Very Low Female Cyclists Observed This Winter in London Ontario
We behold that certain truths are self-evident: If there are few female cyclists it is likely that a roadway is unsafe. And the first amendment of this truth is that, if very few female cyclists are observed it is highly likely that it has been a very cold winter. These words are somewhat plagiarized from the American Constitution yet there is some truth to them.
The winter season of 2025-26 in London, Ontario was unusually brutal. Much snow and very cold. Last winter season was also unusually brutal. So the past two winter seasons have been reminiscent of those winters of the 1970s in southern Ontario. And many are puzzled over the research findings that there is global warming taking place. However the phrase “global warming” might also include “global extremes” where droughts, high heat, severe storms and every other climate pestilence may be ahead of us.
From the Gorski Consulting viewpoint we have been conducting substantial cyclist observations along the roads of London, Ontario and these are also a barometer (thermometer) giving us an indication of the weather conditions. For several years now we have made comments in various website articles that few female cyclists can be observed riding on or adjacent to London’s roads. We then observed that those female cyclists are even more scarce in winter months. And if a winter is particularly “brutal” even less female cyclists can be found. So we say, without too much scientific rigour, that observations of female cyclists can predict safety concerns and they can indicate seasonal weather patterns. Our latest cyclist data for this past winter season in London, Ontario, is shown in the table below along with data from a few previous years.
The above table confirms that the overall number of cyclists observed riding along London’s roads in winter is low compared to warmer months. The average number of cyclists observed in the winter months (Dec, Jan, Feb and Mar) for the past 6 winters has been about 161 observations. These winter months are about a third of a full year. So if we multiplied the 161 by 3 we could say that, if the trend continued, we should be observing about 483 cyclists per year. But that is not the case. In the past six years Gorski Consulting has been making observations of about 1000 cyclists every year. So, again, this demonstrates the general lack of cyclists riding along the City’s roads in winter. However the trends are even more interesting when we focus on female cyclists.
Observations from previous years indicate that the percentage of female cyclists fluctuates about 13% each year. However the above table shows that, in winter months, the female percentage has been about 7.25%. So, although we are seeing a reduction in cyclists observations in winter months overall, that reduction is even greater for observations of female cyclists.
What is the purpose of our focus on female cyclists? It is because a reduction in female cyclists affects our ability to increase cycling as a mode of transportation. We need to shift our methods of transportation riding in gas-powered, personal automobiles. And we need to increase our usage of mass transit and active transportation. The lack of female cyclist observations is telling us that we have to do better. But we need to understand why females appear to avoiding riding along London’s roads. It could be a safety issue that we may need to correct. It could also be a matter of convenience and comfort. But we do not know. That is the purpose of gathering this observational data.
In late March of 2026 local news media announced that the City of London had a reduction is transit bus usage from 18.4 million rides in 2024 to 17.5 million in 2025. Those are troubling numbers. London City staff have concluded that much of this drop has to do with the reduction in foreign students attending Western University and Fanshawe College. Perhaps. However, what is the ridership situation with cyclists in the City? We had great plans about transitioning into mass transit and cycling but are those plans faltering? From the cycling standpoint there is no real data available from the City other than some broad numbers of imbedded cycle counters which are of minimal assistance.
We have to have a realistic understanding of the challenges posed to cycling in the City of London. Our climate is not helpful and variable/extreme weather conditions are more than inconvenient if cyclists cannot ride except through some heroic effort.
Officials are great at ignoring large gorillas in their rooms. They just pretend they are not there. A very large gorilla is the reality that cycling is more dangerous to persons than if they were riding in a personal automobile. Modern, passenger vehicles have improved tremendously in the last few decades in terms of protecting their occupants. Air bags, seat-belts and a whole litany of standards in the interior that most occupants are aware of. Given a scenario where the severity of impact is a velocity change of 20 km/h the occupant of a passenger could may sustain minimal or no injury. Given the same 20 km/h velocity change for a cyclist the injury potential could deadly because there is absolutely nothing between the cyclist’s body and what is struck and could control and manage those collision forces. As much as we want to encourage cycling, we also cannot ignore this very large gorilla.
OPP Sends Important Seat-Belt Message But Also Sends Misinformation
Gorski Consulting does not dispute most of the message sent in an OPP post on X (Twitter) today with respect to the importance and effectiveness of seat-belt use in a serious collision. However the post also sends some misinformation.
