No Comments on Fatal Concrete Barrier Failure on Hwy 401 in Mississauga Ontario
This is a wonderful picture of Santa Claus, but it has nothing to do with the present article. We cannot show you the relevant photos even though they may be of critical importance to public safety.
Once again police and official news media have failed to inform the public about a deadly roadway failure that likely led to the death of two, and possibly three, road users in a collision that occurred on Highway 401 in Mississauga, Ontario yesterday.
Not surprisingly little information was publicly divulged. A few photos of the collision site were displayed on websites of official news agencies but no photos were provided by the investigating police. This means that photos of the site cannot be published by Gorski Consulting as they are deemed copyrighted. Yet they are essential to the public’s knowledge of a deadly circumstance.
Police provided a confusing description of what happened. Even a later clarification was also confusing. But generally the collision reportedly unfolded when two westbound vehicles, a Lexus SUV and a Ford Pick-up truck collided in the westbound lanes of Highway 401 near Winston Churchill Blvd yesterday morning, November 21, 2020. This impact led to the Ford Pick-up truck crashing through the concrete median barrier and colliding with an eastbound Dodge minivan.
Although the police explanation is confusing, it appears that two persons in the Ford Pick-up truck sustained fatal injuries. A third occupant of the Ford Pick-up truck sustained critical injuries.
News media have failed to highlight the fact that the Ford Pick-up truck should not have successfully passed through the concrete median barrier. Similarly police have also said nothing about this failure. The few photos of the site show that portable concrete barriers (PCBs) were in place at the outer edges of the highway and therefore this was likely a construction zone – another important fact that was not clarified. It is always a concern that adjustments to normal travel in a construction zone can lead to collisions and it needs to be noted whether or not such adjustments could have influenced the initial impact between the Lexus and Ford. Regardless, the main issue is that once the initial impact occurred the median barrier should have contained the impacting vehicles within the westbound lanes. That is the purpose of constructing a concrete median barrier. The on-site photos show that a portion of the concrete median barrier was broken out and it seems highly likely that this is the point that was struck by the Ford Pick-up truck as it crashed through the barrier. Again, neither police or official news media have confirmed this. It is a deafening silence.
The testing of the performance of roadway structures has long been standardized through protocols that have been primarily developed in the U.S. As with almost all highway and vehicles matters, Canadian standards mimic those of the U.S. for important harmonization reasons. Thus it would be ridiculous, for example, to have the travel directions on highways changed just because drivers cross international borders. Or that road signs should be totally different in the two countries. Or that certain vehicle safety features should be vastly different. Harmonization is extremely important for all road users in North America.
Thus, with respect to barrier safety testing, Canada must follow certain protocols similar to those in the U.S. An older U.S. protocol named NCHRP 350 was recently replaced by another called MASH. Both of these deal with testing of concrete barriers by impacting them in controlled tests by vehicles of various sizes, weights and angles of approach. Regardless of which protocol is used, a typical pick-up truck should not be able to crash through a concrete median barrier. If such a situation occurred the barrier would not be allowed to be installed on a U.S. highway. But does the Province of Ontario follow the protocols established by the U.S. Departments of Transportation? Does the Province of Ontario follow any protocols at all? This has not been revealed. And it certainly has not be discussed in the reporting of the present crash which is directly related to the the Province’s safety responsibilities.
These discussions are matters of critical importance to the safety of all citizens of Ontario and throughout Canada. Government transportation departments should not have card blanche to do as they please without accountability to public scrutiny. And police and news media fail in their obligations to the public when they fail to inform the public of these critical matters.
Dangerous LED Traffic Signals Covered By Snow Cause Vehicles to Pass Through a Red Light
LED traffic signals are inexpensive to operate. And they do well in warm weather. But when there is a snowfall and low temperatures the lack of heat causes snow to adhere to the lamps and obscure them. This signal was found on southbound Wellington Road in London, Ontario and it caused four vehicles to pass through it, fortunately without causing a collision.
