wortley.
And finally the JVC2 camera was positioned on the north side of Mountsfield Drive and pointing westward toward the pedestrian crossing, as shown in the photo below.
Upon initial attendance at the site on June 15, 2026 it became apparent that the pedestrian crossing was not well visible because of the interplay between sun and shade caused by the large, roadside trees. The location of some of these trees can be seen in the Googlemaps view shown below.
Indications of this problem can be seen in the site photos below, taken on June 15, 2026.
In the image below a school bus is attempting to make a left turn to travel from the stop-signed Mountsfield Drive, to travel southward along Wortley Road. Tree branches are hanging too low so that the bus driver’s view of northward traffic is made more difficult and the driver is forced to put more attention to that portion of the roadway. This could prevent a good assessment of what objects (pedestrians) may be near the bus.
A discussion of the results from the video sessions at this site will be discussed in an upcoming website article which will be posted on this Gorski Consulting website in the near future.
Classic Red Herrings In Failing To Disclose Why Five Children Killed North of Kitchener Ontario
There can be nothing more comforting than a standard, condolence message sent by Ontario’s Premier about the “heartbreaking loss” whereby five children were killed in an unidentified collision at the intersection of 4th Line and Wellington Road 12 north of Kitchener, Ontario on June 13, 2026. This would seem to be the case since police and official news media did not report any useful information about the actual collision. The only available information is that the collision involved a van and a SUV. The five deceased children were riding in the van. There was conflicting information that either 9 or 10 persons occupied the van.
It is notable that a day after the tragedy news media announced that police would be conducting a “new safety blitz” focusing on the dangers that exist at roadway intersections. There was no clear explanation what the blitz entailed and what police were actually intending to do as part of the blitz.
The propaganda about the safety blitz is, in the view of Gorski Consulting, a red herring, that has been thrown onto the public deck so all can see that something is being done, even though there has been nothing done. The issue is not the danger of collisions at intersections. The issue is that five children were killed but no adults were killed. This fact is been hidden from public understanding.
No one has provided any description of the involved van and whether it was capable of properly transporting 9 or 10 occupants. Some specialty vans could be capable of such transportation but that is not possible for most, typical vans. So were the children who died properly restrained by infant carriers, child seats or booster cushions? This issue has cleverly been ignored by police and news media. And this is a recurring problem.
There have been many previous collisions of suspicious child fatalities where those fatal results have not been discussed, for seemingly bazaar reasons. Surely, any person, in any official capacity, who knew that there was a life-threatening danger to a child’s life, would do something to broadcast that danger. For the simple fact that when the danger remains unknown, it cannot be corrected. And the danger will cause the death of future, innocent children. This relationship is not that difficult to comprehend.
It has been my personal experience, from examining an admittedly small sample of collisions involving serious injury and death to children that a child that is properly restrained, particularly in an infant carrier or child seat, gains superior protection from these devices compared to adults simply wearing a three-point (lap & shoulder) seatbelt. That extra casing around the child’s body is what gives the child that extra “helmet” of protection. In addition, most of these devices restrain the child with a 5-point, harness, something that is difficult to do with adults unless they are in racing cars. Yet it has been my personal experience that I have witnessed unnecessary tragedies where children were either not restrained, or were improperly restrained and this has led to very difficult tragedies that need not have occurred. In monitoring various news reports over the years I have observed a number of occasions where child deaths have occurred in suspicious circumstances, circumstances that ought to have been uncovered, but were not. And because these circumstances have not been uncovered those tragedies have been repeated, for nonsensical reasons.
So, for the present matter, it is imperative that the circumstances by which the five, innocent children came to their deaths, ought to be made public. If this is a matter of a very high severity collision whereby there is a reasonable explanation for these deaths then so be it. It could be a terrible tragedy that we would find difficult to avoid. But if this collision consequence is a matter of improper or no child restraint then it must be revealed as such.
True To Their Word Police Reveal Nothing About How Five Persons Died
No one needs a crystal ball to make the following pronouncement: Today, tomorrow, or three weeks from now there will be a tragic motor vehicle collision that will be scantily announced in official circles. It will be pronounced as devastating. And there will be quotes from various politicians and officials explaining how deeply sorry they are that the tragedy took place. Investigating police will have closed the collision site for several hundred metres around, or sometimes for several kilometres, so that the peering eyes of journalists with long-zoom lens can only distinguish the markings of official vehicles, but very little or no useful images of the collision-involved vehicles. It will be announced that the tragedy is under investigation and it is too early to tell how it unfolded. And there will be quotes from local residents about how they do not understand how the tragedy occurred but they will explain their theories. And then there will be the many posts on social media, a very few will insightful and specific details, but by far, mostly a series of uninformed opinions that the collision could have been caused by Martians or unknown terrorists, or something similar. And then there will be silence until some future anniversary where some news articles will remind the public that the victims are sadly missed. Having spent well over 40-years of investigating and reconstructing the deaths of thousands of collision victims I do not need a crystal ball to know that this merry-go-round will continue spinning despite what words I may add to the process.
Just this past May 23rd the one-year anniversary of another traffic tragedy passed related to the deaths of five persons in a collision at the intersection of Thorndale Road and Cobble Hills Road east of Thorndale and less than 20 kilometres north-east of London, Ontario. Police who investigated the collision provided no useful information about it, not even the travel directions of the involved vehicles. The only useful information was that an SUV was struck by a truck and that truck collided with a second SUV. It was the initial impact that killed all five occupants of the first SUV.
