What Has Been Learned From Five Years of Reported Cyclist Collisions in London Ontario
A review of reported cyclist collisions in London, Ontario would make one believe that there are very few such collisions. In fact there is likely a very large segment of non-reported collisions, as suggested by further research. This article will provide a short review of cyclist collisions that occurred and were reported in London, Ontario in the last five years. Then we will examine some further research which indicates cyclist collisions are under-reported by a large margin. It should be recognized that nothing can be learned from these occurrences, not only because so many are never reported, but also because of the very minimal information that is made available in each reported collision.
The following is the list of 13 collisions reported by official news media in London between the years 2019 and 2023.
May 24, 2019
At approximately 2115 hours a female cyclist was struck by an unidentified vehicle Adelaide Street between Dundas Street and Queens Ave. The cyclist sustained serious injuries. No further information was made available.
June 15, 2019
At approximately 1530 hours a cyclist, of undisclosed gender, sustained a serious head injury after a collision on Wellington St north of Horton Street. The striking vehicle was a Pontiac G5. A site photo showed a distant view of a cycle lying in the left, northbound lane of Wellington just north of Horton. No further information was made available.
June 28, 2019
At approximately 2230 hours a male cyclist sustained fatal injuries in a collision on Hamilton Road at East Street. Two vehicles were reportedly involved: a dark coloured Chevrolet SUV and a red Honda sedan. No further information was made available.
July 22, 2019
At approximately 2300 hours a male cyclist was struck by a hit-&-run driver while travelling westbound on Exeter Road and approaching Wonderland Road. The cyclist sustained numerous injuries, the most serious was a head injury that left him in a coma and ultimately with permanent brain injuries that altered his life significantly. Eventually the hit-&-run driver was caught and was sentenced in court. While there was considerable media attention paid to the health progress of the victim, nothing was reported about the details of the collision. In fact, the specific location of the collision was never publicly identified.
August 22, 2019
Shortly before midnight a male cyclist was struck by an unidentified vehicle on Commissioners Road near Andover Drive. The cyclist sustained critical injuries however the eventual outcome of those injuries was never publicly reported. The type of vehicle involved in the collision was never identified. And no information about how the collision occurred was ever provided.
November 4, 2019
At approximately 0620 hours a cyclist was struck and injured on Adelaide Street just south of King Street. A photo taken by a reporter from the London Free Press showed the struck cycle and its wheels appeared to be undamaged. However the handlebars and front wheel were rotated around 180 degrees. Police were at the site for several hours but no additional information was made available.
September 5, 2020
At approximately 1230 hours a cyclist sustained fatal injuries after he was struck while riding his bicycle across Gainsborough Road just west of Hyde Park Road. The London Free Press posted an article focused on a cyclist who arrived at the collision site only a few minutes after it occurred. The witness cyclist claimed that there was a sight obstruction caused by vegetation in the southbound direction in which the deceased was travelling. Police were observed to operate a drone during their investigation at the site but no additional information was released about the collision.
Gorski Consulting conducted a traffic study at the site and it was found that the witness cyclist was correct in his reporting the sight obstruction. Furthermore it was found that typical motor vehicle traffic along Gainsborough Road was well above the posted speed limit and that unsafe features of the cycling path where the fatal collision occurred also may have been a factor in the collision. The London Police Service did not provide any information about their investigation.
March 2, 2022
The London Police Service reported that a cyclist was struck by an unidentified vehicle at an undisclosed location of Trafalgar Street near Elm Street. The extent of injuries to the cyclist was not reported. No further information was made available.
August 7, 2022
At approximately 0200 hours an unconscious cyclist was found lying on a sidewalk on Sunningdale Road near the YMCA east of Adelaide Street. No information was made available by police about their investigation. A family member posted on social media that the cyclist sustained major head injuries but that he was likely to recover. The family member also reported there were “cuts all over his arms, legs and neck”. No further information was made available.
September 18, 2022
At approximately 0430 hours a cyclist was struck by a hit-&-run vehicle on Hamilton Road near Inkerman Street. Extended media coverage of many months described how the search for the striking vehicle was continuing. Meanwhile nothing was noted about how the collision occurred. In February 2023 local residents gathered at a local community centre to discuss what actions could be taken to make Hamilton Road safer.
