How Fast Was That Car Going?
The internet is full of experts who use false information to confuse, and sometime defraud the public. The realm of collision analysis is no exception. A common theme is to use false evidence to support a false claim. There are many examples where collision evidence is misinterpreted, sometimes on purpose. The classic case is one of using the existence of collision damage as an indicator of collision severity and vehicle speed.
The above photo was posted on the Boston Fire Department Twitter account showing a recent impact of a building at Corinth St. Roslindale. The massive destruction of the building caused many viewers to be amazed that a car could cause so much damage. This naturally leads to the belief that damage must equate to massive severity of impact and an incredibly high speed of the vehicle. It only requires a quick look into the debris to observe that the front end of the car shows little in the way of rearward crush. For example the right front fender appears to be relatively undamaged. There is damage to the windshield and roof of the vehicle but that is mainly due to the debris falling down from the façade of the building.
There is a simple relationship involved here that Sir Issac Newton encapsulated centuries ago: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In short, in an impact of two objects, the force applied to one partner must be equal to the force applied to the other partner. In the above example of the building collapse the force applied to the building must be equal to the force applied to the car. When we see the obvious evidence of major damage to an object we do not know the object’s properties. A building may be very strong in terms of holding itself upright but it may be brittle and may not be able to withstand the vibrations of a lateral force. The evaluation must involve the examination of the collision partner, the car, to determine the magnitude of the force that was involved.
In the world of motor vehicle collision reconstruction we know quite a lot about the structural properties of motor vehicles. For example Federal Transportation agencies routinely collide vehicles into immovable barriers. And with the advent of event data recorders (“Black Boxes”) there is a lot of data that allows comparison between visible damage, change-in-velocity and acceleration. So in the above case, even without detailed data, we can look at the damage to the car to see if it supports our belief that the building sustained a tremendous impact.
Clearly, even from this very cursory view, the damage to the building does not match the relatively mild damage to the car. The damage to the building is likely the result of the gravitational force, the normal force, which collapsed the building when the foundation of the bricks. etc, was disturbed. Yet, to the inexperienced eye, all it needs is some “expert” to fool the general public into thinking this must involve a vehicle travelling at a tremendously high speed. This is just one example where the public is continually fooled into believing all sorts of delusions by persons willing to take it down that delusional path. The internet has provided the means by which millions of viewers can receive the same delusional message and be influenced by it.
The moral of the story: buyer beware. The public must be better at critically evaluating what it is swallowing.
Drowning Risks Continue in Water-filled Ditch Rollovers
At the risk of playing this broken record (for young folk ask your parents or grand parents what that means) there is a danger when a vehicle comes to rest upside down in shallow water in winter conditions. The above photo, provided by the OPP on December 15, 2022, was accompanied by a dry Twitter comment that “Thankfully, no injuries to the lone occupant”. Nowhere is there any further comment about how easily this result could have been fatal.
Imagine that this collision occurred in night-time on this relatively low-volume road. The depth of the bottom of the ditch could easily hide any illuminated lighting of the vehicle to any passing motorists. So the vehicle could have been left unseen for hours. What if the driver sustained some form of injury that caused him/her to find it difficult to escape the vehicle? What if the seat-belt became difficult to release in this upside down position? What if the doors could not be opened? Few persons realize that, when a ditch is very steep and narrow a vehicle can become lodged parallel to the deep crevice and the doors cannot be opened against the sides of the earth ditch. Fortunately in this above example the ditch is just slightly wide enough so the vehicle in not parallel to the ditch and there appears to be room to open the doors. But the doors could still be difficult to open if damaged.
So what happens when you’re stuck upside down in water and you cannot get out of the freezing water? You might survive, sometimes for several hours depending on other factors. But hypothermia eventually sets in and the result can be lethal.
The reality is that the number of persons who perish in shallow, water-filled ditches in Southwestern Ontario is not publicized. At Gorski Consulting we have published several articles on our website on this issue. While such drownings occur throughout the province a fair number of them occur in the counties of Lambton, Essex and Chatham-Kent. These counties appear to have a larger number of deep and narrow ditches next to many roadways where there is no protection provided by any guiderails or barriers. Since the Municipal Act was enacted the safety of roadways, which was exclusively a provincial governance, suddenly became the responsibility of local municipalities. Those municipalities that had a preponderance of safety problems now had to find the money within their local jurisdictions to deal with those problems. So now the safety of roadways becomes dependent on which municipal jurisdiction you drive in. The counties of Lambton, Essex and Chatham-Kent would have to spend huge amounts of money to protect the very large numbers of roadways with water-filled ditches with proper roadside guiderails and barriers. Yet, in the past, the Province of Ontario would pool the information about safety problems throughout the Province and then would provide the funds to deal with the most urgent concerns regardless of where they existed.
