School Bus Rollover – NTSB Seat-Belt Recommendation: Theory Versus Reality
The photo below is taken from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report of April 23, 2026, discussing the rollover collision of a school bus on March 4, 2024 near Millstone, West Virginia. Investigations conducted by the NTSB are often of exceptional quality with few of the biases that accompany investigations of other agencies. However there are important issues in the current NTSB report that are not fully addressed. Let us first provide a brief summary of the NTSB report on the current collision and then we will follow-up with our comments.
The best summary of the NTSB report is provided in its opening paragraphs which we attach below.
What Happened
On Monday, March 4, 2024, about 5:50 p.m. eastern standard time, a 2022 IC
77-passenger school bus occupied by a driver and 19 students was traveling south
on State Highway 16 (SH-16) near Millstone in Calhoun County, West Virginia, to take
students home from after-school activities. The bus departed the right side of the
roadway, returned to the roadway, and rolled over onto its right side, coming to rest
across both lanes of SH-16. As a result of the crash, 3 students on the bus sustained
serious injuries, 16 students sustained minor injuries, and the driver was not injured.
In addition, the National Transportation Safety Board conducted a limited
investigation of a multivehicle crash involving a school bus that occurred in Dale,
Texas, to examine occupant protection safety issues. In that crash, a 5-year-old bus
occupant was fatally injured and 43 other preschool students, 10 chaperones, and the
school bus driver sustained injuries of varying degrees.
What We Found
At the time of the crash, the Millstone school bus driver was impaired by
alcohol, which resulted in his loss of control. We found that implementing alcohol
detection systems on school buses can prevent alcohol-impaired driving by school
bus drivers.
We also found that unbelted bus passengers were injured from impacting
other occupants and the school bus interior during the rollover sequence.
Lap/shoulder belts, had they been installed and properly worn, would have provided
the best protection for the students by keeping the occupants within the protective
seating compartment.
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause
of the Millstone, West Virginia, crash was the school bus driver’s alcohol impairment
resulting in his loss of vehicle control and the school bus’s roadway departure and
rollover. Contributing to the severity of the passenger injuries was the lack of
passenger lap/shoulder belts on the large school bus.
What We Recommended
As a result of the investigation, we recommended that the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration require all new school buses to be equipped with a
vehicle-integrated alcohol detection system that prevents or limits vehicle operation if
driver impairment by alcohol is detected.
We reiterated Safety Recommendation H-18-10 to West Virginia to enact
legislation that requires new large school buses to be equipped with passenger
lap/shoulder belts. We issued new recommendations to West Virginia to enact
legislation to require all passengers to wear school bus seat belts when they are
available, and to establish enforceable policies and procedures for all school districts
to ensure students properly use passenger seat belts. Finally, we classified Safety
Recommendation H-25-26 Open—Acceptable Response for the Leander Independent
School District issued as a result of a 2025 school bus crash in Leander, Texas.
A diagram showing the collision sequence was shown in the NTSB report and this is reproduced below.
A photo showing the culvert that was struck by the school bus is also shown below, taken from the NTSB report.
And finally, the bus passenger seating positions and their injuries were shown in the NTSB diagram shown below.
Gorski Consulting Comments
There is an important sentence in the above wording of the NTSB report that we highlight again below:
“We issued new recommendations to West Virginia to enact legislation to require all passengers to wear school bus seat belts when they are available, and to establish enforceable policies and procedures for all school districts to ensure students properly use passenger seat belts.“
There is little doubt that, in a loss-of-control collision with rollover, the availability and proper use of seat-belts would improve the safety of school bus occupants. A collision like this evokes lateral and vertical forces and a seat-belt can be very effective in keeping occupants within their seating space while riding down the marginal forces that exist. It needs to be emphasized that during a rollover the bus deceleration would be at a rate in the range of 0.4 to 0.6g and that represents a low level of force. This emphasizes that rollovers can be managed with relative safety if one can be assured that occupants are kept in their seating positions, are not ejected and that there is little or no structural intrusion into the occupant space. However the danger of rollovers is that their injury consequences are often unpredictable.