September 1, 2023
On this Friday afternoon a cyclist was struck by a vehicle on Adelaide Street between Dundas Street and Queens Ave. The extent of injuries to the cyclist was not made available. London City Police did not provide any information about their investigation.
December 1, 2023
At approximately 0500 hours a cyclist was struck by a Chevrolet SUV on Wharncliffe Road just north of Riverview Ave. News reporter photos showed the cycle lying in a driveway at the edge of the southbound curb lane. The cycle’s front wheel and handlebars were rotated 180 degrees. There appeared to be minimal or no damage to the rims of the cycle. The Chevrolet reportedly had damage to the right of its front bumper and along its right fender. No information was provided by London Police Service about the status of their investigation.
December 8, 2023
At approximately 1630 hours a cyclist as struck by a London Police Service cruiser on York Street near William Street. The cyclist suffered a serious injury but no specific injury information was made available. News media reported that York Street was closed for over 12 hours and that the Ontario Special Investigations Unit (SIU) became involved. At this time there has been no further information made available on the SIU website. No further information was made available from any other source about this collision.
Discussion
Thirteen collisions have been discussed in this five-year review of reported cyclist collisions in London, Ontario. Reviewing the descriptions it can be seen that absolutely nothing useful has been provided in these descriptions. If one were to provide safety guidance to cyclists and motor vehicle drivers these descriptions would be of no value.
The question remains whether these 13 collisions are the only ones that occurred in London in the past five years. No one can say for sure because no specific, official data exists that would confirm that cyclist collisions are being under-reported.
One might believe that an organization such as a local health unit might provide reliable information about cyclist collisions. After all a health unit must be responsible for monitoring any health risks to the public. The local health unit in the London area is the Middlesex-London Health Unit. Scanning their website it becomes clear that not much useful data about cyclist collisions is available. Some dated reports are available on the website with some data. For example a report in 2014 provided some cyclist collision data as follows:
“Collision data gathered between 2008 and 2013 in London indicate there were 779 Motor Vehicle Collisions (MVC) involving cyclists and of those incidents, cyclists were at fault 502 times and drivers were at fault 273 times (Human Environments Analysis Lab, 2014). Injury data indicate that the average yearly rate of Emergency Room visits between 2009 and 2013 for bicycle related traffic collisions was higher in Middlesex-London at 27.8 per 100,000 compared to 18.8 per 100,000 in Ontario. This amounted to 128 ER visits per year in Middlesex-London (Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, 20“
However even this limited data raises some questions. Someone conducted an analysis that determined there were 779 cyclist collisions in the 5-year period between 2008 and 2013. Or there were about 156 cyclist collisions every year. Compare this result to the one in our review where only 13 collisions were reported to the public between 2019 and 2023. Does that not suggest that there is a very large under-reporting of collisions to the general public? And there is more…
In a Canadian Press article published on August 2, 2022, statistics on cyclist hospitalizations were quoted from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). In part the article noted:
“The Canadian Institute for Health Information has released national data that covers hospitalizations and emergency department visits from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021. It shows hospitalizations for all injuries dropped by about 15,000 visits year-over-year to 256,000 — but hospitalizations for cycling injuries increased 25 per cent to 5,255. The jump was especially big in Ontario, which logged 1,579 bike-related hospitalizations and accounted for about 30 per cent of all cycling traumas. The province also saw nearly 29,000 trips to the emergency room for cycling injuries, up one third from the year before.“
Does this finding also show that recent collisions are vastly under-reported in London, Ontario? There were “nearly 29,000 trips to the emergency room from cycling injuries” in Ontario. In 2021 Ontario’s population was estimated to be about 14.9 million. And London’s population was approximately 400,000, or about 2.7 percent of the province’s population. If there were 29,000 trips to the emergency room in Ontario then one might believe there should have been about 783 visits in London. This belief would seem to match the data from the Middlesex- London health (779 visits) unit noted above.
Comparing the research to the number of cyclist collisions reported to the public would indicate that, of those collisions requiring a hospital intervention, which were about 780, only 13 were publicly reported. Or only about 1.7 percent were actually reported to the public. And even when those collisions were reported absolutely nothing of benefit was provided that would help the public in understanding how their safety might be jeopardized or what factors would be important in preventing their injury and death.
2023 Data on Cyclist Helmet Use in London Ontario
As in previous years Gorski Consulting has obtained observations of cyclist helmet use in London, Ontario for the year 2023. The latest data is shown in the following table.