In an article posted by Bryan Bicknell of CTV News in London, the comments of a couple of persons were posted will some thought-provoking content. One driver who reportedly drove through the intersection on a regular basis indicated he could not understand “…how this could have possibly happened”. And a resident who owns land at the intersection had the following comment:
“Well, the only thing out of the ordinary is that it has the hill over there, which is a little difficult seeing traffic coming this way,” he explained, referring to drivers coming from the south and checking to their east for any westbound traffic.“
In his article Bicknell referred to some signs near the intersection but made no reference to their relevance.
As a result of the lack of information I attended the collision site on June 1, 2025 and prepared an article (“Poor Reporting of 5-Fatal Collision North-East of London Ontario Has Consequences”) on my findings on June 10, 2025. This article is still available to be viewed on this Gorski Consulting website.
A few days after the collision occurred the official news media announced that local politicians would authorize a safety study of the intersection after the police investigation was completed. But why?
Surely a single motor vehicle collision does not spark a safety study at every intersection. Is it because five persons died in one vehicle? But if there was just a single driver then there might only have been one fatality. So was it just bad luck and nothing to do with the safety of the intersection? The motion for the study was unanimously approved. So did the councillors know something about the intersection that was not publicly revealed?
To this day no information has been made available about charges against the truck driver involved in this collision. Yet there were numerous racial slurs posted on the internet shortly after the collision occurred against that driver. Again, what information has passed under the radar that suddenly these comments have supposedly died down? Is it because the driver of the northbound “SUV” was governed by a stop sign and therefore deemed at fault? But there are many scenarios where such facts do not necessarily mean the driver is at fault. There could be many circumstances that exist that need to be considered. So were those circumstances considered? After a year has passed no one knows or, at least, no one officially knows.
Once Again Body of Deceased Not Found By investigating Police
The public should have a right to know why police fail to locate the body of a deceased in a motor vehicle collision. But such explanations are not being provided.
In a detailed article (“Missing Fatality – But Still No Useful Details Revealed”) posted November 14, 2025 on this Gorski Consulting website we reported on a fatal collision of November 1, 2025 at the intersection of Chinguacousy Road and Queen Street in Brampton where investigating police failed to identify that the body of a deceased was in one of the colliding vehicles. In that article we made the following comment:
“What should be concluded from the above discussion about historical methods of collision reconstruction is that, in order to conduct a properly scientific analysis of a collision, vehicle interiors must be included in that analysis and examined in detail. When a proper examination of the interior of a collision-involved vehicle is conducted there should be no reason for an injured occupant in that vehicle to be unidentified. What led to the lack of identification of a deceased inside a vehicle has not been explained. Beyond police, medical personnel and even fire department personnel have responsibilities for identifying occupants in a damaged vehicle and why their failures occurred also needs to be revealed. Up to now there has been no photo posted of a reasonable quality that could reveal the extent of damage to the Honda Civic and provide some explanation as to why no one detected the deceased passenger.”
Subsequent to these comments the official news media revealed that the body of another deceased driver was also not identified by investigating police in the Ottawa area. The following excerpt is provided from the Ontario SIU report:
“On the evening of January 23, 2026, the man drove a Dodge Caravan southbound on Bank Street. His blood alcohol concentration was more than twice the legal limit. Approximately five seconds before the collision, his vehicle was travelling at about 170 km/h on Bank Street, approaching Morningside Avenue in a 60 km/h zone. The man lost control of the Caravan. South of Morningside Avenue, the vehicle crossed into the northbound lane and shoulder before entering the snow-covered east-side ditch. The man was ejected from the vehicle and suffered catastrophic injuries that resulted in his death. The time was about 8:20 p.m.
At about 9:43 p.m., a passing motorist stopped at the collision and subsequently called 911. Officers were dispatched to the scene at about 10:13 p.m. After searching the vehicle and the surrounding area without locating anyone, they left the scene at about 11 p.m.
The following morning, after receiving a call from the man’s wife reporting that her husband had not returned home from work, the police service dispatched an officer to the collision scene. Upon arrival, the officer located the man’s body partially buried in the snow-covered ditch several metres from the Caravan.
Based on the SIU’s preliminary inquiries, including review of video footage that captured the incident in part and the results of the postmortem examination, Director Martino was satisfied the investigation should be discontinued. At autopsy, the pathologist attributed the man’s death to multiple blunt force injuries, and explained that given the nature of those injuries, the man would have been deceased by the time the first officers arrived at the scene following the collision. On this record, there being no reason to believe that any officer caused or contributed to the man’s death, the SIU was without statutory jurisdiction to investigate the incident.
That said, Director Martino identified what appeared to be evidence of misconduct by the officers who initially attended the scene in connection with their investigation of the collision, in contravention of section 19 of the Police Code of Conduct. Director Martino will be referring the matter to the Ottawa Police Service Chief of Police and, further to section 35.1 of the Special Investigations Unit Act, 2019, to the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency.“
There are obvious problems when “evidence of misconduct” by police becomes public knowledge but no explanation is given as to what the misconduct entails. The details of this misconduct should not be kept within the secretive confines some tribunal. Persons who read or hear of such things come to distrust the the operations of police and those who oversee them. Incidents labelled as “errors” may or may not be so depending on the details of each incident. Leaving the present matter secret and unexplained helps no one.
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