Snow Piled On Roadside Barriers Is Dangerous
Two incidents have been reported in the past couple of weeks involving vehicles being projected over roadside barriers because snow had been piled against the barrier. In one instance, photo shown above, the driver was lucky as the vehicle rollover did not proceed down a deep slope, as shown in the next photo.
In this instance police confirmed that there were “icy roads” and the vehicle “struck the snow on the shoulder” indicating that road maintenance was an issue. Police reported that no charges were laid but the maintenance of the roadway was a factor. Would police not charge the persons involved in maintaining the highway? This is where investigative bias sets in. Even with a major snow storm police have an obligation to inquire why and if certain roadway maintenance was not performed.
In a second incident the situation was more dramatic although the video cannot be shown here. A vehicle was passing through the overpass on Highway 427 at Highway 401 in Toronto on February 3, 2026 when it was launched over a snow-covered barrier and flew onto Highway 401 where it struck the top of a passing tractor-trailer. Miraculously injuries were not life-threatening but obviously a fraction of a second could easily have caused two fatalities in the flying vehicle.
CTV News submitted a photo in their article on a third incident, reportedly on an overpass of Highway 8 in Kitchener on January 26, 2026. The photo clearly showed the extensive snow piled on the barrier of the overpass where the vehicle was launched. In the article on the Highway 427 incident police explained the existence for the snow as follows:
“Plows are coming through, clearing the highways, pushing that snow off to the side,” Schmidt said. “In this case, they can’t push it over the wall because it would go onto the highway below, and so it’s pushed up against the edge.”
While this is a problem it cannot be left alone, blaming it on winter weather conditions. Like any maintenance issue the question is, was the action reasonable? Could the snow be pushed further off the overpass and then onto a roadside slope? Such actions may be more time consuming and complicated but their reasonableness needs to be evaluated. It is our experience that this is not the first time that barriers have become compromised in this manner, in a number of previous years, throughout the Province of Ontario.
Many transportation complications occur due to winter weather, as they occur in many seasons resulting in various dangers. Snow piled on roadside barriers makes those barriers ineffective and dangerous. So it needs to be removed as quickly as possible.
Extreme Cold Affecting Transportation in Ontario
Environment Canada has posted the weather conditions for London, Ontario for the dates of January 29 and 30, 2026 as noted below.
The effects of weather conditions like these are compounded by news that municipalities in Ontario are running out of road salt. This creates an additional safety problem. Yet the largest salt mine in the world is located just an hour and a half drive north of London at Goderich, Ontario, News media are reporting that long lines of dump trucks are waiting for hours near the Goderich mine to load up on salt.
Without road salt many streets in London are looking like they did many decades ago when road salt was not rigorously applied, as shown in the example below, taken on a local street in London on January 28, 2026.
While grand plans have been discussed by many politicians that they are working on increasing the active transportation modes of cycling and walking, the reality in these past two winters in that walking and cycling are extremely difficult when such snow and low temperatures exist.
Overall extreme winter conditions have an affect on road safety. Because of poor traction many drivers are involved in loss-of-control collisions or rear-end impacts. Many of these incidents are minor in severity but some are not. The City of Toronto has seen a rise in the number of pedestrians being injured and killed and these incidents are also likely affected by the weather. Movement in all these extremes is difficult and it relies on everyone to pay particular attention to what they are doing.
Speed Camera Removal Consequences In Ontario
Dr. Carrie Mitchell, Associate Professor of Planning at the University of Waterloo is inviting Ontario municipalities to provide their data on how the removal speed cameras (Automated Speed Enforcement – ASE) in Ontario have affected road safety. The title of her research is “After the Cameras: The Policy and Safety Impacts of Removing Automated Speed Enforcement in Ontario“. The announcement reported on the Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals (CARSP) included the following description:
“This study will examine how vehicle speeds, volumes, and collision patterns changed before, during, and after the 2025 ASE policy rollback under Bill 56. The goal is to provide the first systematic, empirical assessment of the safety and policy impacts associated with removing ASE from Community Safety Zones across Ontario.”
The result of the research will provide a report of the results to the municipalities. However there has been no mention of whether the results will be provided to the public. In theory municipalities work for the benefit of the public and all employees of these municipalities are funded by public taxes. But when it comes to releasing the results of their studies municipalities are secretive, even when it involves such crucial matters as public safety.