The Counties of Lambton, Essex and Chatham-Kent may become liable for failing to provide the proper protections from roadside drownings. Claims in civil litigation will be made and lawyer negotiations will result in further payments by local taxpayers. Civil proceedings almost never reach trial but are almost exclusively resolved through lawyer negotiations. And even if there is very little evidence of liability no one wants to enter the realm of the courtroom where legal fees will skyrocket and the outcome is known in legal circles as being unpredictable.
Very often this is a matter of politics, not fault. A political realignment that allows safety problems to exist while punishing local jurisdictions is a matter of inequality. So, in practice, there is likely never to be enough local money to fix the roadside safety problems that continue to exist. What remains are such incidents as shown in the above photo, where we rely on luck to save some and ignore the publicity when someone else succumbs to unfortunate reality.
Fire After Barrier Impact – Everyone Silent About Safety Concerns
It is never a good thing when police and news media do not focus the public’s attention to obvious safety issues.
On December 9, 2022 the OPP Twitter account posted several photos relating to collision on Highway 401 near Whites Road just west of Toronto. These photos showed a burning vehicle. Not far from the vehicle was a damaged energy attenuation device (a crushable terminal located at the end of a concrete barrier). When impacted this device is supposed to crush/collapse in a controlled manner such that kinetic energy possessed by the striking object (vehicle) is dissipated. A similarly controlled crush on the front end of a modern vehicle will dissipate additional kinetic energy. All these things, when working together, properly reduce the likelihood that a vehicle occupant will sustain serious injury, or worse.
In the OPP photos we see that the striking vehicle caught fire and, although firemen put out the fire, it was too late. The vehicle was completely consumed. The only portions of the vehicle remaining were the bare metals.
At no point in the OPP description, or in any comments by the public, was there any mention of the obvious safety problems in this result. It is as if no one is able to comprehend that barriers and energy attenuation devices are supposed to make collision results better, not worse. The obvious problem with the result is that if any vehicle occupants were unable to escape from the vehicle they would be consumed by the fire. And there are numerous examples in significant collisions where extrication procedures by rescue personnel are needed because an occupant is trapped in a vehicle and cannot escape.
The lack of comment is used as a method of informing the public that there is nothing wrong here. The public need not no anything further. All is as it should be.
Almost universally, throughout the developed world, roadside hardware must undergo compliance testing to ensure that it will perform to the specifications required by a roadway authority. Those specifications are created so that the hardware will prevent or reduce the level of collision severity that leads to road user injury and death. This process is costly but accepted because of the benefit that is the result. In the present scenario we are led to believe that vehicles catching fire after a barrier impact is the norm. Nothing wrong here. This system and vehicle have both performed properly. Not everyone is that naïve to accept that assertion.
Cyclist Helmet Use in London Ontario
When have you last seen a professional, racing cyclist not wearing a helmet? At a minimum that should provide an indication of how important helmet use is to the safety of all cyclists. Yet what information is available to the average cyclist riding along or adjacent to urban roads about helmet use? Turns out that not much, or no information is provided. Collisions occur, some of them fatal, yet the involvement of helmet use in those collisions is never reported.
While conducting observations of cyclists along roadways in London Ontario, Gorski Consulting has provided a variety of data about cyclist speeds, characteristics of cyclists and where they ride. In the latest data, from the first six months of 2022, we have now also examined the issue of helmet use. And the results are quite surprising.
The Helmet Use Data
Cyclists were observed on the streets of London over a period of six months from the beginning of 2022 until the end of June. In that time photos were taken of 501 cyclists who were either riding cycles on a roadway, riding on a sidewalk or stopped within any portion of the traffic right-of-way. The results of these observations are summarized in the table below.
There were 417 male and 58 female observations. In 6 observations the gender of the cyclist could not be determined.
Where gender could be determined the percent of female riders was just 12.2 %. This finding is not much different from findings from other years dating back to 2013.
Looking at helmet use, 248 of the 417 males cyclists were not wearing a helmet. This amounts to 59.5 % non-usage. For females, out the total of 58 observations, 29 were observed not to be wearing a helmet, or 50.0 % non-usage.
