City of Ottawa Officially Admits Its Failures in Multi-Fatal Bus Crash
We will likely never know what the City of Ottawa did to cause the multi-fatal bus crash of January 11, 2019. By accepting it was liable for the bus crash at its Westboro station Ottawa can be assured that much of the details of its actions will never be released to the public. In a letter dated January 7, 2020 City solicitor David White wrote “This memo is to confirm that the City and its insurers accept civil responsibility arising from the bus collision…”.
This is just a continuation of the actions of police who have also released few details about the crash. The bus driver, Aissatou Diallo, was temporarily arrested for a short time after the collision but no explanation was given for this unusual action except that she was being uncooperative with the investigation. Details of why she was uncooperative have never been given. It is reported that Diallo’s trial on charges of dangerous driving will be heard in March of 2021. That date is over 2 years after the collision.
There was an obvious incompatibility between the unusually tall, double-decker bus and the low, overhanging structure at the Westboro station. Such an obvious incompatibility should have been recognized by those responsible for operating the bus service. Combined with the lack of bus crashworthiness it would seem that substantial guilt must ride with other persons other than the bus driver. Yet no official entity has made mention of these issues. Police seemed to be quick in focusing their investigation on the bus driver while no details have yet been released as to why the driver’s actions were determined to be dangerous.
There is a likely possibility that much of these details may never be revealed, as witnessed by the happenings in the Humboldt Broncos tragedy of April, 2018 in Saskatchewan. The police report in the Humboldt Broncos collision was never publicly released. This seems bazaar given the high publicity given to the collision and the uninformed opinions that continue to be expressed about what caused it, what caused the fatalities and what corrections need to be made in the future. While everyone has an opinion no one wants to demand that the police report be released so that those opinions can be based on hard facts.
LIke the Humboldt Broncos collision, many recommendations have been made from the OS Transpo collisions for future improvements but few have been acted upon. In a CBC article of January 21, 2019 Ryan Tumilty described the numerous delays that occurred as Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) filed recommendations from their investigations and these recommendations took “decades” to be acted upon. The CBC article indicated:
“As of last fall, there were more than 62 outstanding TSB recommendations that were more than 10 years old and 22 of those are more than two decades old.”
The TSB investigated a bus crash with a train in 2013 involving a similar OC Transpo bus. At that time it recommended improvements to bus crashworthiness. Those recommendations have not been acted upon because Transport Canada indicated it was having difficulty finding a “bus shell” to conduct its crash testing. This explanation continues even after the January 2019 crash. No explanation is available why Transport Canada could not simply buy a fully completed bus if a shell was not available.
Both the 2013 and 2019 crashes exhibited similar indications of poor crashworthiness of the structures of the buses. The area of direct damage showed how the sheet metal of the bus structure simply became torn away and there was little indication of any deformation to the non-contacted structure where the separations occurred. Deformation to the non-contacted area near the separation would indicate that a substantial amount of energy was dissipated before the failure occurred. Lack of such evidence would indicate that the failure occurred without much energy being expended. Photos of the bus from the January 2019 crash indicated that the most obvious sign of this weak structure is that the roof of the bus appears essentially undamaged at its front edge where the roof pillar separated and was pushed rearward.
Similarly, the OS Transpo bus from the 2013 railway train showed similar conditions. Again, the directly contacted structure has separated from the rest of the bus and the roof appears essentially undamaged.
The Ottawa Citizen newspaper indicated that claims with respect to the Westboro crash have reached $180 million. Whoever caused the City of Ottawa to become exposed to these claims is unlikely to suffer any personal consequences. Police have focused on laying charges against the bus driver but those who are employed by the City of Ottawa, or those who manufactured the bus and any other persons who are protected by large organizations will never experience similar repercussions. The $180 million will simply be paid by the taxpayers of Ottawa.
Ottawa is not the only City exposed to such claims. The City of Hamilton will have to pay large amounts due to the loss, or intentional hiding, or an engineering report that showed that the surface conditions of its Red Hill Valley Parkway were substandard. A $250 million class action lawsuit and other claims have been filed and once again, any employees of the City will likely be protected while the taxpayers will pay the costs. Not only does the City of Hamilton have to deal with that fiasco but only a few months later it was found that City politicians agreed to hide another misdeed with respect to sewage that was leaked into a City watershed – a leak that had been going on for several years. While such misdeeds became public because individuals put there careers on the line to become whistler-blowers, the numbers of incidents in other municipalities where mis-deeds have been successfully hidden will never be known.
