Rainbow Bridge Explosion Yet No Explosive Materials Existed?
Initial concerns were that an attempted terrorist attack took place when a speeding vehicle “exploded” at the US Customs booths at the Rainbow Bridge crossing between the Province of Ontario and the State of New York. Subsequently FBI officials were quoted as saying :
“FBI Buffalo has concluded our investigation at the scene of the Rainbow Bridge incident. A search of the scene revealed no explosive materials, and no terrorism nexus was identified. The matter has been turned over to the Niagara Falls Police Department as a traffic investigation,”
The word “explosion” can be easily misinterpreted. News media frequently use this term when there has been a violent collision accompanied by fire. But the results of an explosion where explosive materials are involved are quite different than what you would see in a motor vehicle collision where no explosive materials existed. While the debris field at the Rainbow Bridge crash has not been shown in detail the descriptions suggest that some sore of explosion occurred that is not consistent with a typical motor vehicle collision. Since the FBI confirmed that “no explosive materials” existed, what caused the explosion?
It has only been a few days since the incident occurred it is reasonable to expect that some analysis will be needed by investigators to understand what actually took place. Even if no event data recordings are obtained from the vehicle a rudimentary speed calculation can be made by examining the launch angle and the trajectory up to the landing of the vehicle. And analysis of the video can also approximate the vehicle speed.
What may not be easily understood is what factors were at play to cause the vehicle to accelerate to such a very high speed in a confined distance. When there is doubt investigators often revert to the catch-all that driver error or intent must have been at play. Yet there are incidents of “sudden unintended acceleration” that may be related to the more complex control systems that exist in more modern vehicles. When potential vehicle defects could exist it is difficult to confirm when large vehicle manufacturers maintain their proprietary information close to their chests. It is quickly forgotten that defects can exist for a number of years, sometimes with manufacturer knowledge. An example of this involved the GM ignition switch defect of a few years ago which resulted in the deaths of at least hundreds of vehicle occupants before a discovery was made by an independent mechanic that a defect existed in the GM ignition switch.
Tractor-Trailer Rollover of Concrete Median Barrier Displays An Inconvenient Reality
The Ontario Provincial Police are not consistent in all areas of the Province in the manner in which they provide the public with crucial information needed to keep them safe. However its Highway Safety Division did an excellent job in providing four photos of a collision site on Highway 400 near Barrie, Ontario where safety issues have been well documented. The collision occurred near Mapleview Drive and involved a tractor-trailer which came to rest over top of the concrete median barrier. While the road tractor remained on the proper side of the barrier the trailer fell onto the opposite side and spilt its load into the opposing lanes. The OPP indicated that multiple vehicles were involved but that injuries were only minor. The three remaining OPP photos are shown below.
The results shown in these photos indicate that the concrete barrier was of some limited success in preventing the tractor-trailer from crossing into the opposing lanes of the highway. The height of the barrier is not known at this location however barrier heights have an influence on the ability of large trucks to tip over them and better control can be had in preventing rollover when a barrier is taller.
In the US The AASHTO has published a manual called the “Manual for Assessment of Safety Hardware” or MASH. It provides for test procedures of various roadside barriers. It is not clear how Ontario determines whether their roadside barriers perform to a similar standard. And this is an important point. No one seems to ask this important question about roadside barrier performance in Ontario. What standards are accepted and why? Many organizations including police, news media and others ought to be engaging the public in a discussion about what is an acceptable level of risk to the public.
School Buses Have A Propensity To Wander
While school buses are generally safe for transporting thousands of students each day in Ontario, they have their vulnerabilities. Many drivers of passenger cars have noted that even when they do not apply much pressure to adjust their steering wheel their vehicle continues to maintain a straight line path. That is not the case with school buses.
Bus drivers must maintain a continual lookout for deviations in a school bus path because even a momentary lapse can cause the bus to veer out of a lane. This problem is more important at highway speeds and when school buses must frequently travel on lower volume roads which are narrower. Furthermore many of these low volume roads may contain a hard surface but the surface is a tar and chip variety which frequently contains bumps and depressions, more so than an asphalt paved surfaces.
On gravel roadways school buses have a further disadvantage because of their wider track width. If one looks at a typical gravel road one will find that there are typically three channels of beaten down or bare surface. These are caused when light duty vehicles use the centre of the road thus the driver’s side wheels follow the same path regardless of whether a vehicle is travelling one direction or the other. But larger vehicles such as school buses cannot fit into these channels and inevitably the right side wheels of a bus end up travelling on the less beaten down and loose gravel that is outside of these channels. What may not be appreciated is that loose gravel contains a lower co-efficient of friction than hard-packed or bare gravel. This difference in the co-efficient of friction is what can cause different tire forces on the right versus the left of the bus centre-of-gravity. Such differences in tire force is what causes “yaw” or rotation and thus loss of control.
The combination of these facts makes it important that bus drivers maintain a constant lookout whenever travelling at highway speeds along back roads. Because of school bus driver shortages there are occasions when inexperienced drivers end up driving along a back road at highway speed without appreciating what dangers exist.