This is a warning to the public of the dangers that exist with LED traffic signals which become covered by snow due to their lack of heat production. While LED signals are cheap to operate they pose a danger in winter conditions when they become covered in snow and their illumination is obscured. This article shows a specific instance that occurred at approximately 1120 hours on the morning of November 17, 2020 on Wellington Road in London, Ontario. The southbound traffic signal on Wellington Road became partially obscured as shown in the photo above. This caused a series of southbound vehicles to pass through the intersection when the signal was red. This development was captured by both still photos and by video showing a Toyota Camry that was entering the intersection on a green signal when the noted vehicles also entered on a red signal.
This is a view looking southward along Wellington Road approaching the overpass of Highway 401 in London, Ontario in the late morning of November 17, 2020. The snow-covered traffic signal is located at the top on the overpass in the distant background.
This view shows the snow-covered traffic signal at the Highway 401 overpass. Vehicles exiting from Highway 401 onto Wellington Road come to a stop at a T-intersection on the right side of this view.
This view shows a Toyota Camry whose driver came to a stop at the T-intersection of the exit ramp of Highway 401 and he is about to make a left turn to travel southward on Wellington Road. Video captured what happened when four southbound vehicles, one after the other, passed through the red signal while the Toyota driver was entering the intersection on a green signal.
This is a frame from a series taken from video as the Toyota Camry driver commenced his left turn onto Wellington Road. Watch as the four vehicles pass through the intersection from the right to the left.
Here the video frame shows the Toyota driver accelerating from his stopped position onto Wellington Road.
This video frame shows how the Toyota driver suddenly applies his brakes as he has detected the vehicles passing through the red traffic signal. Fortunately he was observant enough but the situation could have been much different.
This video frame shows the Toyota continuing to move forward while braking to a stop as the driver has detected vehicles approaching through the red signal.
This video frame shows the first of four vehicles that passed through the red traffic signal. The Toyota driver appears to have released his brake as he seems to expect that the other traffic will not pass through. But that is not the case…
This video frame shows the Toyota driver has still released his brake and the Toyota is crawling forward as the driver likely does not understand why a second vehicle could pass through the same red signal.
This video frame shows a very fast moving black SUV or Minivan that is passing by the Toyota. The vehicle’s speed has blurred its image in this frame. The Toyota driver has re-applied his brakes as he now understands that these vehicles are not stopping for the red signal.
This view shows the third vehicle passing through the intersection while the traffic signal is red for its direction of travel.
This video frame shows the Toyota Camry as it completes its left turn after the last southbound vehicle has cleared the intersection.
This warning is provided while no similar warning has been provided by official entities that have installed LED signals. This happening is unlikely to be an isolated event but is likely to repeat itself over the lifetime of such signals in winter conditions.
Disturbing Fire & Deaths in Crash on Hwy 427 In Toronto
The lack of useful news regarding the death of two occupants in a fiery collision on Saturday evening, November 14, 2020, should be disturbing to anyone concerned about public safety. Yet this comes on, November 15th, that is internationally marked as a day of remembrance of those who have died in motor vehicle collisions.
The scant information coming from official news media indicated that a single vehicle “crashed into a guardrail and caught fire” on Highway 427 near Highway 409 near Toronto, Ontario. One of the news agencies claimed that the driver of the vehicle fled the scene and was still at large.
Several photos of the vehicle were shown by news agencies but these cannot be shown here due to copyright laws. These photos were taken in night-time conditions and therefore the details of the damage are difficult to decipher. They seem to suggest that there was a massive amount of frontal crush across the complete front end of the vehicle. This should be contradictory to the news that the vehicle struck a guardrail since such crush should not exist from striking a rail. Also, a fire should not be expected from an impact with a guardrail. Furthermore, if there was extreme crush at the vehicle’s front end it would seem suspect that a driver could have fled the scene without significant injury.
This demonstrates, once again, how the public is provided with very limited information about such deaths. Because they are infrequent, and because there is so much extraneous information battering the public’s psyche, the importance of this incidence is quickly extinguished, much quicker than the fire itself. In some future occasion someone else will meet a similar fate without any concern whether the death could have been prevented or whether some kind of malfunction occurred that could have been corrected before the tragedy occurred.
Vehicle fires, in particular, should be of high concern because they defeat all the safety systems engineered into vehicles and roadways. When a person is trapped in a vehicle that has caught fire there are limited options available to save that person. So it is highly important to determine how and why a fire was started and what can be done to prevent that fire in a future collision. It can be seen from the scant reporting, and from the lack of important questions being put to police and fire officials, that the lack of information is a disturbing, recurring problem.