Silence About Sudbury-Area Child Collision Deaths Enables Future Tragedies
The specific location of the site of the triple fatal collision on Hwy 17 west of Sudbury was not well described in the news media. Its actual location is likely only 780 metres west of Hwy 24 and at about 2.5 kilometres east of Hwy 144.
The cause of the deaths of three children in a single vehicle crash near Sudbury Ontario continues to be kept secret. What is known is that the dead children, aged 11, 10 and 6 were accompanied by a fourth child, aged 10, who sustained “undisclosed, life-threatening injuries”. The children were also accompanied by two adult women, aged 45. One adult, the driver, was uninjured while the other sustained minor injuries. These facts are disturbing.
It has been mentioned in a previous article on this website that the noted fatalities are not consistent with the severity of the visible damage to the collision-involved 2007 Honda Accord. Admittedly, the investigating police only provided a single photo showing the front and right side of the vehicle. Further damage might exist to the other portions of the vehicle than cannot be seen. Yet the existence of additional damage is not likely given the general explanation of the circumstances. The visible crush was of moderate magnitude with no indication of disruption of the occupant compartment. Broad indicators of collision severity such as the displacement of wheels, roof pillars and windshield fracture all confirm the moderate severity of this collision. This is further evidenced by the report that the driver was not injured while the other adult passenger sustained only minor injuries. Why is it that the two adult occupants of the vehicle sustained such mild consequences yet the children did not? That is the question that no one is asking.
Here is a brief review of basic principles.
Collision injuries and deaths are caused primarily by the sudden change in speed of a vehicle. Technically this is more accurately described as the “change-in-velocity” of the vehicle. Velocity is similar to speed except that it also has a directional component assigned to its definition. And knowing this directional component is important in a technical analysis. The change-in-velocity of a vehicle in a serious collision can take place in just over a 10th of a second, or just over 100 milli-seconds. And this timing can be as long as half a second, or 500 milli-seconds, in extremely long collision sequences, like severe sideswipes for example. This timing is important because it has an effect on the acceleration pulse and collision forces. In injury assessment it is really the acceleration pulse that is experienced during the change-in-velocity that is the factor that determines the severity of injury. Acceleration is the rate of change of velocity. Technically, there is no such thing as “deceleration” but this is referred to as a negative acceleration. So we either have positive acceleration (i.e. depressing the gas pedal) or negative acceleration (collision). But let’s continue to use the term deceleration as this is more easily understood.
Given a certain velocity change a vehicle could sustain different rates of deceleration during the time that the vehicle is changing its velocity. Ideally, we would want the vehicle to sustain a constant rate of change in velocity so that the deceleration is relatively stable. But this theoretical ideal does not occur in real collisions. Let us use an example.
We can use the example of a velocity change of 40 km/h that is completed in a 1/10th of a second. 40 km/h is the same as 11.11 metres per second. So we say that the vehicle loses a velocity of 11.11 metres per second. However, because this change occurs in 1/10th of a second this is equivalent to a change of 111.1 metres per second, it’s just that the change does not exist over the entire second.
We also need to know that deceleration is defined with respect to the earth’s gravitational pull, which is at a rate of 9.81 metres per second squared, and this is referred to as one “g”. So now we can divide the 111.1 metres per second by 9.81 and arrive at an average deceleration of 11.3 gs. This is the average rate of deceleration that could be expected if the vehicle was slowed at a constant rate. But that is not what happens in real collisions. There are soft and stiff spots in vehicle structures and other factors are involved such that the average deceleration is not the same as the peak deceleration. It is the peak deceleration that matters in injury causation and this peak deceleration for the vehicle structure will be different than the peak deceleration experienced by the vehicle occupants. And individual occupants will sustain different peak decelerations. And peak acceleration needs to occur over a sufficient time in order to be relevant to injury causation.