Red Hill Valley Judicial Inquiry Final Report Pending
A technical report that was written ten years ago became missing and from this millions of dollars have been spent trying to explain how this happened. Such is the reality for the citizens of the City of Hamilton who will pay all the expenses.
The latest news posted on the website of the Red Hill Valley Judicial Inquiry is that a final report, to be delivered by Justice Herman Wilton-Siegal, will be available on November 29, 2023. The report should provide a summary of the vast testimony that was complied over the years with respect to how a technical report, the Tradewind Report, became lost, or purposely hidden. The Tradewind Report provided the results of testing on the surface of the Red Hill Valley Parkway in Hamilton, Ontario. Those results showed that the road surface was substandard, although much argument has been made during the inquiry about whether any standards exist, or which standards are applicable.
What should stand out from all this is the time and expense involved. in May, 2019 Justice Wilton-Siegal was appointed to lead the Inquiry. By the end of April, 2020, it was reported that the Inquiry already spent close to $2 million dollars. No further accounting has been made available as to what the current expenses have been. It was noted by news media that the City of Hamilton reserved a total of $7 million for total potential Inquiry expenses. That money will be coming from City of Hamilton taxpayer pockets. The Inquiry has been operating for about 3 1/2 years now and undoubtedly, participating lawyers representing the participants in the Inquiry have been submitting their invoices. We will see shortly what has become of all this time and expense.
However the end of the Inquiry is not the end of the matter. A class action lawsuit may be pending in the amount of $250 million. Again, whatever is resolved from that will be paid again by City of Hamilton taxpayers.
Was Truck Break Through of Guardrail A Factor In Driver’s Death? – Updated
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) announced on their Twitter feed that a fatal tractor-trailer collision occurred in the early hours of November 21, 2023 in the westbound lanes of Highway 401 between Highway 59 and Sweaburg Road at Woodstock, Ontario. They subsequently posted a photo of the crash site which is reproduced above.
OPP in its Central District frequently attach 3 or 4 photos of an accident site and this provides some idea of what might have transpired. Yet in other districts such as the Western District, very few photos are ever posted. Thus the single photo provided in the present case is, at least, an improvement. Yet the content of the photo shows how much information the OPP fail to disclose.
As shown in the above photo a tractor-trailer has travelled into the north ditch of the highway. One can clearly see that a long length of damaged guardrail is attached to the base of the trailer. This would suggest that the truck plowed through the guardrail as it travelled to its final rest position. As noted many times before on this Gorski Consulting website, the simple impact of a guardrail should not cause fatal injuries to the occupant of a vehicle involved in the crash. And this is particularly true when a very massive tractor-trailer is involved. So what happened? Police have provided no explanation. And a single photo is clearly insufficient to provide a proper explanation.
When police close a highway to investigate a fatal collision they are the only ones who can know what happened and what factors led to the death of the victim. Withholding information from the public about that death can contribute to future deaths by keeping the public ignorant of important dangers. As an analogy, if a Coroner investigates the poisoning death of a victim, would it be appropriate to keep the public from knowing the danger of the poison that killed the victim?
Even the single photo above demonstrates that there are some concerns. The left side of the tractor-trailer is resting next to the end of a large concrete catch basin. Such concrete structures exist all along the sides of the highway and help provide drainage or the passing of small streams beneath the highway. It is very important to make sure that vehicles do not strike these stiff and immovable objects.
The police provided only a single photo and that photo provides a poor view of the cab area of the truck. Yet from this distant view it appears that there is substantial damage to that cab. This damage is unlikely to have come from contacting the guardrail because the cab area is so high above the level of the rail. And, because the truck remained upright, it could not have come from striking the ground. It is possible that the truck struck something else that is not shown behind the photo but that appears less likely. The most logical conclusion is that, having plowed through the guardrail the road tractor struck the end of the concrete catch basin and this is what killed the driver. But why did the OPP not provide that explanation? Or more simply, why did the OPP not provide an additional photo or two so that someone could derive a better interpretation of the evidence?
It is a common problem that Highway 401 does not contain the types of roadside structures that can properly contain large vehicles such as trucks and buses. Yet, on any given day about half of the traffic volume is made of of large trucks an buses. This means that half of the driving public is not properly protected when vehicle exits the road surface at highway speed. This is an important fact. It may be costly to increase the protections of the roadsides of Highway 401 but it is a debate that needs to be had by the public. The debate cannot be had if the public is kept in the dark about these dangers.
Just as important, many truck drivers are also kept in the dark about the dangers that exist to them on this highway. This is all because police, politicians, news media and others are failing in their duties to inform and protect the public.
UPDATE: November 22, 2023, 0700 Hours
News media are now reporting that the truck was engulfed in flames upon arrival by emergency personnel. Nothing was mentioned about the fire in earlier reports. This type of delay or lack of notification is common whenever a vehicle fire is involved. It is also common that no mention will be made whether the fire was related to the driver’s death or what caused the driver’s death. In a scenario where a truck rides over a guardrail the chaos can create potentials for vehicle fires where the metal of the rail can puncture vulnerable areas of the truck and/or can set off sparks that lead to a fire. None of this can be properly assessed without better evidence such as more photos around the accident site.
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