If one could be assured that most school bus collisions would occur in the manner shown here then there is little argument that seat-belts should be mandated on school buses. But that is not the case. Collisions can also occur where the school bus is not involved a loss-of-control and rollover. They can occur where there is frontal contact of the bus with something of substantial mass. They may occur where an impact occurs with another heavy vehicle or with a non-yielding object such as a large tree or a permanent roadside fixture such as a concrete bridge abutment. Collisions of this type, can create large longitudinal decelerations, that could be of much higher levels than the lateral and vertical forces discussed above. Levels of longitudinal deceleration could easily be ten times greater than the forces occurring in a loss-of-control and rollover.
One might be convinced to conclude that such longitudinal forces should not be a problem because seat-belts are specifically designed to improve occupant protection from these kinds of forces. But the situation for children on school buses is actually more complicated than this.
In modern, light-duty vehicles collision forces are controlled not only by ride-down with seat-belts but there are numerous other safety features that add to the occupant’s protection. Frontal air bags, for example, help in the occupant’s ride-down. Features such as knee-bolsters help in controlling the forces at the legs and lower trunk. Collapsible steering rims/columns, padded dashs and other devices are all used in conjunction with seat-belts to protect an occupant in light-duty vehicles. But essentially none of these devices exist in the interior of school buses. So, on school buses we are asking the seat-belt restraint to do the primary, and sometimes the only, work of ride down in a school bus frontal collision. But there are other issues.
When the NTSB recommends that jurisdictions “establish enforceable policies and procedures for all school districts to ensure students properly use passenger seat belts” the issue is more complex and the NTSB report has not addressed this complexity.
Even in the general realm of seat-belt safety issues, there are common problems with proper usage even before we look at the specifics of children on school buses. Seat-belts are a benefit to reducing injury and death but one must also understand that certain conditions can make seat-belts dangerous and sometimes they can be difficult to wear “properly”.
The first problem is that persons who ought to know better inform the general public that they must wear seat-belts – period, without informing them that seat-belts must be worn properly. And then officials do not inform the public how to wear seat-belts “properly”. And so there are many persons riding in vehicles who are oblivious to the dangers that exist when they do not wear their seat-belts “properly”. In fact those persons who tell persons to wear seat-belts “properly” do not understand what “properly” means. And so they misinform the gullible public who do not question the seemingly authoritative officials.
Seat-belts are beneficial because they apply a force to the occupant’s body at locations that can absorb that impact force with less consequence. So the torso (shoulder) belt applies a load to the collar (clavicle) bone and upper ribs. And the lap belt applies a force to the pelvic bones (below the illiac crests). However, if the seat-belt webbing position strays from these ideal points of application dangerous consequences can occur, particularly at the lap belt. If the lap belt is positioned too high, or if the occupant’s body slides out of position, the lap belt can apply a force to the unprotected abdomen where there are multiple, important organs. Displacement from the ideal points of force application also occur if the seat-belt restraint system does not fit the occupant primarily due to occupant size differences.
And this is a problem with children on school buses because they come with large size differences. There could easily be 10 children on any given school bus route where the children are as little as 4-years-old. However there might be routes where no such children exist. And there could be several children who are comparable in size to adults. This wide variety of occupant sizes must be accommodated with properly fitting restraints. The 4-year-olds may require a forward-facing, child-seat system while larger children may require seating in a booster-type system to increase the angle of the lap webbing from the anchorage. And the adult sized children may only need to wear a restraint that is similar to the three-point, adult-style of seat-belt system. When the type of available restraint does not properly match the size of the child the restraint becomes difficult to wear “properly” and increases in injury levels can occur.
What will happen if the unique composition of child sizes on any given school bus route happens to place some children into seats wear the restraints are not suitable for their size? Will someone prevent some children from riding on that route? Highly unlikely.