The benefit of an airbag, seat-belt or child restraint is that these systems help the occupant’s body to ride down the change-in-velocity in a controlled manner, applying the pressure of contact to structures of the body that can withstand that contact, while also lengthening the timing of that ride-down. In a nutshell, all these devices start the deceleration of the occupant’s body at an earlier stage and not much later than the start of the vehicle’s deceleration. And this additional time of deceleration is what allows for overall lower rates of deceleration.
Other factors can mess-up this relationship between change-in-velocity and injury causation. So undesirable factors such as occupant ejection, structural intrusion, fire or vehicle submersion in water need to be taken into account. And the actual frailty of the individual needs to be taken into account.
While seat-belts, airbags and other technological advances provide superior protection in the vast percentage of collision scenarios, not all persons can be protected in all collision scenarios. This is where we come to the issues of the three fatalities in the Sudbury collision. Restraints do not just magically prevent death and injury. There must be an active involvement of the vehicle occupant to ensure that the systems are able to function properly. So drivers must keep their bodies far enough away from an exploding airbag so that they do not sustain airbag-related injuries. Proper types of restraints must be installed for the protection of children, and generally, the proper restraint for the occupant must also be worn properly and this requires an active participation by the occupant.
One of the true tragedies of life is that we ask persons to wear their seat-belts but then we do not inform them that they must also wear them properly. This does not mean obvious mis-uses such as placing the shoulder (torso) webbing behind the back. But there are critical matters such as placing the lap webbing down low and tight. It also involves examining the type of clothing being worn and whether this will cause undesirable slack in the system. Even with the installation of “pre-tensioners” that pull a webbing tight, those pretensioners can tighten the webbing for only a few inches and if slack is extreme the benefit of the pre-tensioner could be substantially lost.
For children we seem to refuse to recognize that “one size does not fit all”. Government vehicle compliance testing primarily involves front seat “dummies” with little or no testing of restraint systems in the rear seat. Yet we tell parents that it is dangerous for children to ride in the right front seat because of the potential of airbag injury. So why is it safer to put a child in a non-fitting seat-belt? It took us an unacceptably long time to recognize that we needed the addition of booster cushions to transition a child from a child seat to an adult seat-belt. Yet we still do not understand that vulnerability exists for those children that are exiting the booster seat phase of their growth and are now going to wear adult seat-belts. We fail to recognize the extreme danger in Canadian winters when we take our 10-year-old child, wearing a slippery, nylon over-coat and tell them to put on their seat-belt in the back seat. What do we expect will happen? Will a magical “restraint fairy” come along and ensure that the restraint will fit the child, that the lap belt will not slip on the nylon coat, that there is no excess slack, that the child has placed the restraint system properly? While this commentary is approaching inappropriateness it cannot be helped in this environment when discussion and education is so crucial to the safety of innocent children. While we must feel empathy for the families who have lost such innocent children we fail in our obligation to protect future children, and to prevent the misery of future families, when we keep the causes of child deaths from public awareness.
Even from the basic facts, the four children in the Sudbury collision could not have been transported in safety. As neither of the four children could safely be seated in the right front seat this means that they all had to be seated in the rear seat. A 2007 Honda Accord does not have four seat-belt systems in the rear seat. No passenger car has four seat-belt restraints in the back seat. So, at a minimum, at least one child had to be unrestrained.
A 2007 Honda Accord is not equipped with seat-belt pre-tensioners so even if three of the children wore seat-belts they were in jeopardy. These dangerous conditions need to be identified so that future children are properly protected. In recent years there has been considerable discussion about the need for seat-belts on buses, including school buses. The need for seat-belt usage on inter-city coaches may be desirable as they will keep occupants within the safety cage of a bus but the structural integrity of such buses needs to be improved. With respect to school buses however there is an additional danger of children not being properly restrained and/or not being restrained by a properly fitting restraint. The potential of increased injury and death to children from such occurrences is not exaggerated. This is why it is important to get to the bottom of how and why the children in the Sudbury crash died. If these deaths are related to restraint system problems then they are an important warning of what could occur if all children are forced to wear seat-belts on school buses, regardless of whether they will protect the children.