The post was sent by an anonymous representative from the OPP North East Region. It correctly makes note that Ontario’s seat-belt law is approaching its 51st year and that seat-belts have saved numerous lives while reducing the severity of countless injuries. The problem lies with a short phrase in that post as reposted below:
“Did you know? · During a collision, being thrown into a rapidly opening frontal air bag when you are not wearing a seatbelt can carry enough force to seriously injure or even kill you.”
This information is wrong and not necessarily innocuous. A vehicle occupant is not thrown into a rapidly expanding air bag because they are not wearing a seatbelt. A properly functioning air bag deploys before there is movement of the occupant with respect to the vehicle interior. Normally an occupant begins motion with respect to the vehicle interior at about 60 milliseconds after the commencement of a collision. A properly functioning frontal air bag deploys before that time. In newer vehicles the severity with which the air bag deploys depends on whether a seatbelt is worn. This because a full deployment may not be necessary if the occupant is already seat-belt restrained. But unrestrained occupants are not thrown toward a deploying air bag just because they are not wearing a seat-belt.
On a number of occasions I have explained the workings/ benefits of seat-belts in previous articles posted on this Gorski Consulting website. But a refresher appears to be needed.
A primary benefit of seat-belts is that, when they are located properly against the occupant’s body, and they are pressed tightly against the body, the occupant will begin to ride down the collision sooner than if a seat-belt is not worn. Why is that important? Because the earlier that you begin to ride down the collision the greater benefit because the greatest kinetic energy available to be dissipated is at the earliest portion of the collision pulse. When you wear your seatbelt tightly you become a “part of the vehicle structure”, in a sense. And when the vehicle structure begins to “decelerate” you also begin to “decelerate” almost at the same time as the vehicle structure. So part of your ride down occurs during “The First Collision”. In “The Second Collision” your body will eventually move into contact with the vehicle interior. But, by that time, your body will have been slowed to the point where the contact with the interior is not as severe.
But when you do not wear a seat-belt, or if you wear it loosely, you may make contact with the vehicle interior without being “decelerated” at all. So the vehicle could come to a full stop, essentially, and then your body will come crashing into contact at the initial velocity at which you were travelling. That is a bad outcome.
And the second part of this issue is that seat-belts need to be placed over the proper portions of the occupant’s body or they can become dangerous, sometimes as dangerous as not wearing a seat-belt at all. So the torso (shoulder) belt must be worn so that it crosses over the collar bone (clavicle). And the lap belt must be worn below the upper pelvic bone (illiac crest) and not over the unprotected abdomen. The positioning of the lap belt is extremely important.
There have been many instances of “Out-Of-Position” (or OOP) occupants who come to be positioned too close to the air bag before it is deployed. That is a very dangerous result and this is what the OPP should have noted. This is the primary mechanism by which persons sustain serious and fatal injuries from air bags. But this has nothing to do with whether someone is wearing a seatbelt because a person can be OOP regardless of seat-belt use.
Air bags were depowered beginning in 1998. Before that date occupants were being used as experimental fatality dummies because air bags were introduced before a proper assessment was made of their safety. The danger of deploying air bags has not been fully diminished and this is where police are part of the problem from two sources. In one instance many members of the police community have very little training to understand when an injury or death occurs that should not occur. This is apparent in many of the news media reports where persons have been killed in unusual circumstances yet police appear to do nothing. Although this is partly a lack of understanding it is also partly because the bias that police possess in their investigations and this is the second source of the police problem.
It is the purpose of police to lay charges against drivers that they believe are guilty of a certain offence. As part of that bias complications that could compromise those charges are withheld from further inquiry whenever possible. So if an impaired driver is charged police do not want it to be revealed that an additional factor, such as a roadway or vehicle safety issue, had also contributed to the collision consequence. In such unfortunate circumstances safety problems that ought to be revealed and corrected are left unidentified.
So the OPP misinformation in their posting is not necessarily innocuous because it demonstrates that, in many instances, police do not understand when a safety component fails to protect an occupant or they have reason to ignore it.
OPP Zameer-Northrup Report Supports An Impossible Impact Scenario
Much emphasis was placed by Toronto’s Chief of Police, Toronto’s Police Association President and even Premier Doug Ford on a report authored by members of the Ontario Provincial Police with respect to their review of the fatal collision whereby Constable Jeffery Northrup was killed in the underground parking garage of Toronto’s City Hall on July 2, 2021. The driver of the BMW car that struck Northrup, Umar Zameer, was originally charged with murder. In the subsequent trial Zameer was found not guilty. It was explained by Zameer at trial that he did not realize that the two plain-clothes officers (Northup and Forbes) were police but that they were criminals intending to rob him. Thus as the officers surrounded his vehicle he attempted to escape by accelerating quickly out of his parking spot.