There are other safety issues with respect to the type of clothing worn by children and how this changes the interaction between the restraint and the occupant’s body. And this also applies to all occupants in general, particularly in Canada where the weather may be different than in southern parts of the U.S. Winter clothing, for example, can create problems with keeping a restraint system properly applied to the previously mentioned ideal locations on the body. And in some instances the type of clothing material matters. Slippery nylon can create the conditions wear a child’s body could slip underneath a lap belt in scenario historically known as “submarining”. In winter conditions it is important to ensure that a winter coat is unzipped and pushed to the sides of the occupant and to tighten the webbing such remove any slack in the system. But will a 4-year-old child understand that concept, highly unlikely.
Specially-trained, school bus monitors will be required to ride along with the school bus driver to make sure that these essential conditions of restraint systems are met. The addition of such monitors will cost money. And the installation of proper restraint systems will also cost more money. Are those responsible for transporting children on school buses prepared to pay these additional costs?
It is easy for the NTSB to recommend “enforceable policies and procedures for all school districts to ensure students properly use passenger seat belts” however the reality is not that simple. While recommendations of a U.S. safety agency do not apply to what happens in Canada, there is an influence that filters up across the border. What the NTSB has recommended in its current report is important to take into account. However there are complications resulting from these recommendations that are not discussed and ought to be known. As suggested by the NTSB the current reliance on compartmentalization is inadequate for scenarios involving lateral and vertical collision forces. Children are minimally protected from striking the sides of school buses and from striking themselves. Something has to be done to reduce those types of collision consequences.
Fast E-Bikes & E-Scooters Highlight Dangers of Immovable Objects
Essentially no information was provided with respect to a fatal collision in Ingersoll, Ontario on Friday, April 10, 2026 that involved a “scooter-style e-bike” (CTV News London). It was only acknowledged that the rider struck a pole on Charles Street.
In a subsequent news story published by CTV News (“Fatal Ingersoll crash highlights growing safety risks of e-bikes and e-scooters”) an Ontario Provincial Police representative reported that the collision involved “a single scooter style e-bike”. No photos were available of the “bike” and there were not photos of the collision site where the fatality occurred.
It would seem that everyone should know exactly what a “single scooter style e-bike” looks like. And perhaps it may not matter since no one would be able to understand why the fatality occurred. Since police are not required to fill out a MTO “police report” if a motor vehicle was not involved it is not clear how such a tragedy would be coded in collision data.
From observational studies conducted by Gorski Consulting it is known that e-bikes travel at higher speeds than almost all recreational cyclists, many in the range of 30 km/h or higher. A small percentage of recreational riders on road bikes have also been able attain such higher speeds. The difference is that riders of e-bikes do not have to be expert riders or physically fit. Riders of road bikes are able to attain higher speeds because they are physically fit, developed through a long process of riding, and they generally equip themselves with higher end equipment including good helmets, lighting and high visibility clothing. While some high-speed e-bike riders have also been properly equipped there is less chance that they will be a road knowledgeable. Understanding the dangers that accompany higher speeds includes knowing how e-bikes may create violations of expectation in drivers of larger motor vehicles.
Much like e-bikes the riders of e-scooters have also been observed to travel at higher speeds. While e-scooters have not been as common on London’s roads they appear to be increasing in numbers. Key elements to safety including how riders conduct themselves near larger vehicles. And what safety equipment they use to protect themselves and make themselves more conspicuous.
Even though there appear to be a greater number of e-bikes and e-scooters riding on, or adjacent to, public roadways no publicly available data exists to understand where this trend is headed. The CTV News article about the Ingersoll cyclist fatality acknowledged that police are seeing an increase in “electric rideable accidents”, and that the Canadian Institute for Health indicated there was a recent 32 per cent increase in e-scooter hospitalizations. And the best advice was to wear reflective clothing, have proper lighting and to stay riding on bike paths. But the dangers are much more than this.
The persons who installed cycling trails, lanes and paths in the City of London have created many safety traps that most riders would not recognize or understand. When riders of e-micro mobility devices travel on this infrastructure they appear to have no understanding of the dangers they are in because many travel much faster than they should.
The photo below shows a dangerous installation of sign posts that were installed in 2021 on Dundas Street just west of Ontario Street. This track was installed to improve the safety of cyclists yet the designers failed to understand that the sign posts would actually increase the danger to cyclists.