The site of the collision on Hwy 17 was not properly identified in the news media. While reports indicated it was near to and east of Hwy 144 an examination Googlemaps does not provide the type of geometry shown in the police photo that exists anywhere near Hwy 144. After further examination, the most likely location of the site is likely about 780 metres west of Hwy 24 or about 2.5 kilometres east of Hwy 144. The two figures below show views of this location taken from Googlemaps.
If this is the actual collision site then one can see that there is no rock cut on the right side of the highway but there is one on left, or median side. Yet the single photo of the Honda Accord appears to show an area of maximum crush at the right front and then a secondary area of damage at the right rear corner. The most logical explanation for the combination of these facts is if the Honda rotated counter-clockwise as it exited the road surface. This Honda would have travelled toward the rock cut in the median. Due to the substantial rotation the right front of the Honda Accord would have struck the rock cut and then, during further counter-clockwise rotation, the vehicle would strike the rock cut with its right rear corner.
It is not known whether the vehicle came to rest where it is shown in the OPP photo. However this could be a reasonable possibility if the vehicle continued its rotation and bounced off the rock cut returning to the road surface.
If this is a correct interpretation of the sequence of the collision event then there should be no other direct damage located on any of the vehicle’s surfaces that are not shown in the OPP photo. This should cause further concern as it would solidify our previous comments that the damage to the vehicle is not consistent with the resultant deaths of the three children.
A witness who came across the collision was quoted as saying “It was snowing a little bit, the roads weren’t ideal, but they weren’t bad”.
And similarly a police spokeswoman stated that the weather conditions at the time of the crash were reasonable with only a light dusting of snow on local roads. But it can be noted that the officer said nothing about the surface condition of the Hwy 17 at the accident site. As a standard procedure OPP will conduct a series of skid tests in the vicinity of where a vehicle approaches impact. Such skid tests would reveal the slipperiness of the road surface. But there was nothing mentioned about the skid tests nor whether any testing revealed the quality of the road surface. This is important because, if the Honda Accord rotated to the degree that its right front struck the rock cut in the median then something had to occur to cause this substantial rotation. Vehicles travelling on a straight highway, on a new asphalt pavement do not suddenly rotate in the manner that the Honda Accord would seem to have done. However a slippery road surface could explain why the rotation occurred. A road surface need not be covered in many inches of snow before losing a substantial amount of its friction force.
There are many questions that need to be answered with respect to this tragic collision, yet no such answers have yet been provided.
Three Children Perish Near Sudbury Ontario Without Explanation
While the public may see nothing wrong with three child deaths in this collision, anyone with sufficient experience and training in injury causation should be shouting loudly.
Granted, the OPP released just a single photo of the collision-involved vehicle in which three children perished (shown above) in a collision near Sudbury on January 1, 2020 when the vehicle reportedly struck a rock cut. And a single photo can be very misleading. But if this photo is so misleading, why would the OPP release it without explanation? Clearly this photo does not explain how three children could have sustained fatal injuries if they were the occupants of the white passenger car shown in the above photo.
The front end shows some crush but the right front wheel is only moderately displaced, rearward, in its wheelwell. And another classic sign of collision severity is to examine the displacement of the roof pillars.The pillars that are visible do not show any indication of displacement. It appears that the right rear door may have been removed by emergency personnel but there is no indication of massive crush in that region. So none of this evidence provides an explanation as how and why the children perished.
It has been observed in the past that police and news media like to play games with the public by not showing the area of principal and direct impact. Thus there could be major crush on the left side, the left rear, or even the rear surface of the vehicle and these areas are not visible in the above photo. But this is a matter of significant importance. Such games should not be played. We should be assured that the children did not die from some unusual reason that requires correction to protect future children.
If the above photo truly represents the primary area of direct contact with a rock cut then an explanation is clearly warranted. There is no reason why three children should die when the vehicle interior is intact and the moderate crush does not indicate a collision severity that limits survivability. Factors such as improper use of restraints or use of improper restraints could result in fatalities even though a collision is of moderate severity. And there could be other complicating factors. But if these complications exist they should never be kept from the public’s attention because, as has been said numerous times on this website, the public is the ultimate entity that should make change occur through its elected representatives.
