Cyclist Death In West London Demonstrates Safety of Path System Has Long Way To Go
Is there a cycling path crossing ahead? Would it be important to let drivers know?
Official news media reported that a 77-year-old cyclist was killed when he was struck by a pick-up truck as he tried to cross Gainsborough Road in west London, Ontario on Saturday, September 5, 2020. The view available to the pick-up truck driver is shown in the above photo, taken on September 6th. It can be seen that the cycling trail is not visible and there is no signage to warn drivers that cyclists might be crossing.
As active transportation has become a big issue in the last few years cities like London Ontario have been trying to play catch up by installing various cycling infrastructure without much attention to details such as cyclist safety. Cycling paths are no different than roadways that carry motorized traffic; both require proper design, correct signage and regular maintenance. In particular roadway design has understood the importance of providing sufficient visibility. That must also apply to the design of cycling paths. At the Gainsborough site shown above, trees and shrubs exist all the way up to the edge of the traffic-way such that neither the cyclist nor the motor vehicle driver have sufficient time and distance to detect the other’s existence. Problems like these need to be detected and corrected before a tragedy occurs, but that is not happening quickly enough.
One of the reasons for this delay is that a vast number of collisions, whether involving motorized vehicles, or cyclists, are not officially documented. In a previous post to this website on November 21, 2018 we quoted research by D. Shinar et. al., in an article published in the Accident Analysis & Prevention journal (January, 2018) that estimated the percentage of cyclist collisions reported in 17 nations. That research concluded that only about 10% of such collisions were officially reported.
Gorski Consulting has found similar results with motorized collisions, even though our research has been made difficult to publicize in Canada. Our study of the collisions at a single site, Clarke Road in the north-east sector of London, also showed that collisions at the S-curve north of Fanshawe Park Road were rarely documented in official police records in comparison to the physical evidence that was documented at the site. While the evidence indicated that most of the unreported collisions were minor it demonstrates that the opportunity to gain evidence of road safety problems was lost.
The problem is compounded when the evidence from serious collisions like the one on the Gainsborough Road site is never publicly shared. The results of police investigations simply become filed with unknown entities. Local news media reported that police used a drone to document the collision evidence at the Gainsborough site. Other technology such as total stations and expensive cameras demonstrate the use of public funds to collect evidence that, in turn, is never shared with the public for the public’s benefit.
A news article published by the London Free Press on September 6, 2020 entitled “Cyclist who came upon fatal crash scene thinks poor sightlines a factor”, quoted a longtime cyclist, Glynn Davies, who observed “When you’re coming from the north of the bike path, there’s bushes on the right, so you would have to come pretty cautiously to get across the road. It could be dangerous…You can’t see long distance…beyond the sidewalk to make sure that nothing’s coming”. Unofficial observations like these are logical and should also have been made by official entities such as police investigators. Unfortunately, while police are sure to document and report on speeding, impairment or driver distraction, they continually fail to report equally dangerous factors related to roadway design, signage and maintenance.
With respect to cycling infrastructure there is little or no public information available about cyclist traffic volumes or numbers of collisions outside of the roadway system used by motor vehicles. The City’s Multi-use Path system for example seems to be used increasingly due to factors such as the Covid-19 epidemic, yet safety concerns on the system have remained for many years without official acknowledgement.
Some examples of problems on the Multi-Use Path system are shown below, documented in August of 2013. In the two images below orange paint was used with considerable effect to highlight the problems but this paint is usually “road paint” that fades away within a couple of weeks or months.
Orange paint was used to high-light tree roots next t the path in this photo taken in August, 2013. Unfortunately this paint is very temporary.
This painting of a “Bump” warning in August of 2013, is helpful but only temporary as the paint dissolves while the tree root bumps only become larger.
A pillar located on the edge of the Multi-use Path east of Wellington Road is shown in this photo taken in August of 2013.
The above photo showing the concrete pillar next to the cycling path was made more visible in 2010 when graffiti vandals painted it, as shown below.
View of vandalized pillar showing graffiti that is actually more helpful in making it more visible. This photo was taken in September of 2010. The pillar still remains to this day.
Other dangers are rarely highlighted as shown in the additional two photos below, also taken in August of 2013. A structural hazard has existed on the path at the railway bridge east of Adelaide Street in that visibility is extremely limited. A mirror had been installed next to the edge of the path a number years earlier but that was vandalized and never replaced.