Fast forward five years to the spring of 2026 and we see below that the dangerous sign posts still exist on the edge of the cycling track. In fact one of those posts actually encrouches into the path.
Riders of micro-mobility devices look at such small-looking posts and do not comprehend the danger they pose. These posts are immobile. Meaning that if they are struck they will not move. But the striking object will come to an abrupt stop. This change-in-velocity is what kills occupants of motor vehicles and this is why roadway design standards require a “clear zone”, often about 5 metres, laterally, from a travel lane whereby nothing immobile can be installed. But it appears it is OK to install such immobile objects next to a cycling track. Maybe because designers believed cyclists would be travelling at a slower speed than motor vehicles and collisions would be less severe? But no one can know what the reasoning was. Now that faster e-bikes and e-scooters are riding this track the collision severity could be a different matter – unbeknownst to the riders of the e-mobility devices.
While riders are often victims of their own poor judgment they are often blamed for being exclusively at fault even through certain cycling paths contain dangers by design or poor maintenance. An number of years ago we reported on such design failures on the Thames Valley Parkway (TVP) in London. A new portion of the TVP was built south of Trafalgar Road at the bridge at Pottersburg Creek in 1918. This segment extended to Gore Road and then to the crossing at Hamilton Road. A number safety problems were reported in Gorski Consulting articles on this website. One of those concerns was with respect to the narrow channel of limited visibility that was created when the TVP travelled in an underpass beneath Trafalgar Road. A photo of the underpass is shown below where a young girl decided to lie down, across the cycling path, within the shade of the underpass.
In their wisdom planners had created a steep downgrade on the cycling lane as it crossed over the CNR railway about 300 metres south of this location. This meant that some cyclists came to be travelling very quickly along the downslope on approach to the underpass at Trafalgar, as evidenced by the photo shown below.
Another safety problem that keeps recurring is the installation of concrete barriers or large rocks on cycling paths. An example is shown in the next photo taken in July, 2025 on the south branch of the TVP east of Wellington Road.
In a very recent example, on April 22, 2026, City of London Bylaw enforcement officers parked their two pIck-up trucks at the bottom of the slope of the TVP just west of Richmond Street. This area is shown in the photo below, taken in 2018, showing a cyclist travelling down to the slope. The maximum slope was measured to approach 12% near its bottom. Testing in 2018 showed that average cyclist speeds reached close to 31 km/h at the bottom of the slope.
The two City of London pick-up trucks were parked at the location where the cyclist is shown in the photo below. This is approximately where cyclists would attain their highest speed.
To summarize, e-bikes and e-scooters are becoming more common in the Province of Ontario and this evidenced in observations conducted by Gorski Consulting in the City of London. New safety challenges are developing from the speed of these newer micro-mobility devices. Designers are not recognizing that immobile obstacles such as sign posts, poles, or parked vehicles can pose a major safety problem because of the severe change-in-velocity that can occur to riders even at seemingly lower travel speeds. Micro-mobility riders are essentially unprotected and when they strike something that is immobile their chance of injury or death can be more likely than for occupants of motor vehicles.
Deadly Cycling On Arterial Roads In London Ontario
As spring begins to bring warmer days, cyclists are beginning to re-inhabit the roads in London, Ontario. The dangers that were created in previous years continue to do so and will likely cause serious injuries and possibly deaths to those cyclists.
The above photo is an example of one of those dangers: cyclists riding on arterial roadways. The photo shows that the rider is in dark clothing, he is not wearing a helmet and there no reflectors or lighting on his bike. Furthermore his position is substantially further from the curb inviting a passing motor vehicle to make contact.
The weaving pattern of the cyclist’s travel can be seen in the next photo where his bike is angled back toward the curb. While laws require that motor vehicles give a cyclist at least a 1 metre lateral clearance, this view demonstrates the obvious fact that a cyclists motion is rarely a perfectly straight path and so the lateral distance from a passing motor vehicle is sometimes reduced due to that fact. Riding a bicycle is essentially a balancing act where the rider stays upright by making changes to his body position as well as making slight adjustments to steering. So this is how contact with passing motor vehicles can happen.
