School Bus Collision South of Woodstock Ontario – Disaster Averted By Luck
If anything, we are inundated with too much detail. With the advancements of the internet, cellphones and various chat groups we are simply drowning in detail about many frivolous things. So why is it, when important events occur, we are presented with nothing but frivolous fluff?
A school bus collision reportedly occurred on Old Stage Road south of Woodstock, Ontario on the morning of Wednesday, February 18, 2026. There were 40 students on the bus and 4 were taken to hospital with minor injuries. Typically this is the only detail that would be publicly revealed.
The OPP, who investigated the collision, were most gracious to provide a single photo of the collision site, which is shown above. But nothing else.
What has not been revealed is that the characteristics of Old Stage Road in the vicinity of the collision were challenging, at best, even in good environmental conditions. Old Stage Road is very winding and its width in the area where it contains a gravel surface is well below the 6.0 metres that would typically exist on most local roads. A view of Old Stage Road is shown below in a segment west of Middletown Line and this is an area where the road contains a hard paved surface. Just 500 metres east of this location the surface becomes gravel.
The next Googlemaps view shows a segment of Old Stage Road east of Middletown Line as the surface becomes gravel.
In a rare occasion the local television news agency, CTV News, provided a supplementary article wherein they provided commentary from a student, Greyson Landry, who described the collision as it happened. A segment from that article is posted below:
“Grade 8 student Greyson Landry, 13, was one of the East Oxford Central Public School students in a Langs school bus as it swerved on an icy road, “She went to one side of the road to the next, then back and then into the ditch pretty hard.”
And he said the rough ride wasn’t done there, “First we hit forwards against the seat, and then everybody goes to the right side of the bus.”
This description is revealing. The motion of the bus to the left and right is typical of a loss-of-control where a driver goes through actions to gain control of the bus but then eventually fails. Greyson Landry’s description of moving forward and then moving to the right is also consistent with what would be expected.
CTV News also attached a photo in their article reportedly submitted by Greyson’s mother, Meagan, and this is reprinted below as, through her submission, she is not claiming copyright to the photo.
The CTV News article quoted Meagan Stacey who claimed that the gravel road surface where the collision occurred “was just an ice rink”. The content of the article suggested that Stacey was concerned that the school bus was allowed to travel on this roadway in the icy conditions.
The CTV News article indicated that individual bus companies decide whether their buses will run or not, as indicated by the short segment from the article below:
“My Big Yellow Bus is a non-profit transportation consortium for the London District Catholic School Board and the Thames Valley District School Board. They distribute information on their website and through social media. According to information provided on the website, individual bus companies decide whether to run or not.”
I do not believe that the above information is accurate. The consortium being referred to is actually called Student Transportation Services and it is they who are responsible for evaluating the weather conditions and then informing the individual bus companies whether they will run or not.
There are particular concerns about what happened in this collision. Number one is that the environmental conditions made the road surface icy. This was a greater problem along this road segment because it was narrow, contained many sharp curves and the surface was gravel.
Secondly, there is a continual shortage of bus drivers resulting in new drivers being hired with relatively little experience. This road segment of Old Stage Road required that a skilled and experienced driver operate this bus because of its road and surface conditions. There has been no information provided about the skill and experience of the bus driver.
Thirdly, there is evidence that a major disaster was averted, mostly due to luck rather than superior procedures and planning. The rest position of the school bus is shown at an almost 90 degree angle with respect to the roadway. Such an angle has been documented over numerous collision investigations where a vehicle begins to rollover. So the bus was at the brink of commencing a rollover and what likely stopped that rollover is that the side of the bus came against some bushes and small trees. Had the bus rolled over the injury consequences would have been less predictable.
For many decades there is been an issue with school buses with respect to installing seat-belts and Transport Canada has avoided that mandatory installation to the dismay of many who do not fully understand this issue. Seat-belts, when not worn properly, in instances of substantial collision forces, can become the mechanism of major injury to children predominantly in the vulnerable, abdominal region. This problem exists with adults but becomes much greater when children are involved. So a dilemma exists whereby some kind of “restraint” of children is required but not a restraint that is typical of a seat-belt designed for adults. Some sort of child seat, booster cushion, or some combination of both, needs to be designed specifically for children on school buses. And, so far, this has proven to be a challenge.
