Unreported & Unexplained Fatality on Hwy 7 in Vaughan
Unreported and unexplained fatalities are the matters which prevent our society from determining what factors are injuring and killing road users, thus preventing an efficient way of achieving the targets of Vision Zero.
Those who appreciate the importance of reducing injury and death on our roads must understand that hiding the causes will not help in achieving reductions in those injuries and deaths.
An example of the problem is the display on Twitter of the above photo in a York Regional Police posting with a short statement that police are “…investigating a fatal single vehicle crash on Highway 7 and Pine Valley Drive…” in Vaughan. There are a limited number of ways in which occupants should sustain injuries in single vehicle collisions and the patterns of damage on the vehicle should reflect and explain those causes. The attached photo does not provide a clear explanation of what caused the damage resulting in the driver’s death. The concentration of debris in the vicinity of the rest position of the vehicle does not indicate that the vehicle damage was caused while the vehicle was rolling or tumbling to its rest position but rather that some form of impact occurred very near to where the vehicle came to rest. Yet the photo has failed to illuminate what exists in the vicinity of where the vehicle is stopped. While it is still early in the process, neither police nor official media have provided an explanation of what happened here.
The public needs to be more educated about how collisions occur, what evidence should look like in certain reported events, and should not accept reports blindly without questioning what they are fed. There is no logical reason why the causes of injury and death need to be withheld from public understanding as it is to the benefit of all that those causes be known and their effects be mitigated.
Join Our Documentations of Traffic on London’s Blackfriars Bridge
Will there be safety problems at the Blackfriars bridge when one way traffic meets with users of the Thames Valley Parkway? This is your chance to get involved in a study that documents those potential problems.
Some disapproving voices were heard, primarily from cyclists, when the City of London decided to allow one-way, motorized traffic to use Blackfriars Bridge to enter into downtown London, Ontario. Cyclists had hoped that the bridge would be closed except for cycling and pedestrian traffic. The City of London promised that they would conduct a study to explore whether there are any safety issues. But, as typical, the details of the study are unlikely to be revealed to the public.
At Gorski Consulting I have been conducting numerous traffic documentations for years as part of my studies for the reconstruction of individual motor vehicle collisions for my clients. The multiple video camera procedures I have developed can provide very detailed assessments of traffic motions and potential safety conflicts. Upon observing the internet chatter on the potential safety issues I have decided to conduct a multi-video camera documentation of traffic at Blackfriars Bridge, independent of the City of London.
Unique safety issues may arise in this traffic study such as the one shown here, where 2 pedestrians are seen walking in the middle of the bridge rather than using the available pedestrian sidewalks.
An understanding of potential traffic conflicts cannot be gained until the incidence of these seemingly unusual actions by users of the bridge are fully evaluated.
For those interested in such a study I am looking for a few volunteers. I expect the study to occur over a two-hour period, possibly during the morning rush hours (0800 to 1000 hours) when motorized traffic will be using the bridge to enter downtown. I would also conduct a similar study at a time when there would be higher cyclist and pedestrian traffic, possibly in the afternoon hours. Volunteers are needed to monitor the video cameras from potential theft since it will be required that the cameras be set up several hundred metres apart. This will be an opportunity for volunteers to get first hand experience in the detailed procedures of conducting a traffic study because I would also allow full involvement in the post-video analysis of the data.
The capturing of motor-vehicle speeds approaching and passing through the bridge would be one element of interest. Also documentation of pedestrian and cyclist speeds crossing past the east end of the bridge will be important. What is obvious is there is a limited visibility at the east end of the bridge where these crossings are occurring and thus there is a potential for conflicts. It is particularly important that planners may assume that cyclist traffic will be crossing at a slower speed because of the steep upslopes of the TVP on approach to the bridge. However, with the greater population of e-bikes such lower speeds may not be experienced as e-bike riders are likely to be travelling on the up-slopes much faster than those pedalling without assistance from battery-powered cycles. This potential problem is likely to be more pervasive as more e-bikes use the crossing.
There is a substantial limit to visibility of users of the TVP as they approach and then cross at the east end of Blackfriars Bridge. The relevance of this visibility obstruction needs to be explored.
Those who volunteer for the study will be given my full support to pursue whatever additional investigations they may wish to conduct. For those cyclists who expressed concern over the City’s decisions this is your opportunity to examine for yourself whether your concerns are warranted.
Contact me, Zyg Gorski, at my e-mail: [email protected], if interested in participating in this study which will likely take place in May or June, 2022.
No Apparent Improvements To CAA’s Worst Roads Campaign?
CAA’s Worst Roads campaign is better than nothing as its subjective method of evaluating and comparing roads is the only publicly publicized program that can be used to compare those roads.