Dubious behaviors of politicians have led to a battleground between governments. Ontario Premier Doug Ford made it unlawful to operate speed cameras in Ontario’s municipalities because he called them “cash grabs”. But no one has publicly explained why this comment was made. Most likely it is because third party companies who operated the cameras on a profit basis were splitting their money with municipalities that allowed them to operate. It is also reasonable to believe that those profits were generated from a lower speeding threshold so that more citizens would be fined. If the camera programs were operated properly the speeding threshold could be increased and thus would capture only those citizens who travel at dangerously high speeds. But then there would be fewer drivers who would be fined and profits would diminished. Is this what Doug Ford was referring to?
But by abolishing speed cameras altogether Ford has made matters worse than they were. Now it may be very difficult to capture speeding drivers when police budgets have not anticipated more police personnel required to monitor and ticket speeding drivers. And, unlike speed cameras, police cannot be present at a location 24-hours-a-day, seven days of the week.
The research announced by Professor Mitchell is important but the results must not be hidden within municipal files and must be released to the public who should have the last say through their voting ballot.
2025 Cyclist Observations Now Available For London Ontario
In the past five years Gorski Consulting has accumulated over 5300 observations of cyclists riding on or adjacent to the streets of London, Ontario. In this past year of 2025 there have been 1434 cyclists documented making it the most in this five-year period. As done in previous years, the charts containing the detailed data are presented below.
The Data
Analysis
Cyclist Gender
Some of the characteristics of cyclists being tracked include gender. This is not always easy because some factors, such as the wearing of headgear, make it difficult to determine gender. However, by removing the small number of observations where gender could not be determined, the following provides a breakdown of cyclist gender in each of the five years.
Year 2021: Total Females = 77, Total Males = 487, Percent Females = 12.54
Year 2022: Total Females = 135, Total Males = 895, Percent Females = 13.11
Year 2023: Total Females = 138, Total Males = 807, Percent Females = 12.54
Year 2024: Total Females = 151, Total Males = 1032, Percent Females = 12.54
Year 2025: Total Females = 186, Total Males = 1204, Percent Females = 13.38
These data show that female cyclists consistently average in the range of 13% of the cycling population. This is quite low. Studies in other parts of the City, such as on the Thames Valley Parkway, show that the percentage of female riders is higher.
Riding on Sidewalks
Despite that City and provincial laws prohibit cyclists from riding on sidewalks, this method of travel continues to be a common activity, as demonstrated in the following breakdowns.
Year 2021: Females on Sidewalk = 64.94%, Males on Sidewalk = 64.89%
Year 2022: Females on Sidewalk = 72.59%, Males on Sidewalk = 65.25%
Year 2023: Females on Sidewalk = 65.22%, Males on Sidewalk = 66.79%
Year 2024: Females on Sidewalk = 70.86%, Males on Sidewalk = 62.79%
Year 2025: Females on Sidewalk = 59.68%, Males on Sidewalk = 55.07%
The smaller percentage of cyclists observed on sidewalks is lower in 2025 because there was a change in where the cyclist observations were made. In 2025 there was an increased focus on comparing two roadways: Hamilton-Horton versus Upper Queen-Ridout. The Upper Queen-Ridout roadway contains a cycling lane therefore almost all cyclists riding on this road were riding in the cycling lane and not on the sidewalk. The purpose for comparing these two roadways is because previous data suggested there could be a difference in the characteristics and safety of cyclists between them and more data was needed to examine whether this hypothesis was true. These findings will be discussed in a future article.
Even roadways that do not contain a cycling lane exhibit differences in the percentage of cyclists riding on a sidewalk. Higher sidewalk usage has been previously observed on Hamilton Road and even more so on Dundas Street between Highbury Ave and Clarke Road. Yet cyclist fatalities have been reported recently on both Hamilton Road and Dundas Street and it is suspected that those occurred when cyclists were riding in a shared lane with motor vehicle traffic and not riding on a sidewalk. Unfortunately officials such as police have never revealed how these fatalities occurred.
Cyclist Helmet Use
Although not reported here, cyclist helmet use is also being tabulated during these observations. The data from 2025 has not yet been compiled. The most recent calculations are for 2024 and these have shown that the percentage of males not wearing helmets was 65.99%, while the percentage for females was 53.29%.