In our experience at Gorski Consulting the issue of cyclist safety is not being addressed by all involved. Cyclists, drivers, police, city traffic practitioners, politicians, medical practitioners, news media. All these entities have some involvement in maintaining the unsafe conditions that exist. We have indicated on numerous occasions that the causes of cyclist collisions and how cyclist injuries occur ought to be reported and this is not happening. Repetitive incidents of unnecessary tragedies occur, and could be minimized, if both drivers and cyclists were made aware of the details of those tragedies.
At a minimum, cyclists should be warned, that if no infrastructure for cyclists exists on an arterial roadway they should ride on a sidewalk, regardless of what the law says. Selecting a proper route to avoid such arterial roadways may also be an option. As always cyclists also need to understand that they have a responsibility, while riding on a sidewalk, not to endanger pedestrians, particularly those who are more vulnerable such as the elderly and children.
Will Chinese Imports Become Spy Vehicles Collecting Canadian Personal Data?
Canada needs the U.S. and the U.S. needs Canada. However with President Trump’s threats to crush Canada’s economy and force it to become the U.S. 51st state Canada’s relationship with the U.S. has rapidly changed. Forced to protect itself Canada has been seeking closer relationships with other nations such as China. A recent agreement was reached between Canada and China whereby 49,000 imports of Chinese automobiles will be accepted into Canada.
The threat of Chinese imported vehicles into North America was high-lighted in a recent interview (Bloomberg News) of the CEO of the Ford Motor Company, Jim Farley, who expressed grave concerns over what could take place. An interesting comment was made in that interview where he warns of national security risks of “allowing technology-laden Chinese vehicles to navigate U.S. roads”. He emphasized that “All of these vehicles have 10 cameras. They can collect a lot of data”.
Naturally comments like these are not expected as Chinese imports could be a threat to the Ford Motor Company. However, the issue of data collecting may not be just empty rhetoric. Motor vehicles are evolving rapidly and their capabilities to gather information are also increasing just as rapidly. It is reaching the point that vehicles that were created for the simple purpose of transporting persons and cargo are now becoming super computers that capture data about the personal lives of their occupants. Analysed by artificial intelligence such data can be used for many purposes by foreign and domestic entities. If foreign entities like China can collect personal data then so too can domestic entities like Ford.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is already proposing rule-making that would require vehicles, commencing in the 2027 model year, to monitor driver behavior/condition to reduce incidents of impaired driving. Details such as tracking of eye movements, pupil dilation and other patterns of behavior will be monitored by artificial intelligence. So is this the type of data that could be captured by Chinese imported vehicles as well?
There is discussion that, in the not-to-distant future, vehicles could be totally controlled by AI software which learns the driving behaviors and preferences of the vehicle owner. As AI learns the driver’s behaviors it actually changes the functioning of the vehicle such that the same two vehicle models could function differently because of what AI has learned.
Whether, when and how these developments will take place is yet to be seen. However Canadians need to be aware that the vehicles they drive are no longer instruments of transportation. They are instruments of personal data collection.
Police Pedestrians Struck By Fleeing Vehicles
A recent controversy irrupted in Toronto, Ontario over the findings from a tragic collision whereby a Toronto police officer, Constable Jeffery Northrup, was killed when he was run over by a fleeing vehicle in the parking garage of Toronto’s City Hall on July 2, 2021. At trial the driver of the fleeing vehicle, Umar Zameer, was found not guilty. The trial judge, Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy, became concerned that some police officers may have colluded in reporting that Constable Northup was standing in front of Zameer’s BMW, and visible to Zameer, just before Northrup was struck. The reconstruction evidence of a Toronto police expert and that of the defense expert both agreed that the evidence did not support that Northrup was standing as claimed.
In response Toronto’s Chief of Police, Myron Demkiw, made a bad decision by claiming that he would involve the Ontario Provincial Police in an “independent” review of the court findings. The existence of Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) would signal to anyone that police investigating the actions of other police is highly unlikely to create an “independent” assessment. The subsequent report of the OPP reversed the findings of the trial by concluding that Constable Northrup was indeed standing up just before he was struck.