Receiving annual publicity from almost all news media outlets in Ontario, the CAA’s Worst Roads campaign continues to gather subjective complaints from citizens as to what they perceive as the worst road in their area. Annually the 10 worst roads are determined based on how many complaints are received about that road. The CAA claims that they partner with the Ontario Road Builders’ Association to “verify” the list. It is not clear whether this is an improvement over the procedures of previous years as the partnership with the Ontario Road Builders’ Association has not been previously noted. Whatever the term “verification” means there is no information as to what is verified or if some legitimate method of road comparisons is followed. While those who build roads can know the specifications that they must follow they are not experts in collision reconstruction nor can they necessarily know what road conditions are less safe than others.
Drivers in Ontario deserve to have a reliable process where road quality and safety can be measured and compared. But due to the dominance of defendants such as Ontario’s municipalities and Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation, such measures have never seen the light of day. In this bazaar set of circumstances, the special interests of these defendants cause them to hide road safety problems so that they are not implicated in civil litigation.
The White Knight in this process ought to be an association such as the CAA. The CAA ought not to have any hidden agenda. Yet the efficiency with which they are able to highlight these problems is compromised by their failure to demonstrate that they have an objective methodology that is independent of subjective opinion.
At Gorski Consulting a simple methodology of road comparisons has been developed using the sensors of the iPhone and multiple video cameras. A test vehicle is driven along a road segment and the iPhone’s sensors capture the lateral and longitudinal motion of the vehicle induced by the road. Spreadsheets are generated that can identify very specific problems, such as individual potholes, or average data can describe the average motion of the test vehicle over the entire road segment. This methodology has been in existence for a number of years now and data has been uploaded to the Road Data page of the Gorski Consulting website.
It is a bazaar world that has been created when governments that, in theory, ought to be interested in reducing road safety hazards, become the catalysts for hiding those safety problems because they must protect themselves from civil litigation.
A Reasoned Approach to Tougher Driver Penalties & Imprisonment
There are many dangerous creeps behind the wheel who need to be permanently removed from the road system. But there are also some who make a mistake with large consequences. Emotional reactions bent on quick vengeance is never a solution. But reasoned understanding of root causes, with early interventions in troubled lives, have been known to provide much more effective and long-lasting positive results.
Our society is troubled by the presence of dangerous persons and reacts by increasing penalties and imprisonment. This is seen as the solution that will reduce those incidents.
Intermixed with this are persons who are not so dangerous but who make mistakes. A classic example would be a tired driver travelling to work in the morning who passes through a red light and kills a child pedestrian. A very tragic circumstance but one that anyone could encounter without being a dangerous criminal. It relies on our police, prosecutors, judges, and ourselves, to consider those circumstances.
Ironically, if the struck pedestrian was a robber running from police, with a bag of stolen money in his hand, the reaction might be different. It would be the same act committed by the same tired driver but he might even be applauded by some for stopping a criminal act.
Twisting the scenario one more time, if the driver was impaired by alcohol the reaction might be different again. An impaired driver killing the child would be highly unacceptable. But what if this was a first drinking offense by a young man who became drunk with no initial intent to drive until the alcohol affected his judgment? Certainly it would be an unacceptable act, but where would it fit within the scale of the other scenarios? Might the reaction be different if it was an alcoholic who had committed other offenses? Since it is known that alcoholism is an addictive sickness are we prepared to treat that alcoholic as a patient who needs treatment or are we interested in punishing him no different that the robber with the bag of money?
The reality is that bad consequences and the character of the person who creates them affect our reactions to them. The worse the consequences the more likely that the penalties will be higher. The worse opinion we have of a person’s character the more we are likely to seek vengeance rather than understanding.
While, in many instances, stiffer penalties and jail time may be a deterrent at other times they can lead to something quite different. A driver who makes a mistake and receives a stiff penalty and possible jail time is likely to be affected by this consequence for the rest of their life. Once that penalty is completed its consequences are not. A stiff monetary penalty that cannot be afforded may lead to the loss of a house, a car or other essentials that might have kept that person in a stable environment, seek help, and allow that person to move on. Without that house, car, etc. a domino effect may occur. A job might be lost. A marriage may fail. The person’s mental state may change. These consequences may seem of little importance if we do not understand when a possible deterrent can change to a possible enhancement for that penalized person’s next bad interaction with society.
At the same time, there in no freedom without responsibility. There comes a point when an individual is past the point of help and must have their freedom removed, sometimes permanently, for the sake of public safety. This must mean continued and costly monitoring because early intervention did not occur or was unsuccessful. Once we help create such monsters there are times when you can’t break the branch and stick it on another part of the tree.