Overall more than two-thirds of male cyclists in 2023 were observed not to be wearing a cycling helmet. Yet the usage rate for females appears to be more, at close to half. Similar data was also obtained and reported in 2022 and this is shown in the table below.
The difference in helmet use appeared to be less pronounced in 2022 as about 63 percent of males were not using helmets and 55 percent of females were non-users.
Observational data like this is important to understand what local trends exist versus what is reported for studies in Ontario, Canada or internationally.
Police Believe Evidence Too Costly To Obtain In Criminal Case
How much is your being found guilty or innocent dependent on your ability to pay? Little attention is given to this rising issue as technical data from motor vehicle manufacturers becomes more and more important in court cases. A recent example illustrates the growing problem.
A police investigator needed to obtain a download of event data recorder (EDR) data in a recent criminal proceeding from a vehicle manufacturer. The police investigator stated:
“The manufacturer’s legal representative, after confirming that the vehicle was equipped with an EDR, sent an authorization form that we had to complete and return, along with our search warrant.  There is a $2500 fee for the EDR service.  Because this was a law enforcement case, the manufacturer told me that they would waive the fee BUT informed me that their policy would be changing soon and LE will have to pay this fee in the near future. The people I dealt with at the manufacturer were friendly and very helpful.  I could not have asked for a better experience with them. Unfortunately, it may be the last law-enforcement related case I might have the chance to use it in.  My agency (like many others I suspect), would almost certainly not be willing to spend $2500 for this download except in the most exceptional cases.  I hope at some point the manufacturer may offer a commercial tool for these downloads.“
Many in the collision reconstruction field hold the opinion that vehicle manufacturers have the right to claim their fees because it is an economic inconvenience to them. Manufacturers are not in the business of offering collision reconstruction assistance in court cases, they are in the business of manufacturing motor/electric vehicles. The manufacturer must support a legal department that receives requests, technicians that must perform the downloads, and a shipping agency that accepts and sends out the EDR hardware. And so a fee of $2500 is deemed a reasonable fee. However is this fee reasonable in most cases?
The police investigator noted that his agency would not use the service “except in the most exceptional cases”. What does that mean? Does it mean that, for those cases where the EDR data could be helpful in supporting criminal charges? But what if there is a chance that the EDR data could prove that police charges were not legitimate? Would the police agency still pay the $2500 fee? Highly unlikely. And when police do not conduct the download, it is left to the person charged with a crime to find the funds to obtain the download. How often will that be possible? If you are in a position of high finance and power a fee of $2500 may be of minimal consequence. But there are likely to be far more persons who simply cannot afford that expense.
We are entering the age where motor vehicles are computers on wheels. They contain numerous computer modules that speak to each other, gathering data from each other so that decisions can be made about preventing collisions or protecting occupants once a collision is unavoidable. The available data is not just in traditional EDRs, they are in snapshots that can be obtained from exterior-facing cameras. They are data taken from communication devices that operate on a vehicle’s network. As these data become resident in more and more vehicle systems the download of such data becomes too costly and is not affordable to the average citizen. The is our brave new world.
As in so many areas government policy lags behind, and sometimes on purpose.
2023 Cyclist Observations Provide Important Data On Cyclist Safety In London Ontario
New data is available from close to 1,000 observations of cyclists travelling on, or adjacent to, urban streets in London, Ontario in the year 2023. This is a continuation of similar observations conducted in 2021 and 2022. These data are very different from what is displayed by the City of London from their eco-counters which are embedded at select points along cycling paths, lanes and tracks, Observations along City streets provide a better indication of the safety challenges existing to the average cyclist who often rides where no official cycling infrastructure exists. The increased documentations by Gorski Consulting in the past few years allow for yearly comparisons to be made and for consideration of developing trends.
The table below shows the most recent data from the year 2023, followed by similar tables for the years 2022 and 2021.
Discussion
As can be seen in the above tables female cyclist observations continue to remain low. The percentage of observed females was 12.54 in 2021, 13.11 in 2022 and 14.60 in 2023. While there appears to be a slight creeping upward in these years the best that can be said is that the percentage of observed female cyclists is in the range of 12 to 15 percent.