There are several practical problems with helmet use. Some riders have complained that helmets are too expensive. Others find them too hot in summertime and too cold in winter. These issues are never discussed in the official circles of London Ontario yet they influence non-usage and therefore increase the severity of injury during a collision or other mishap.
Cyclists Riding Through Pedestrians Crossings
In the last 4 years (2022-25) Gorski Consulting has been documenting the numbers of cyclists passing through pedestrian crossings. Cyclists are told that, if they approach a pedestrian crossing they need to dismount and walk their bike across. But the reality is far different. For example, in the past four years 359 cyclists were observed in a pedestrian crossing. Of those only 42 actually walked their cycle through the crossing. A total of 88.3 % of cyclists rode through the crossing. This finding was consistent across all four years. An additional finding is that those cyclists who enter a pedestrian crossing do so, almost exclusively, from riding on a sidewalk.
Cyclists do not realize that when collisions occur and matters reach civil litigation lawyers are quick to use the cyclist’s riding in a pedestrian crossing as contributory negligence and therefore a substantial portion of the cyclists claim will be deducted by a judge. Given the very large percentage of cyclists that ride through a pedestrian crossing this becomes an easy attack against cyclists.
Cargo Bikes
Officially we understand that cargo bikes are a class of cycles that are manufactured to carry cargo along with the cyclist. A view of such cycle is shown below.
Far more cyclists are seen with improvisations that include attachments of mini-trailers, wagons and even golf carts. These need to be recognized and considered when developing a strategy for improving cyclist safety in London.
Summary
Cyclist observations are the only source of objective data that the public can obtain about what is taking place with cycling in London, Ontario. The point of such observations is to assess whether the cycling mode of transportation is increasing as per the needs to fight climate change. But these observations are also the only objective information that the public can use to evaluate cyclist safety in the City of London. If transparency existed, like it should, the public would be provided with much deeper and relevant information by police, city staff, news media and by hospitals that receive injured cyclists. That is not happening. In fact, on the few occasions when cyclist collisions are reported, they either involve fatal, or serious injuries to the cyclist. But nothing of relevance is revealed as to how the event occurred or what factors were at play. This leads to fatalities and injuries that recur, over and over again, as cyclists and drivers do not understand how they could improve their safety.
Collision Event Data Recording Becoming More Complex And Detailed
The average vehicle owner may be totally unaware of the rapid developments in information recording that is being incorporated into their newer vehicles. While many large institutions such as government, police, insurers and researchers are taking advantage of this new technology the average vehicle owner’s knowledge and rights are being buried in their own distraction and apathy.
Collision recording capabilities began in 1999 when General Motors began installing event data recorders (EDRs) in some of their vehicles. Many other manufacturers soon followed. By 2006 the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) created rules governing what type of data was required of the manufacturers if they chose to install EDRs. These rules became effective in 2012. NHTSA estimated that by 2006 64 percent of new light vehicles were already equipped with EDRs and by 2022 they estimated that 99.5 percent of 2021 model vehicles were so equipped. But other developments have occurred up to the present time such that matters have become complicated.
Manufacturers began installing technology that could control some vehicle functions without driver intervention. These systems, more widely described as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), were not in the general stream of vehicle development when NHTSA wrote their rules. A number of manufacturers make the functioning of ADAS available in the downloads of collision data but not all. And since NHTSA does not specify what manufacturers can or cannot record much of the recording about crash events is proprietary to the manufacturers and no one else can see it. All of this is ok so long as there are no defects in the ADAS, but that is obviously not guaranteed. If a malfunction exists that is not reported in standard EDR downloads it may be difficult to uproot.
Many modern light vehicles also record photos and video from their exterior cameras. Most of these are difficult to extract. One exception may be the video recordings on newer Teslas. Teslas provide the ability to record a full 10 minutes of video to a local USB storage stick if an event occurs that resembles a collision. A view of this ability is visible in the Tesla Dashcam which is reproduced below.
Overall vehicle owners would have difficulty gaining access to the standard EDR data let alone gaining access to any of the hidden data in ADAS or camera data. A download needs specialized equipment and an analyst who is capable of performing the download. And this costs money. More money than the average owner can afford even if they recognized the importance of collecting the data.
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