Vengeance, like candy and alcohol, may be a quick, satisfying indulgence. But if our ultimate goal is our health and the overall well-being of our society we need to take it in moderation. And we need to understand its consequences. Penalizing a driver causes a disruption that may result in a downward spiral. A driver with a drinking problem may resort to more drinking. Perhaps a turn to more powerful drugs, or a turn to more dangerous crimes. The need to consider this is not because we are “bleeding heart liberals” or unfeeling for the loss of the victim. This need is because it affects our own pocket book, our own future safety and how effectively our society will function in the future. Because, unless we are willing to keep troubled persons away from society for their life-time, they will eventually return and not necessarily in a better state. The fallacy of believing that a quick return to prison will surely occur is that, in fact, a troubled person performing disruptive or criminal acts, does not get caught on a 100% basis. If our goal is vengeance without rehabilitation that driver may return to society with a fresh, sharper and more mean-spirited axe to grind. Impaired drivers will continue driving impaired but they will become more educated on how not to get caught. Speeders will continue speeding. Distracted drivers will continue driving distracted. Many of these acts will go on for a substantial time and over many incidents before those responsible are snared, and the process could repeat itself.
Furthermore, imprisonment does not mean that there is no cost to our society. It means that we pay for meals, housing, guarding and other costs that occur during imprisonment. Recent statistics from Correctional Service Canada (CSC) indicates that it costs taxpayers $116,000 per year to keep a prisoner in jail. In the fiscal year 2015-16 there was an average of 14,639 persons in Canadian jails which resulted in costs of about 1.7 billion dollars. So why not become tougher on crime? Why not increase the prison population to 30,000? That is OK, but now the costs rise to 3.5 billion dollars. The solution exported by many who blow this horn sounds great.
What occurs during imprisonment has consequences for what occurs after imprisonment. Involving the penalized driver in a reason to change may be a greater deterrent that the penalty itself.
Drowning at Ethel Ontario – Accountability Might As Well Be Rocket Science?
Under normal circumstances accountability is not a difficult concept to understand: If someone’s actions have caused someone’s death they should be accountable for it. Why is that principle so hard to follow in motor vehicle deaths? Let us look at the following example.
From articles posted by CTV News London and the London Free Press it was reported that at around 2300 hours on Friday, March 18, 2022 the OPP responded to information that a vehicle had left “the roadway” and entered the Maitland River south of Ethel, Ontario. Both news articles reported that a body was subsequently recovered from a submerged pick-up truck at 1800 hours on Saturday, March 19th. Neither article provided any information as to where the vehicle entered the water. In their defense these were the only news agencies to bother with providing any information to the public about the drowning. Many prominent news agencies provided no mention of the drowning.
The London Free Press article reported that the submerged pick-up truck was found south of Ethel. At best, CTV news reported that police responded to Ethel Line and that the pick-up truck was recovered south of Ethel, Ontario. But there are two sites where a vehicle could possibly enter the water of the Maitland River south of Ethel, as shown in the map below.
The area near Ethel, Ontario where a drowning occurred in the Maitland River on Friday, March 18, 2022.
A Google Maps view of the Ethel Bridge site is shown below. It shows well-constructed guard (guide) rails on both sides of the bridge abutments and these rails are properly secured to the ends of the concrete abutments. At first glance it seemed unlikely that a vehicle would pass through this location and into the water. So the roadway maintenance personnel and County officials seemed to have done their proper job here.
View, looking south, along Ethel Line at the Ethel Bridge located just south of Ethel, Ontario. This bridge crossing the Maitland River looks to be in good condition and contains properly anchored guard (guide) rails positioned on both ends of the bridge.
The second site is shown in another Google Maps view shown below. This is a view looking south and the Maitland River is hidden in the trees along the right side of this view. Here the situation is of more concern. There is no barrier here between the roadway and the Maitland River. There is a downslope from the roadway to river leading to a further concern.
View, looking south, along Ethel Line. The Maitland River is hidden in the trees on the right side of this road. Note there is no barrier here and there appears to be a substantial grassy slope leading from the roadside down toward the Maitland River.
So is the site of the plunge into the water relevant? Well it depends of whether you understand the concept of accountability.
Let us deviate from this example for a moment and consider the successful launch of a rocket toward a moon landing. NASA is an organization with many employees with incredible skills. Each employee’s actions are responsible for getting a rocket to the moon. The guy who supplies the rocket fuel is just one employee. If the rocket-fuel guy does not supply the fuel the mission fails. Thus he has an important responsibility as he is accountable toward making sure the rocket fuel is available. If the rocket fuel is not available the actions of hundreds of other employees do not matter, the rocket will not reach the moon. Surely it is understandable that the successful implementation of a difficult task is reliant on all persons in the plan being accountable for each of their tasks. Is this so difficult to understand?