This data also shows the location of cyclists. Previously we have categorized cyclists with respect to whether they were observed within the travel lanes of a road or whether they were observed on a sidewalk. In the 2021 data we did not note what cyclists were doing at pedestrian crossings of intersections but this was changed in 2022 and 2023 with the addition of two columns: “Riding Thru Ped Crossing” and “Walking Thru Ped Crossing”. These columns were added because it we noted that a substantial number of cyclists were riding on pedestrian crossings and this action is prohibited.
When tallying the numbers of cyclists on the sidewalk we included all observations where cyclists were riding, walking or stopped on a sidewalk. We also included those cyclists in this category who were observed to riding or walking through a pedestrian crossing. It was judged that cyclists within a pedestrian crossing were likely to have originated from a sidewalk so this is the reason for their inclusion.
When tallying the numbers of cyclists on a road we combined those observations where cyclists were riding within a traffic lane along with those that were stopped in a traffic lane. Cyclists observed riding within a designated cycling lane or track were also included in this category of riding on the road.
As can be seen in the above tables we have separated males and females. So in 2021 the percent of cyclists on a sidewalk were: Males = 64.89% and Females = 64.94%. For 2022 the data indicated: Males = 65.25% and Females = 72.59%. And for 2023 the data indicated: Males = 66.79% and Females = 65.22%. While these data show slight differences from year to year those differences are not likely to be meaningful given the size of the samples. However, overall it could be said that about two-thirds of cyclists in London, between the years 2021 and 2023, were observed on a sidewalk versus within a travel lane of a road or cycling lane. Note that Provincial legislation and London bi-laws prohibit cyclists from riding on a sidewalk. So about two-thirds of cyclists have been observed to be disobeying those laws.
We will have more discussion about these observations in future articles on this Gorski Consulting website. Data about helmet use and differences between travel locations will be some of the issues to be discussed.
School Bus Double Fatal Collision Near Brampton Ontario
The public was not served well by both investigating police and the official news media with respect to a recent double fatal collision involving a First Student school bus in the outskirts of Brampton Ontario.
The OPP reported that just before 0800 hours on December 19, 2023, a “passenger vehicle” and school bus collided at an undisclosed location. The use of the term “passenger vehicle” could not be any less informative. The OPP reported that there was one student on the school bus who was not injured. There were five persons in the “passenger vehicle” and one of them was pronounced deceased. In a subsequent update the OPP reported that a second occupant of the “passenger vehicle” also died.
The OPP seemed to work hard at providing as little information about the collision as possible. A photo of the collision site was posted on their Twitter account but this seemed to be arranged so that no useful information could be obtained from it. The photo showed two OPP vehicles at the site, with possibly other police vehicles nearby, but nothing was disclosed about the actual collision evidence.
Official news media began to display photos of the area and from this it could be ascertained that the OPP photo seemed to be taken in a manner to hide indications of the final rest positions of the vehicles as well as the damage to them.
A short video was taken of the accident site by CP24 News from Toronto and this was helpful in providing some basics of the evidence. This video provided an aerial view of the site, either from a helicopter or perhaps a drone. The content of this video cannot be shown on our website because it is copyright. The video would have been instructive and educational if someone with collision reconstruction experience was able to point out important elements from it. But news journalists are not experts in collision reconstruction. So the information reported by news journalists from the video was very basic at best. A journalist interviewed an OPP Sergeant at the site and it was clear that minimal information was going to be reported by the Sergeant. Yet the OPP were focused on requesting any information from dashcam footage that the public might have.
Eventually the official news media reported the location of the collision: on Heart Lake Road which is located on the northern outskirts of the City of Brampton. At no point did anyone provide a cross-reference to determine specifically where on Heart Lake Road the site was located. So it took a little digging by Gorski Consulting to find the actual site. However this points to the obvious issue that neither police nor official news personnel are providing the public with basic and essential information that they ought to have with respect to fatal collisions that are victimizing them.
Using the information contained in the CP24 News video our analysis suggests that the collision occurred on Heart Lake Road, about 420 metres south of the Old School Road. This general area is shown in the Google Maps view shown below.
A closer view of the site is shown below, also taken from Google Maps.
Another Google Maps view is shown below. This is a view looking southward along Heart Lake Road from south of Old School Road.