View, looking east, while approaching the abutment of the railway bridge just east of Adelaide Street. This photo was taken in September, 2010 and the abutment remains to this day without any changes or signage to warn cyclists of the extremely limited visibility.
In the two photos shown below, taken in September of 2010, the end of a pipe is sticking out of the path surface at the intersection of Blackfriars bridge in downtown London. No paint markings exist to highlight its presence.
View of the cycling path near intersection with Blackfriars bridge taken in September of 2010.
Close-up view of the end of a pipe located in the middle of the Multi-Use Path in September, 2010. The pipe existed for many years but has since been removed.
Many safety concerns remain on London’s Multi-use Path system that are not acknowledged or made known to the unsuspecting public. This is particularly concerning when the system is used by many vulnerable persons such as children, the elderly or persons who are inexperienced riders.
It can be a challenge to the City of London to address these problems and that has to be acknowledged. Yet the City, like all cities in Ontario, must balance the need to acknowledge problems with the advice of their risk management departments who insist that such acknowledgement will place them in a position of civil liability. Above all it is this threat of civil litigation that keeps many municipal safety problems from being publicly acknowledged and therefore an impetus to pay for corrections is lost. Many taxpayers, if they are aware of the dangers of leaving safety problems uncorrected, would gladly accept the additional taxes, rather than paying the large costs of risk management departments and their high cost-lawyers.
Zipper Merge Signs at Highbury Ave Construction Zone – Are They Effective?
Do we understand what these signs mean? Or are we just ignoring them?
The City of London Ontario has put up some interesting “Zipper Merge” signs in the construction zone on Highbury Ave. The signs are supposed to encourage drivers to use a “zipper merge” technique that, so far, has been ignored by Ontario drivers.
Below is a frame taken from video during observations of traffic at the Highbury Ave site on September 3, 2020. The green “Zipper Merge” signs can be seen posted along the median of the highway but almost all drivers continue to use the right lane. When a vehicle tries to use the left lane, as shown in the frame below, vehicles, particularly large trucks, will pull out and block the left lane preventing “speeders” and “cheaters” from taking advantage of the left lane to pass the slow or stopped traffic.
The trench warfare continues at the construction site on Highbury Ave, south of Hamilton Road in London, Ontario. Even though green “Zipper Merge” signs have been installed to encourage drivers to use both lanes up to the point where a closed lane ends, drivers continue to stay in the right lane. Many drivers, such as the driver the large truck in this view, purposely pull into the left lane to block any drivers attempting the use the left lane to speed past slow or stopped traffic.
The extent of exclusive usage of the right lane is obvious in the two additional frames shown below.
There are many problems that develop during this warfare, some that become dangerous. When the left lane is free of traffic the few vehicles that use that lane will travel at very high speeds because of the 100 km/h posted speed. This speed occurs just next to traffic that may be stopped in the right lane. At times drivers in the right lane decide to pull out of the right lane into the left lane, sometimes from a dead stop. This leads to very dangerous differences in speed that could lead to high speed crashes. This is just one of the problems that exists in construction zones that is not discussed.
Gorski Consulting has been monitoring the construction zone on Highbury Ave in London this past summer to gain some insight into some of the factors that lead to collisions in expressway construction zones. We hope to post additional articles on this issue on the Gorski Consulting website in the coming weeks.
Cyclist Critical Injuries on Path Illustrates Need For Proper Design & Maintenance
Two cyclists reportedly collided in a bike trail near Lakeshore (east of Windsor), Ontario on September 1, 2020, resulting in life-threatening injuries to one of them. Examination of the site on Google Maps indicates that it contains a severe lack of visibility around sharp curves that are bordered by a tall fence. Neither police nor official news media have provided any explanation whether these path features were related to the cyclists’ impact. Yet the presence of these deficiencies cannot be ignored.
The following three images are taken from Google Maps and they show are area on the bike trail where the collision occurred.
View of the collision site just east of Lakeshore, as indicated by the orange oval.
The two views below provide a view looking west toward the bike path. It can be seen that the path contains sharp curves and a fence that is located immediately next to the edge of the path. This combination would make it difficult for cyclists to see each other as they approach from opposite directions. The specific location where the impact occurred was likely just beyond the views shown in the figures below. Investigating police have not made images of the specific location available to the public. The Windsor Star has provided some images apparently showing two bicycles on the path with police conducting examinations but we are not allowed to show these photos.
View looking west toward the bike path that contains sharp curves that are boarded, extremely close to the path’s edge, by a tall fence.