Transport Canada has emphasized their “compartmentalization” whereby the bus interior is designed to keep children within compartments around where they are seated. While there has been some benefit to this thinking it is inadequate. A major segment of school bus collisions occur in the manner shown in this Old Stage Road collision whereby a school bus goes out of control, rotates to a sideways position and then rolls over. During that sideways motion and during that rollover there is little, or no protection provided to children who end up striking the side interior of the bus. Many such contacts can be “minor” but not all. There are many stiff and protruding areas on the side interior of a school bus that pose safety problems. This lacking of protection needs to be revealed even when it is not easily corrected.
Also, while compartmentalization has included the concept of preventing ejection, that outcome still remains a concern. Recent rollovers of school buses in south-western Ontario suggest that ejection is not being eliminated and children are capable of being ejected through the side windows.
The present collision involved a lucky avoidance of a major tragedy, It had little to do with good planning and procedures. Particular attention must be paid to those roadways that are of a lower standard such as Old Stage Road. Those responsible for deciding whether school buses drive on this road must take into consideration, not only the general weather conditions in the area, but also the specific characteristics of a low volume road where those weather conditions are likely to be of greater effect.
UPDATE: February 20, 2026 1010 Hours
I have spoken with a representative of one of the bus operators in south-western Ontario and I stand corrected about my comment that Student Transportation Services is the group that decides whether buses are cancelled. The bus operator representative indicated that the decision is made through discussion amongst the managers of the various bus operators and a consensus is reached. It is not clear to me how this decision is made and what factors go into making that decision. I am told that certain bus routes are designated “Red Zones” and I understand that these routes are judged to be more problematic such that buses driving these Red Zone routes would be cancelled before others. What factors go into determining what is a Red Zone route is not clear. But it would likely be something that could pose greater danger to the bus than a typical route.
Regardless, I stand by my comment at the end of this article. Whoever makes decisions about cancelling or proceeding with bus routes must understand that not all routes are the same and some routes are likely to be affected by weather conditions more than others. Low volume routes for example may not be maintained with plowing, or salting/sanding, as roadways of higher traffic volumes. And this needs to be understood such that some routes may need to be cancelled when others may not.
Cyclist Tristan Roby Passed Away Without Education Preventing Future Tragedies
What we know is that in July of 2019 Tristan Roby was a cyclist who was struck on Exeter Road in London, Ontario by the driver of a pick-up truck who did not remain at the collision scene. The driver, Jesse Bleck, was later convicted of failing to remain and sentenced to 4 and a half years with a 10-year driving prohibition.
A previous Gorski Consulting article was posted on this tragedy on July 16, 2023.
Publicly we will never know how this collision happened. That fact would seem trivial as some might argue it is none of the public’s business. And that would be true if Roby’s death was only a personal matter, but it is not. Fatal collisions are not just personal matters but they are canaries in the coal mine whose singing could save future persons from similar fates.
One will never know how Roby’s future might have been changed if the results of a previous cyclist fatality were made known to him and if this might have changed what actions he took on the night he was struck down. But it is always an available opportunity to use the results of a tragedy to change the consequences in some future incident.
Each year Gorski Consulting conducts about a thousand cyclist observations along the roads of London, Ontario. Those observations show how and where cyclists ride as well as their characteristics such as their helmet use, their clothing, the cargo they carry and their gender. These facts are not the best indicators of how a cyclist collision might be avoided but they are the best one can get. Because the facts surrounding any real cyclist collision are never revealed. And we just stumble from one tragedy to the next, like a blind public attempting to cross a high-speed expressway.