Having reviewed the OPP report it is my view that it supported an impossible collision scenario. This scenario would have placed Constable Northrup on top of the BMW hood as the impact took place and it could not explain how Constable Northrup would have come to be underneath the BMW and thus run over.
Never-the-less the findings of the OPP report provided the excuse that Chief Demkiw needed to override the matter of police collusion. This was subsequently followed by comments made by Ontario’s Premier, Doug Ford, that the trial judge should apologize, a comment that was also supported by the president of Toronto’s police association.
In my view these developments are a black mark on the reputation of Chief Demkiw, the OPP, Premier Ford and Toronto’s Police Association. The findings of the trial should have been a catalyst toward reviewing the operations of police when they operate under cover, are on foot, and are in the vicinity of motor vehicles. The secrecy with which police conduct their operations makes it impossible to know how they conduct their training in this area. However there are previous incidents over the years that lead to safety concerns for both the police officers and also the public, like Umar Zameer, who may not be guilty of any wrongdoing but become caught up in questionable police procedures.
Confusing interactions have occurred where pedestrian police have used questionable judgment and these can be highly publicized. It can be recalled that in the early morning of May 17, 2024, the world’s top-ranked golfer, Scottie Scheffler, was on his way to the Valhalla Golf Club, in Louisville Kentucky when he encountered a pedestrian police officer who engaged Scheffler after Scheffler had steered into a wrong lane as a result of a police investigation that blocked Scheffler’s progress to the club. It was alleged that sometime during this altercation Scheffler drove his vehicle forward causing the police officer to be dragged and injured. Initially Scheffler was removed from his vehicle and handcuffed and police indicated he would be sent to jail because he did not comply with police instructions. Eventually Scheffler was released to continue with the golf tournament but what actually caused the dangerous encounter was never properly explained. Scottie Scheffler’s public demeanour demonstrated a calmness that did not align with an aggressive action to cause a police officer’s harm. The police officer being “dragged” by Scheffler’s vehicle is something that is commonly described in news media articles but it is not always a result of the officer being caught and attached by some portion of the vehicle. Rather it is often that an officer grabs a hold of a vehicle that begins to move. However what actually took place that led to the altercation was never properly disclosed. And this is a recurring problem when attempting to unravel the Gordian Knot of secrecy surrounding police interactions. Not all incidents are the same and the unique conditions of every incident requires that the details surrounding it need to be revealed. But such details are rarely or never revealed.
The next segment of this article will review incidents, some of them tragically fatal, where police officers, while pedestrians, were struck by fleeing vehicles.
Historic Incidents Of Police Officers Struck By Fleeing Vehicles
Unless one is a police officer who is continually exposed to making traffic stops and conducting other investigations near running vehicles it is difficult to get a clear understanding as to why police become embroiled in life-threatening incidents when they are pedestrians. It can be reasonably assumed that there are dangerous persons in our society and there is an essential need to control those persons for the society’s protection. How often police must deal with such dangerous persons, and how they are forced to perform their essential duties, is simply unknown. And this is not helpful to police and not helpful to the general public.
The table below is a summary of recent incidents where police in the Province of Ontario were struck by moving vehicles while they were pedestrians. It has not been possible to obtain a complete set of these instances and there is no other resource where such data can be found. Never-the-less the table provides some general indicator of the types of scenarios in which police, as pedestrians, were struck.
In reviewing the scant details of some of these instances it is quite obvious that drivers were aware that they were dealing with police. Regardless of the consequences such drivers have made the decision to flee. And at times those drivers were not intent on stopping just because a pedestrian police officer was in their path. And if such a driver is not stopped he or she may travel anywhere throughout a city or rural area, possibly endangering the lives of many innocent persons. So there is a strong urgency for police to try to stop such drivers as quickly as possible.
One problem is that not all persons who interact with police are criminals, nor are they dangerous. Sometimes, like in the instances of Scheffler and Zameer, misunderstandings develop. As in the case of Umar Zameer he appeared to be just an average citizen who was out with his family when he was approached by under-cover police whom he did not recognize and circumstances escalated. It may be that police believe they do not need obvious uniforms and badges to be recognized as police. It was reported in the Zameer trial that police tried to show their identification to Zameer and therefore he should have recognized that they were police. However it would not be difficult for a criminal to create identification that looks legitimate. How could a typical driver be able to distinguish genuine documentation versus forged documentation?