Issues important to identifying road road safety problems must be made known to the general public but often they are not. In the present instance the investigating police have not provided basic information about how this collision occurred or what factors may have been relevant. Official news media can fill in some of the blanks with on-site photos but it is apparent that they also will not allow their photos to be shown except through their own outlets.
In this context information about serious injuries and deaths becomes a commodity, being sold and traded like pork bellies on the stock market with little regard to the right of the public to be informed about dangers that could kill them.
Wakaw Saskatchewan Fatal Collision Driver Wants Answers That Gorski Consulting Cannot Provide
Understandably the driver of the pick-up truck in the middle of this mayhem wants to know how and why this collision happened but we all work hard to make sure he will never know.
Jeff Helperl is a fortunate, unfortunate driver who survived the collision shown above where a transport truck reportedly rear-ended a line of stopped vehicles in a construction zone on Highway 41 near Wakaw Saskatchewan on August 25, 2020. He sent the above photo, along with the photo below, through social media, reportedly claiming that he wants to know how a transport truck could have caused this collision. He reportedly saw the truck travelling toward him just before the collision. A valid outcry amongst some is that this is a case that demonstrates more and better heavy-truck driver training is needed.
This photo, like the one above, was reportedly taken and submitted by Jeff Helperl, one of the drivers involved in this fatal collision.
As as road safety researcher and collision reconstruction consultant for the past 40 years I have turned to the internet for the past 10 years or so to provide some of my opinions drawn from my experience of investigating and reconstructing literally thousands of collisions. While I have conducted many investigations for hire by lawyers, insurance companies and private citizens, the advice that is given on the Gorski Consulting website is absolutely free and non-profit. Any website has to contain a degree of self-promotion but its has been my attempt, as much as possible, to give back to society as a whole, and to the very few, forgotten, unfortunate persons who have lost family members, friends or acquaintances to transportation tragedies. For drivers such as Jeff Helperl, or any others involved in this current tragedy, I would feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment to provide some answers.
In the official investigations/reconstructions that I have examined, after I have reviewed all police documentation including witness statements, my examinations of the vehicles and collision sites, and various testing, it comes to light that opportunities were missed to identify and collect crucial evidence that would have made determinations of cause so much easier. But in the context of seeing the very small tidbits of information about such collisions coming from the internet, whether from police, official news media or social networks, the problem becomes much more evident. The lack of information is blindingly vivid.
Like any other driver, Mr. Helperl deserves to know what happened in his collision. This is not just a personal need but there is also the right of the public to know what factors could be leading to their potential, future death. We may not all take heart pills but it should be our right to know when someone has died from taking such a medication because, one day, we may be in that same circumstance. The reasoning is no different in motor vehicle collisions. It should be our communal right to be provided with a correct and accurate explanation.
In the absence of such information I have attempted to comment where I can. This is a difficult matter because, even with decades of experience, it is often impossible to overcome the effects that a lack of information creates. While I can provide suspicions based on previous experience that is often not good enough to provide the explanations that the public needs and ought to have.
At the same time the absence of essential information does not stop others from commenting and influencing the understanding of what has taken place. In fact, with the advent of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, “fake news” becomes all that much more dominant. We have now formed tribes of peoples who do not converse with other tribes; we only communicate with our closed group of “friends” who share our own viewpoints. Rarely does it occur to us that our understandings could be biased because we do not allow opposing views to pass our mental filters. The conclusions about collision causes expressed by our friends simply consolidate the strong viewpoints we have already developed from evidence we do not have. There is a general lack of understanding that many are drawing conclusions from very sparse information yet we do not stop to consider that reality.
The unfortunate Humboldt Broncos, multi-fatality, bus collision of April, 2018 in Saskatchewan is a prominent example of the problem. Even though numerous news articles and television news programs have reached almost every Canadian, no one has questioned why crucial evidence has been kept from public knowledge. The official RCMP investigation report has never been made public. Yet the information gathered by the RCMP is unique. No one was in a position to identify and document the collision evidence. Some information provided by the RCMP during the truck driver’s trial showed that crucial errors appeared to exist in the analysis, such as the fact that the bus driver would appear to have started braking before he could see the truck, an action that should not have made any sense. The cause of the deaths of the hockey players in the bus was also never revealed or discussed. The roof of the bus was shown lying next to the bus yet there was no official comment or explanation why, an apparent undamaged roof, could simply be lying detached from the bus body. While my first belief was that the roof had been cut away by emergency personnel others have informed me that this is not so. Simple matters like these could be clarified through the viewing of the official RCMP investigation matters. But it appears that will never happen.