As a society what we deem important is that we can capture a culprit who is responsible for the collision and then we are satisfied when the culprit is given a punishment, a prison sentence or driving prohibition, and then that settles the matter. At no point is there a thought of examining the collision and asking: What could have been done, or what can be do, besides seeking vengeance against a specific driver? Could we install certain cycling infrastructure? Could we improve some lighting? Could we educate some drivers to focus on vulnerable cyclists. Could we instruct cyclists about where they should ride, what they should wear and the benefits of helmet use? None of this is happening. The specific facts of every cyclist fatality, and even those collisions of simple injury, seem to held in some “Fort Knox” facility, never to be seen by the public’s eye. After all, it is of national security that such specific information not be released because who knows what might happen.
Car Did Not Fall Over Bridge – But Close To Drowning
Official news media reported that on February 9, 2026, a vehicle had fallen off the bridge on Wellington Road in London, Ontario at Dingman Creek on the City’s southern outskirts. A photo taken by London’s Fire Department show the vehicle sitting right-side-up in the creek with barely half of its wheels submerged in the shallow water. No mention was made of the extent of injury to the driver however it was noted that he was able to climb out his vehicle through the convertible roof so it would suggest that any injury would be minor. It would seem that, other than falling over the bridge, this collision was deemed a non-event.
Because of the description that the vehicle fall off the bridge I decided to make a further inquiry. During the recent extreme weather conditions it had been reported that snow was plowed against roadside barriers and several loss-of-control vehicles flew over these launchpad ramps. Police had blamed drivers for these occurrences while fault would appear to be more complicated. So I wanted to explore this new incident to see if it was similar to those previously reported.
I attended the collision site in the early afternoon of February 9th. Travelling along Wellington Road I examined both sides of the bridge at Dingman Creek and decided that evidence near the west side was likely related to the reported incident. I parked my vehicle on the west roadside, north of the bridge and then I took photo through my windshield toward the bridge, as shown below.
Using the measurement tool in Googlemaps I determined that a short guardrail attached to the north end of the bridge was about 26 metres in length. But this rail is difficult to see in the above photo. As I got out of my car and walked toward the bridge I took the next photo shown below.
There was evidence that several vehicles had recently parked on the snow-covered shoulder and this would be expected as emergency vehicles would have responded to the incident. Despite the trampled nature of the evidence I was still able to detect faint evidence that a vehicle had slid toward the snowbank in front of the guardrail.
One might see in the photo below that there is a difference in the character of the snow pile on the right which contains large chunks of snow and the snow in the centre and left of the photo where the snow is crumpled and no large chunks exist. This because the loss of control vehicle struck the snow.
Looking down at the crumpled snow there were a number of pieces of vehicle body materials strewn about, as shown in the photo below.
Coming closer to the end of the guardrail there was little evidence of contact of the snow bank, as shown in the photo below. So it suggests that the vehicle became airborne.
But further along the rail there was damage to three posts and this is likely where the airborne vehicle made contact, as shown in the northward view of the photo below.
Swinging around to face south again, the photo below shows that the last few posts of the guardrail were undamaged and therefore the vehicle fell down into the steep slope to the right of the guardrail before reaching the bridge.
Looking up from the steep slope one can see that the vehicle fell a substantial distance.
looking toward the bottom of the slope there was evidence of a lot of foot traffic related to rescuing the vehicle and driver, as shown in the photo below.
Looking down at the water where the vehicle came to rest it was confirmed that the level of water was very shallow. So long as the vehicle remained upright there was no chance that the driver would die from drowning.
However one must consider the substantial drop down the slope, shown again in the photo below.
There are a number of similar incidents like these where the outcome is far different and sometimes deadly.
It has been discussed many times before in previous Gorski Consulting articles where vehicles end upside down in shallow water. Even when a seatbelt is worn an injured or disoriented occupant finds it difficult to release the latch and ends hanging down. A situation where there is slightly more water depth could cause an occupant’s upper body to be submerged in the icy water. If these incidents occur on low-volume roads and in darkness there may be no one to detect the upside down vehicle. Eventually, over several hours of freezing temperatures the occupant dies from exposure, or drowning from having only the head submerged in the shallow water. So these are matters that need to be taken seriously.