Racism Prejudice and Discrimination – Make Them Homeless in 2020
This holiday season, celebrate your making racism, prejudice and discrimination homeless. Make them have no place to sleep, nor food to eat, nor encouraging words to grow. And give a warm and helping hand to the poor, mentally challenged and victims of misfortune who truly deserve your encouragement and respect for surviving the difficult hurdles placed in their paths.
Propane Tanker Rollover Due to Road Bump Rarely Publicly Admitted
It is one of those things we do not talk about in public. Road bumps cannot cause collisions. At least not publicly.
Yet the Kingston Whig Standard was willing to report to the public that, according to the driver of a propane tanker truck, this is exactly what caused the loss-of-control of his truck and subsequent rollover.
This rollover reportedly occurred on Orser Road, just north of Kingston, Ontario. A Googlemaps view of Orser Road in the 2900 block is shown in the figure below. This view was taken in May of 2014 or about 5 1/2 years before this incident. The road surface appears to be a tar and chip material which is known to be less stable than a hard, asphalt paving or concrete. So, depending on how the maintenance was carried out, it is believable that a significant bump could be generated on this type of surface.
Anyone living in the area could easily walk to the vicinity of the tire marks and gouges that would be caused by the tanker truck before its rollover. From this point a walk could be taken for approximately 200 to 300 metres to determine if any significant bump existed. Unfortunately neither police nor the author of the newspaper article provided any indication whether such an exploration was conducted. Whether or not police would have documented the existence of such a bump in any report will remain unknown. The activities of the tanker truck driver will also be unknown with respect to what he/she does in defense of any charges. And the activities of the insurer of the truck in determining where liability may lie will also be kept secret.
There are rare occasions where roadway bumps become so obvious that police and news media have no option but to make them known. An example of this is a “sink hole” that was reported by the OPP in the left (fast) lane of Highway 401 between Brock Street and Thickson Road near Whitby on December 24, 2019. A photo posted on the OPP Twitter account is shown in the figure below.
Much like sightings of rare animal species, sightings of road maintenance workers taking measurements of road disturbances are extremely rare. Here the OPP released a photo of such a happening. Such procedures are generally top secret.
The close up view of the the above photo, shown below, seems to indicate that the road depression is about 6 inches or 15 centimetres. Ontario’s Minimum Maintenance Standards (MMS) indicate that this Class 1 Highway should be inspected 3 times per week. However is that good enough? Published traffic volumes between Thickson Road and Brock Street in 2016 indicate about 151,000 vehicles use this stretch of Hwy 401 every day. If the roadway is not inspected for 3 days that works out to over 450,000 vehicles. While it cannot be known how many vehicles might be travelling in the eastbound left lane, the potential numbers need not require deep thought.
This zoomed in view seems to show that the drop in the road surface is about 6 inches or about 15 centimetres.
Ontario’s MMS also provide examples of what depth and area of “potholes” are permissible and how much delay can exist before they are repaired. But is the depression shown in the above photos a “pothole” or simply a depression? And how with this pothole or depression be measured? Will some investigators use a four-foot carpenter’s level or something much longer? The MMS do not provide a definition and this often means that many highly paid lawyers will argue the point at great length, and expense, should the issue come to trial.
For a paved surface the “pothole” must have a surface area of a at least 1500 cm2, or a square this is about 1.2 by 1.2 metres (or about 4 feet by 4 feet). It must also have a depth greater than 8 centimetres (just over 3 inches). If these conditions exist then the roadway authority is required to make a repair within one week from the time that the problem is discovered. So, if the roadway authority is negligent and does not detect the road problem for one month, does this mean that it now has one month plus one additional week to make the repair? Well this may require another meeting of high priced lawyers, with additional high costs, to make a direction to the trier of fact (judge). Who will pay the bills when individuals need to defend themselves against these massive costs? Legal Aid?
It is no wonder that the tanker truck driver would simply want to plead guilty to charges and then plead no contest to any increased premiums on his or her insurance coverage when the rules are so highly stacked against him/her. That is the least of anyone’s worries as the consequences of not identifying a roadway problem and correcting it in a timely manner could mean the loss of someone’s life. With no one being held liable for taking that life.
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