The news video showed that the SUV had come to rest on the right (west) roadside ditch while the school bus came to rest on the left (east) roadside ditch. Police pilons were positioned on the road indicating that the collision occurred within the paved road and that both vehicles slid to their respective sides of the road. It was apparent that, after impact, both vehicles travelled past the point of impact along similar distances. Nothing was said about the travel directions of the vehicles and so this had to be derived from the evidence.
Some portions of the vehicles were visible in the video, particularly the SUV and damage evidence could be seen along its front end as well as along its left side. The SUV’s windshield contained concentrated areas of fracture particularly at its driver’s side.
Views of the school bus were shown from a distance however it did not exhibit much crush. What damage was visible indicated that it was primarily along the driver’s side of the front end.
The totality of this evidence suggests that the SUV had been travelling southbound and the two vehicles collided in a manner such that there was direct contact damage along the driver’s side of the SUV, and possibly also along the left side of the bus. This is a common happening in head-on collisions. The majority of serious head-on collisions involves an offset where the direct damage is to the driver’s side of the front end. This typically results in counter-clockwise rotation of both vehicles. This rotation was evident in the rest position of the SUV. However the rotation of the bus could not be determined at this time because of the lack of sufficient evidence.
Two occupants of the SUV perished but nothing was said about how and why this occurred. A news reporter announced that, based on his experience, the vehicles had to be travelling very quickly, well above the posted maximum speed of 80 km/h. This is why news reporters should never be trusted to be collision reconstructionists. While the reporter confirmed his understanding that roadways were reported to be slippery in the region the reporter did not seem to think that a vehicle travelling on a downslope on a slippery surface might be factor in the cause of this collision.
By no means was the reporter’s announcement accurate. The available evidence regarding the vehicle speeds would come from examining the speed lost during post-impact trajectories of the vehicles along with a reasonable rate of deceleration. Along with this one must also consider the speed loss from the crush that occurred to both vehicles. A momentum analysis would not work in this co-linear collision and some work would be needed to estimate the change-in-velocity of both vehicles derived from measuring the crush. But even without this basic analysis a collision reconstructionist would be able to tell, just by looking at the basic evidence, that high speeds were not involved in this collision. That is to say, the speeds were within the bounds of what would be expected on a highway signed with a an 80 km/h maximum speed. It is incredible how misinformation can be spread by persons who know very little about collisions and nothing is done to correct that problem.
Modern technology is such that almost all light-duty vehicles are equipped with some form of event data recorder and, in some instances, other forms of evidence capture. Undoubtedly police should have had access to these sources of evidence. Data captured and retrieved from various modules can provide precise information about certain parameters but not all can be known that is needed. Some interpretation of the data is required and, must also be compared to the physical evidence.
This is why a solid grounding in physical evidence must be a component of any reconstructionist’s experience and training. For many years investigators working for federal agencies such as NHTSA and Transport Canada were required to provide vehicle crush data for the narrow purpose of developing estimates of the change-in-velocity (Delta-V) of vehicles in impacts. At no time was it understood that these procedures could be adapted to create further understandings about how collisions occurred. Measuring vehicle crush could go beyond estimating Delta-V and could explore how the shapes of vehicles were changed by the impact. By studying how the shapes of vehicles changed a better understanding could be obtained about what was happening to the vehicles during the time that they were in contact.
With respect to the present collision, if a reconstructionist was familiar with documenting how the shapes of vehicles changed it would be possible to develop a greater understanding of what kind of collision was involved. Evidence about how the vehicles approached each other and how they interacted during the time of contact would allow for a better understanding of what was occurring just before impact. The fact that there appeared to be direct contact along the left side of the SUV would have been an important clue to how the vehicles approached each other just before impact. Without going into too much detail, the presence of direct contact along the left side of the SUV should lead to the question why it existed and why the vehicles did not separate during counter-clockwise rotation before that damage occurred. In our detailed study of many severe head-on collisions the presence or absence of such evidence has been helpful in categorizing and differentiating classes of head-on collisions.
It can be observed that the presence of this direct contact along the left side of a vehicle during a head-on collision is what makes it more dangerous to the occupants of that vehicle, particularly the driver. We have studied this phenomenon for many years without much interest in the reconstruction community. This is often because collision reconstruction has become a police affair with focus on determining vehicle speed and laying charges, rather than focusing on how fatalities can be prevented. As we have mentioned many times before, nothing is learned from these tragedies when those who investigate and report collisions do not understand what they are dealing with.
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