Well the successful implementation of a road safety plan is no different than that rocket launch to the moon. The successful implementation of a road safety plan also requires that the actions of many persons, and agencies, act in an accountable manner in order to reach that safety goal. We often refer to the three foundations of road safety: The human, the vehicle and the environment, or HVE for short.
Those accountable for the human factors may be those that drive a vehicle. In order for the road safety strategy to work the driver must drive at a proper speed, must not be distracted, must not be impaired and so on. The driver is accountable for these things.
Those accountable for the vehicle may be the vehicle manufacturers who must build a reasonably safety vehicle. Air bags must deploy at an appropriate timing and severity. Wheels must not break off. Steering wheels must change the direction of the vehicle reliably. Those persons who work at federal institutions such as NHTSA or Transport Canada must also have a regulatory role to play. Vehicle technicians must be accountable for providing correct maintenance procedures to a vehicle. And so on.
And there are those accountable for the environment in which the vehicle travels. This refers to the roadway system and how it is designed, maintained and signed. It refers to those roadside objects constructed to lessen the likelihood of a significant injury should the driver or vehicle fail in their obligations.
The concept of accountability applies to each and every individual in this chain of responsibilities because, if one fails, we all fail. No rocket fuel, no successful launch. It is that simple.
When a rocket fails to launch NASA does not just simply and hurriedly build another rocket. That would be stupid would it not? NASA would investigate why the launch failed. It would look at all the actions that were taken or not taken. If the rocket fuel guy failed to supply the fuel NASA would not simply blame the guy who supplies the oxygen, or the guy who is responsible for the rocket’s structure, or whatever. Recognizing that the fuel was not supplied NASA would make sure this was corrected for the next launch. And no need to build a new rocket.
So what investigation should be carried out when a fatal collision occurs? Should the same sort of investigation be carried out? Should investigators follow along and note where the failures occurred? Should investigators look at the Human, the Vehicle and the Environmental factors in totality? If the guy responsible for the Environmental factors has failed to ensure a safe site should that be ignored? It should be ridiculous to ask that question but the reality is just that: Environmental factors that fail are not investigated and documented in fatal motor vehicle crashes. And fatal motor vehicle crashes continue, and missions to improve road safety fail, on a regular basis.
Let us return to our example of the fatally drowned driver in the Maitland River. The fact that the vehicle entered the water is a failure of the environment where the entrance occurred. But has this failure been acknowledged? No. Not only has it not been acknowledged it has not even been mentioned or identified where the failure occurred. Why did police not identify the specific location where the pick-up truck entered the water? And when the news reporters filed their articles for the public why did they not comprehend that the location where the vehicle entered the water was relevant? Are you not accountable for informing the public when the lack of installation of a roadside barrier, or the improper installation of a barrier, has led to a drowning death?
In fact this evening, March 21, 2022 CTV News provided a video segment where they included some video footage of the location where the pick-up truck was either found or entered the water. Indeed the location shown in the video footage was at the Ethel Bridge, and it seemed to show an area on the west and on the south side of the bridge. Subsequently I returned to Google Maps and examined the guard (guide) rail on the south side of Ethel Bridge and the two images below show what I uncovered.
View, looking north, along Ethel Line toward Ethel Bridge. CTV news video seemed to show the area to the left (west) of the bridge where the pick-up truck may have entered the water. But note how the rail on the right (east) is much longer than the rail on the left (west). Why was the rail so short on the west side of the bridge?
View, looking north at the guard (guide) rail on the west side and south of the Ethel Bridge. The rail is very short and much shorter than the length of rail on the east side. Why was this short rail installed instead of the longer length on the east?
Why have police not commented on how the vehicle entered the water, supposedly at the bridge, and somehow bypassed the protections of the guard (guide) rail? It should have been obvious to any untrained eye that the shortness of the rail would be a factor in whether or not a vehicle could enter the river. These are the ways in which road safety hazards are bypassed and allowed to exist, undetected, because those responsible for the public’s safety fail to protect the public’s safety.
As I have said before, Vision Zero is a marvelous propaganda campaign. Many experts quote how we must focus on reducing a vast number of deaths by the year 2030. But Vision Zero is doomed to failure when politics and corruption prevents the identification of those factors that continue to cause fatalities because those accountable for those factors are sacred cows, untouchable in the field and unidentifiable to the public. Indeed, road safety is rocket science: the rocket will never get off the ground because the rocket fuel guy continually fails to fill the tank.
You must be logged in to post a comment.