How could Mr. Helperl expect to understand what happened in his collision when such massive tragedies such as the Humboldt Broncos collision have provided such poor explanations? Mr. Helperl is likely the last person, along with any and all members of the public with no official standing, to know what factors led to his crash. The only saving grace is that he was able to post the two photos of the crash shown above, on his own, and thus allow independent persons such as myself to consider some basic possibilities. Even now I am conducting observational studies of traffic at a construction site in London, Ontario (Highbury Ave at Commissioners Road) to understand how rear-end impacts develop. A couple of articles about this work have already been posted on this Gorski Consulting website. Such work is not sponsored by anyone except myself. It does not go to any personal profit but only to improve my understanding of the underlying issues which I hope to discuss in the future. While deadly rear-end impacts keep recurring the uninformed public does what would be expected, it works with what information is available (which is essentially nothing) and draws conclusions. I would not expect anything else. An important issue such as someone’s death attracts the attention of many who seek explanations. But what we need is something better. We need education from objective evidence and explanations from independent experts who are not paid to provide the public with a fairy tale.
George Floyd & Masai Ujiri Demonstrate Just How Much Objective Evidence Matters
Objective evidence is a huge equalizer to achieving justice, not just in assessment of motor vehicle collisions but in far wider circles.
Can we imagine what the situation would have been like if there was no one to videotape the murder of George Floyd? Or even the less consequential, even though disgusting, treatment of the Toronto Raptors basketball team President Masai Ujiri last year after his celebrations were corrupted by a bullying security officer? It was the ability to provide an objective account of these events via videotape that allowed everyone the opportunity see what actually transpired, rather than what someone would be willing to convince us of what transpired. We spend many years of life molding the filters of bias upon our personal mirror such that it reflects only what we wish to see. And in many of us there is no blindness greater than of those who refuse to see.
Unfortunately, these events have also taken place in the realm of motor vehicle collision analysis and judgment. Police and courts that have accepted the subjective evidence of witnesses who have claimed to see things without objective verification. The danger of such actions has been known and warnings have existed for decades, yet there has been no change. We are now, possibly, at a crossroad where the calls for change may require that objective evidence, such as that provided by videotape, be brought into the assessment.
Similarly, the data from event data recorders (“black boxes”) has been available to the select few since the year 2000. Yet the average driver, or vehicle owner, has had no chance of obtaining that data in their own defence – it is merely used by those who have deep pockets and who can afford the costs of the hardware and consulting fees to obtain the data. Government agencies, research institutes, insurers and police have had the opportunity to use that data but not the average citizen.
There are many persons today that are walking, or lying, in the shoes of George Floyd and Masai Ujiri. And not necessarily because their skin is black but because they are victimized. They are victimized because it is our choice to remain silent. They are victimized because they do not have the resources to defend themselves. If we are truly objective we will recognize that victimization knows no bounds in colour of skin, race, sexual orientation and so many other divisions of life. In that regard individual members of the police can also be just as victimized. But it is the police culture toward the black community that must change. It is many other cultures that also must change.
In our view the only one of the two who can speak right now, Ujiri, has provided a profound statement that we are compelled to repeat below:
“The video sadly demonstrates how horribly I was treated by a law enforcement officer last year in the midst of my team, the Toronto Raptors, winning its first world championship. It was an exhilarating moment of achievement for our organization, for our players, for our city, for our country, and for me personally, given my long-tenured professional journey in the NBA. Yet, unfortunately, I was reminded in that moment that despite all of my hard work and success, there are some people, including those who are supposed to protect us, who will always and only see me as something that is unworthy of respectful engagement. And, there’s only one indisputable reason why that is the case – because I am Black.
What saddens me most about this ordeal is that the only reason why I am getting the justice I deserve in this moment is because of my success. Because I’m the President of a NBA team, I had access to resources that ensured I could demand and fight for my justice. So many of my brothers and sisters haven’t had, don’t have, and won’t have the same access to resources that assured my justice. And that’s why Black Lives Matter.
And that’s why it’s important for all of us to keep demanding justice. Justice for George. Justice for Breonna. Justice for Elijah. Justice for far too many Black lives that mattered. And justice for Black people around the world, who need our voice and our compassion to save their lives.
Those are the ties that bind us.”
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