The actual percentages of non-use were actually higher because the non-use counts discussed here are for instances where we could be certain that a helmet was not used. In a number of instances a cyclist head was not visible or was covered by other clothing such as a hood. While the number of those instances was not large it, never-the-less, indicates that the actual percentage of non-use of helmets is higher than indicated.
Strangely, helmet non-use by cyclists appears to be less on the Thames Valley Parkway. In a study conducted in July, 2021 268 cyclists were observed in the Greenway Park area of the TVP. Sixty-eight cyclists were observed who were not wearing a helmet. This is a 25.3 % non-use rate. This rate of non-use appears to be much lower than the previously mentioned observations along City streets.
These results are both unexpected and concerning. Given the reasonable concern of being struck by passing motor vehicles one would think that cyclists would be more prone to accepting ways of protecting themselves with proven protective gear such as helmets. This data seems to contradict that expectation. Yet there is an additional factor that needs to be considered – the riding location of the cyclist.
Cyclist Location Data
The table below provides a breakdown of where the cyclists were located, if on the roadway or on the sidewalk.
The summary at the bottom of this table shows that, of the 417 male cyclists, 273 were observed to be riding or stopped on a sidewalk. Thus 65.47% of male cyclists were observed on a sidewalk. Similarly for females, of the 55 females, 38 were observed to be on a sidewalk. Thus 69.1% of female cyclists were observed on a sidewalk.
Thus one possibility for the low helmet use rates on London’s roads is that about two-thirds of cyclists ride on sidewalks where the danger of being struck by a motor vehicle is greatly diminished. This can only be speculated.
What seems of interest is that the number of cyclists riding on sidewalks continues to be very high. The observations for these first six months of 2022 indicate a higher percentage of cyclists on sidewalks than in previous years where similar observations were made. It remains a topic of no discussion that Provincial traffic laws and London’s laws make it illegal for cyclists to ride on sideways and yet cyclists continue to disobey these laws. No one wants to address this large elephant in the room.
Latest Scandal At City of Hamilton Really Smells
Congratulations taxpayers of Hamilton, you have officially won another local scandal. The price? You will be paying perhaps $300 million dollars out of your property taxes to pay for all the lawyers on all sides of the various scandals.
Presently you have been paying millions of dollars to conduct the Red Hill Valley Parkway Judicial Inquiry, which has been going on since 2019, and legal fees keep coming in. Once this inquiry is completed a $250 million class action lawsuit will commence. The largest benefactors from this legal process will be the lawyers.
Your next payments may be for the Chedoke Creek Sewage Leak scandal. Repercussions from this might have been lessened if your politicians and staff had been up front and admitted that the sewage leak occurred. Instead, politicians covered it up and even supported the cover-up after they got caught. And then some politicians wanted the City to investigate who leaked the leak to the public and punish the whistleblower(s).
Now, another sewage leak has been revealed that was dumping sewage into the Hamilton harbour for 26 years. City staff have downplayed the extent of the leak. And that it was all an understandable, inadvertent mistake. That may be so but why would you now believe anything that a city politician or staff member says? The script has likely been written by lawyers at the City of Hamilton Risk Management Department. Does that not give you a clue that the script was written to minimize the future legal implications? Can you really believe that the script was written to properly inform you?
Municipalities in Ontario all have a similar political and staff structure as Hamilton. There are members of the political and staff regimes who believe that they can do as they please because their actions and decisions rarely reach public scrutiny. Whatever repercussions may result from their actions these individuals rightly understand that municipal risk management departments will protect them because they are a part of the corporation. Taxpayer’s money is essentially limitless and, when all else fails, they can simply parashoot out of their positions and work elsewhere. Most municipalities do a good job of limiting their exposures to liability by listening to their handlers at their risk management departments. The unfortunate circumstance with Hamilton is that the actions of certain individuals crossed the line of the standard arrogance and local news media eventually exposed those actions. Unable to control local media the City of Hamilton was forced to come up with new lines of defense, including the invoking of a judicial inquiry. Its about public perception.
We can be sorry for the unknown number of taxpayers who tried to inform themselves about the character of the politicians for whom they voted and who set transparency and accountability high on their list of desirable qualities. For the rest we can simply say: you deserve what you got. You voted for politicians whose goal was to hide whatever could be hidden. You voted for politicians who were willfully blind and did not want to inquire what City staff was up to.
A new City mayor and council have been voted into office and it will be interesting to see if they understand transparency and accountability. The new mayor, Andrea Horwath, has requested an investigation into the latest sewage leak. It remains to be seen whether she will follow the script that her risk management lawyers give her.
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