At trial two reconstructionists, one from the Toronto Police Service and the other retained by Zameer’s defense both came to similar conclusions as to how the collision occurred. They both opined that Northrup was knocked over near the left-front fender of the BMW while it was reversed by Zameer. Northrup fell down and then the BMW rode over top of his body when Zameer accelerated forward. The presiding judge, Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Molley, expressed her concern when two other plain-clothed officers, Constable Antonio Correa and Constable Scharnil Pais, collaborated the testimony of Constable Lisa Forbes that Constable Northrup was standing in the lane with his hands up, in front of the BMW when he was struck.
Justice Molley stated:
“…all three officers would have to be wrong about this detail in exactly the same way for this theory to make sense. That also raises an issue of whether, if they were wrong about where he was standing, they may also be wrong about if he was standing in front of the BMW at all. When three versions of an event are wrong, and wrong in the same way, you must also consider whether there has been collusion between those witnesses. All of the officers denied collusion. As I described to you earlier when dealing with eyewitness testimony, one witness can honestly mis-remember an event, particularly when the event was traumatic or shocking in nature. Ladies and gentlemen, it is possible for one officer to have a memory of Officer Northrup standing in front of the vehicle in the middle of that laneway with his arms raised to his chest level and his palms outstretched, even if that memory is not accurate. It is for you to decide if it is possible for three officers to have that same mistaken memory”
I have not had an opportunity to examine the evidence except through the comments made about the trial and what was contained in the OPP report following the trial. This does not negate the following opinion I express because my opinion only focuses on the specific OPP analysis of the impact contained in their report.
The portion of the OPP report discussing their findings about the impact is shown in the text and figure below.
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The OPP text accompanying the above photo states “The OPP reconstructionist marked a green arrow that indicated the principal direction of force of the BMW to Detective Constable Northup during the collision”. If the reconstructionist had any rudimentary understanding of Newton’s Third Law of Motion (“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”) he should have understood that the travel direction of Northrup’s body would be opposite to the direction of force exerted on his body. So, clearly, Northrup’s body would travel along the same line as the green arrow but in the opposite direction, or towards the centre-rear of the hood. This is not arguable opinion, this is basic science.
The following set of four photos show a re-enactment of a pedestrian’s motion during a frontal impact by a passenger car typically known as a “wrap trajectory”. Such a trajectory has been well-known for many decades in the collision reconstruction community. Because this re-enactment is from a scenario where the pedestrian and vehicle are both stopped it cannot fully depict the pedestrian’s body moving or sliding rearward up the hood and toward the windshield that would occur in the dynamic scenario where the striking vehicle is in motion. But the general dynamics are there.
The basic point of this enactment is to show that the centre-of-gravity of an adult pedestrian is generally above the leading edge of the grille/hood of passenger cars and this causes the pedestrian’s body to travel onto the hood while the lower legs are struck and carried in the direction of the striking vehicle. It has been reported that Constable Northrup was six feet four inches tall and this would be substantially taller than a typical adult.
If Northrup’s body was on the hood of the BMW and the BMW was reportedly in high forward acceleration Northrup’s body would continue to travel rearwards with respect to the striking vehicle. And if the principal direction of force was at the angle depicted in the OPP figure then Northrup’s body would travel rearward and to the right with respect to that hood.
The additional factor is that the BMW was at a state of being steered hard to the left at the time of contact. If the principal direction of force was as shown, the turning of the BMW would be progressively toward Northrup’s body and this would also be the mechanism by which his body would be expected to move toward the right and onto the BMW’s hood.
In this scenario the body would exist on the hood for a substantial time and distance. Northrup’s body could not just magically fall to the ground in a split second. And if Northrup’s body was carried on the BMW’s hood for a reasonable time the point where Northrup’s body was run over would have to be a substantial distance forward of where the OPP determined the initial contact occurred. However the OPP report indicated the following:
“The OPP reconstructionist concluded Detective Constable Northrup was standing at the BMW’s front left corner when the BMW accelerated forward, struck Detective Constable Northrup, plowed him along the ground, drove over him and fled the scene.“
So how could Northrup’s body end up under the front end of the BMW if his body was moving in a direction toward the right and rear of its hood and his body was being carried on that hood? This is simply impossible. This is not just a bad reconstruction, it is a terribly bad reconstruction.