Snow deposited on guardrails is a dangerous matter. Sometimes it is difficult to avoid due to large snow storms. However there also must be a recognition that such snow needs to be removed from those barriers as quickly as reasonably possible. One also needs to be aware that certain lengths of guardrail may be too short to prevent vehicles from passing by them. There is little point to spending the money to install a guardrail when it is too short and endangers too many drivers when a vehicle goes out of control.
Cycling In London’s Extreme Winter
One might ask, in this current extreme winter weather, if cyclists are very hardy, fool-hardy, or both. The extreme weather that has engulfed London, Ontario from mid-January, 2026, means that cyclists are exposed to very trying conditions, and some of these are down-right dangerous.
The numerous cycling lanes that have been created along London’s roads are now mostly covered in deep snow, making them impassable. There are always a few hardy cyclists who are willing to ride regardless of the extreme conditions, but it is a real challenge this season. Cyclist observations conducted by Gorski Consulting show that many cyclists end up walking their bikes on the sidewalk because snow-cover makes it treacherous to ride on the road and there is too much snow covering the sidewalks.
Some roadways in London are especially dangerous for cyclists if they intend to ride in a lane shared by motor vehicle traffic. Major arterial roadways such as Hamilton Road, Highbury Ave, Dundas East, Exeter Road, Adelaide Street, Richmond Street and Oxford Street have no infrastructure to accommodate cyclists and in collisions with motor vehicles the cyclist always loses – sometimes losing their life. It is a danger that is not being publicized, leaving both drivers and cyclists unaware of these dangers.
Extreme Winter Weather Conditions Continue in South-Western Ontario
The poor weather conditions continue in South-Western Ontario at least until February 9th as snow squalls and storm systems, accompanied by usually cold temperatures, reek havoc on roadways. The extreme conditions began on approximately January 14, 2026 and have not let up since. Such a long period of cold and snow are unusual, even for this area which expects to see poor conditions every winter. Many jurisdictions are running out of road salt even though the world’s largest salt mine is located in the region at Goderich, Ontario.
Snow being plowed against roadside barriers has led to several instances of vehicles “flying” over the barriers when out-of-control, leading police to defend the plowing while blaming drivers. Regardless of who is at fault, winter is playing a large role.
Environment Canada was forecasting low temperatures of -25 Celsius for early Sunday morning, February 8th, but the actual low was only about -18 Celsius, making it sound almost balmy. Yet temperatures are forecast for -20 Celsius again for Monday morning. These temperatures are finally expected to moderate for Tuesday, February 10th.
While the number of collisions generally tend to increase in such winter conditions the actual number of serious and fatal collisions is historically reduced. One theory for this is that drivers generally cannot generate enough speed in snowy conditions and the slippery surfaces lead to many fender-bender type events. There are, of course, those instances where a loss-of-control occurs and a vehicle slides into the path of another, sometimes leading to serious or fatal consequences. Poor visibility is also a contributing factor especially on expressways where a traffic slow-down occurs without sufficient warning to oncoming drivers approaching from the rear. This is often a problem with heavy vehicles that either collide with stopped traffic or are rear-ended while slowing or being stopped on an expressway.
After a collision occurs on an expressway the danger does not end there. Persons do not recognize their danger as other vehicles approaching the area become involved in subsequent collisions. There are differing schools of thought as to how to avoid this danger. Some claim that the best approach is to remain in your vehicle which is OK if you can guarantee that your vehicle will not be struck by a high-speed tractor-trailer. Similarly stepping out of your vehicle to look around after your collision can be a recipe for disaster due to the subsequent collisions that often occur. If you step out of your vehicle depart as far away as possible from the roadway and think about how subsequent impacts may project vehicles into where you are standing. There is no all-knowing instruction that can lead you to safety as every collision sequence is unique, but there is some general advice that can improve your chances. If you can, climb over any barrier that separates you from traffic. Try to move upstream from the approaching traffic and try to move as far in a lateral direction away from the lanes of traffic. Being visible, such as wearing proper reflective clothing, or carrying a flash-light or lantern may be of some help but not always when vehicles are colliding in your midst. The bottom line is, think, then react appropriately and quickly.
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