Expressway Rear-End Impacts Need Better Evaluations
Most social media posts found it amusing that a load of beer from a rear-ending truck was spilt onto Highway 3 at EC Row Expressway in Windsor on November 5, 2020. If only such attention was focused on why and how such serious impacts occur.
In a December 16, 2018 article posted to the Gorski Consulting website the results of observations of tail-gating vehicles on Highway 401 were shown from videotaping sessions at four different sites. Without funding or additional help it was not possible to analyse the full two hours of data from each site. Instead, only 15 minutes was analysed from each site. A summary of those results was provided in the following text taken from that article:
“Although the numbers are small they suggest that the most common combination of one vehicle following less than 2 seconds behind another is where a non-truck is being followed by another non-truck. The least common is where a heavy truck is following a non-truck. These results may be surprising considering the comments made by various drivers of passenger cars and light trucks claiming that aggressive truck drivers attempt to drive them off the road by their close tail-gating. These preliminary data may suggest that it is more common that the drivers of passenger cars and light trucks and van are the ones who do more tail-gating than the drivers of heavy trucks. However the small numbers of observations in this study make these judgments non-conclusive. Exploration of the full 2 hours of videotape from each session might help to solidify what is the actual case.”
This work is obviously incomplete and a full analysis would be helpful. Such base data would help those in the general public who have essentially no information about how and why rear-end collisions occur but feel the need to express their opinions, often due to their wish to change the course of these events. It is encouraging to note that some persons are interested enough to make their comments. However they also need solid, objective evidence to use in their commentary.
“Construction Carnage Alley” And Other Median Barrier Issues on Hwy 401
This median cross-over collision occurred on Highway 401 at Merlin Road in December of 2018 even though a cable barrier was installed at the location.
While it is good news that the Ontario government announced the first phase of construction on a median barrier in Highway 401’s “Carnage Alley” the news may not be all good. The flip side of this news is that construction will mean additional deaths if the Province does not have a plan to deal with deadly construction traffic conflicts on this high speed highway. The goal is to complete this first phase of construction by the year 2022. It will involve an 11 kilometre segment from the Town of Tilbury to Merlin Road. Other phases will follow. During these multiple years of construction closed lanes will mean that the normal flow of traffic will be disrupted and collisions will be caused. The Province of Ontario has never provided a public account of the number of collisions that occur as a result of such flow disruptions. This is not surprising as such information could cast focus on the government’s activities and whether reasonable precautions and plans were developed to minimize collisions. Also many news reports of collisions often hide the fact that a collision on Highway 401 was related to construction activity.
The building of a concrete barrier will also include the widening of Highway 401 to 3 lanes in each direction. This is also good and bad news. More lanes mean an easing of traffic congestion. However the existence of a third lane will mean that the large percentage of heavy truck traffic will be located predominantly in that far right lane. When an emergency occurs, and there is a loss-of-directional control, such a truck will very often be directed toward the concrete barrier. The problem is that, when such a truck is located far away from the barrier it has an opportunity to change its direction of travel more so than if it were located in the passing lane, close to the barrier. Thus the angle of approach to the barrier will be increased. It is the angle of approach that is an important factor in the severity of an impact with a barrier. When a heavily loaded truck strikes a concrete barrier at a sharp angle there is no guarantee that the barrier will remain intact or that the truck will be held back from plowing through or over it. The characteristics of the barrier are important to identify so that it can be judged whether it will meet the demands of a heavy truck impact.
In the U.S. new procedures for testing the safety of roadside hardware have been published in the “Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware” or MASH for short. Six different test levels are described and the higher test levels involve progressively larger vehicles. For example Test Levels 5 and 6 (TL-5 and TL-6) involve a tractor-trailer, weighing about 79,000 lbs, travelling at 50 mph and striking the barrier at an angle of 15 degrees. While this information is available to the U.S. public essentially no comparable information about testing procedures is publicly available in Ontario. Has Ontario adopted the MASH procedures for assessing the safety of the Highway 401 median barrier? Has the proposed barrier been tested under similar test levels? No one has asked these important questions.
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