Who were the police individuals who signed the OPP report and what experience did they have in analyzing pedestrian collisions? This has not been revealed but it is a crucial point. Such basic errors in physics are appalling and why they occurred must begin with an understanding of the background of these individuals.
This is likely why the testimony of Constables Forbes, Correa and Pais was not believed by the court. And this is why both the Toronto Police Service reconstructionist and the defense reconstructionist both agreed on the general scenario that Constable Northrup was not standing up when the BMW accelerated forward and struck him.
Consistent with the previous actions of Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford, he was quoted by news media saying that “Maybe the judge should apologize”. No the judge should not apologize, Premier Doug Ford should apologize for accepting the OPP analysis without understanding that it was flawed. The OPP should apologize to the public for allowing such a report to be written in the name of the OPP.
Toronto’s Police Chief, Myron Demkiw, made a bad decision that made matters worse. He made the decision to invite another police agency to conduct an investigation about members of his own force. Anyone in the policing community would recognize that the public has never trusted a situation where one police force investigates another. This is why an agency such as Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) was created so that there would be some arm’s length separation between police agencies protecting their own kind.
Historically there have been many problems with the SIU and these were going to be corrected by recommendations made by Justice Michael Tulloch in an April, 2017, 263-page report encompassing seven months of research and resulting in 129 recommendations. The liberal provincial government was going to enact the Safer Ontario Act at that time encompassing most of Tulloch’s recommendations and this became law in March of 2018. But the Progressive Conservative party came into power in June and Doug Ford scrapped the law.
In March 17 and 19, 2026 articles posted by CP24 News of Toronto there were a number of views provided about the OPP report. It is not surprising that the lawyer for Zameer, Nader Hasan, reportedly called the OPP report “profoundly disappointing, reckless and irresponsible”. Nasan called out Chief Demkiw who appeared to support the OPP’s findings as Demkiw stated;
“This report is about allegations that our members faced, and it speaks to that investigation, which, quite frankly, again, I’d encourage everybody to read. It is very thorough and comprehensive as it relates to those allegations and the vindication of our members facing those allegations.”
This is an occasion where those collision reconstructionists, whether they be employees of the police, or private consultants, need to speak up and point out that the analysis of the OPP reconstructionist about how the impact occurred is greatly wrong and against accepted, basic science.
OPP Report Into Zameer-Northrup Tragedy
A 55-page report was released today by the OPP with respect the collision on July 2, 2021 whereby Toronto Police Constable Jeffery Northup was killed. The OPP have concluded that the previous investigations and the opinions expressed by the trial judge in this case were in error. We are reviewing this report and will have more to say once we have digested its content.
Lack of Transparency of In-Vehicle Surveillance Programs
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is drafting new legislation that will require the monitoring of drivers with cameras that evaluate the drivers ability to safely control their vehicle. Infrared sensors will track eye movement, pupil dilation, glances and head nods indicative of drowsiness. These sensors will be combined with Artificial Intelligence to prevent vehicle “ignition” if impairment is determined. This law will reportedly come into effect with 2027 model vehicles.
The new technology will add a few hundred dollars to the cost of a new vehicle while it is expected to save between 9,000 and 10,000 lives annually.
It is known that impaired driving is a major safety concern. Technology that can drastically reduce impaired driving is a valuable safety benefit. However, too often, governments and their agencies are shortsighted in understanding the repercussions of such legislation. They only see the benefit that is conveyed to them while not seeing the broader picture of how the public might react to the legislation. This technology will allow the collection of very detailed personal information while there has been no explanation as to how that information will be safe-guarded from unauthorized collection and use. It is a common problem that governments and their representatives do not understand the meaning of transparency, or they know it, but are unwilling to abide by it.
Public backlash is not unheard of. Recently the Ontario government of Doug Ford made it illegal for municipalities to use speed cameras to monitor speeding drivers. This was largely successful because municipalities in Ontario were secretive about how the programs were used. Ford was able to suggest that the cameras were a “cash grab” and were not being used to improve road safety. The cash grab was likely because the threshold for designating speeding was set too low and there were many drivers who were being fined for travelling minimally above the posted speed. However that specific threshold was never publicly disclosed, neither by Ford nor by the municipalities. So a valuable tool that could have saved many lives in Ontario was scraped because there was insufficient transparency over how the tool was being used. This is how the same circumstance could befall the monitoring of drivers for impairment. Failure to involve the public and failure to be transparent with the public is a recipe for failure of any secretive government program.
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