The image below shows the three under-cover officers who interacted with Umar Zameer on the night of the tragic Northrup collision. It is difficult for me to believe that these persons were readily identifiable as police officers. And this is an important safety problem.
In my review of the scant details of these instances it is apparent that, at a number of times, police made a decision that placed them in a dangerous position. The methods of police training in such instances are accountable to no one outside of the police community yet those methods have to be questioned when a number of officers have attempted to physically interact with a vehicle and driver when the vehicle is running and under the control of a driver.
I should not have to emphasize that a driver in a running vehicle is no different than a person holding a loaded gun. It may be possible for a physically fit police officer to subdue a person holding a gun or knife. But that same officer cannot subdue a 4000 pound vehicle even through the driver might be of minimal size and strength. The officer is highly unlikely to win that battle. There are instances where police officers have attempted to reach into a running vehicle to attempt to shut off the ignition or for some similar purpose. In my view police training should explicitly forbit an officer from such an action. Past experience has demonstrated that this is too dangerous. When police have reportedly been “dragged” by an escaping driver’s vehicle it is rarely because the officer has become physically snagged onto some portion of the vehicle exterior. Almost exclusively it is because the officer has attempted to grab a hold of some portion of the vehicle or has partially entered into the vehicle interior and this decision has placed the officer in greater danger.
In my long career I have had the displeasure of conducting a detailed investigation of a police pedestrian fatality in a traffic stop gone terribly wrong. It was something that I conclude could have been avoided if police had received proper warning about the dangers of engaging a driver in a running vehicle. Not being an expert in these procedures I would advise that the most important matter is to disengage a driver from a running vehicle by asking the driver to shut off the engine and step outside. If the driver does not comply then the officer should never attempt to open the vehicle’s door and attempt to remove the driver or attempt to reach in and shut off the ignition. Reaching into the vehicle is the worse thing a police officer can do. At this juncture the most important action a police officer can do is to disable the vehicle by whatever means possible. There may be some method to deflate or damage the vehicle’s tires. Or there may be some method to disable the performance of the engine. Creating holes in a vehicle’s radiator would be an example where a vehicle would progressively become undriveable. Police ought to have instruments available on their person to perform these actions.
A driver that attempts to escape after their vehicle has been damaged by police can be easier to apprehend. If a tire is damaged and becomes deflated the vehicle can no longer be driven at its highest speed. And the deflated tire becomes progressively damaged the more it is driven in a deflated condition. Incidents have occurred where the path of escaping vehicles can be followed by the roadway markings left by the damaged tire. In some instances the trail left behind can be followed without the necessity of involving a high speed pursuit. As a tire begins to disintegrate the escaping vehicle will begin to ride on the wheel rim and this produces distinctive markings on the roadway which are not difficult to detect. In one instance the path of a vehicle riding on its rim was followed through numerous urban roadways, over several kilometres up to the final location where the vehicle was boxed in by police vehicles.
Tragic results have occurred when police have discharged their firearms toward occupants of a `vehicle rather than at the vehicle itself. This was evident on November 26, 2020 when OPP officers attempted to stop an escaping pick-up truck that crashed through their road block on Pigeon Lake Road in Kawartha Lakes. This encounter resulted in the death of the Pick-up truck driver but also an 18-month old child in the pick-up truck who was struck and killed by police bullets. While charges against the three officers who shot at the occupants were dropped this was an example of bad police training and bad police performance of their duties.
It is understandable that many times police have no idea who they are approaching and it requires some exceptional thought to consider what may unfold. On a previous occasion an officer may have encountered a dangerous criminal with a loaded gun, so that could colour an officer’s actions in the next instance where the officer does not know the next encountered individual. The difficulty is that not all drivers are dangerous criminals and how they are approached must be an essential part of police training. The tragic death of Constable Jeffery Northrup must be a catalyst for police officials to review their procedures when police are on foot and undercover.
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