Bus in Hong Kong Tripped Over Low Barrier & Into Tree on Road Edge
Those who understand road safety issues can focus the public’s attention to issues that may not be readily apparent. That was the case in the latest, multi-fatal, double-decker bus crash in Hong Kong yesterday that killed 6 passengers.
It did not take long for Professor Ahmed Shalaby, a road safety expert and Professor in the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Manitoba, to post the following on his twitter account:
“A Hong Kong double-decker bus collided with a roadside barrier and then a tree immediately behind it. In addition to speeding, two other factors increased the severity of crash. Lack of crashworthiness standards for buses, and roadside barriers that don’t shield large vehicles.”
In these few words he encapsulated the major problems that were not mentioned in numerous news media posts.
In Professor Shalaby’s last sentence “…roadside barriers that don’t shield large vehicles” he pointed out that the highway at the Hong Kong site contained a barrier that was the initial point of contact. Although no views of that barrier have been shown at that specific point of contact, its characteristics can be seen in the photo below, where the damaged bus is stopped next to the barrier.
Clearly, compared to the height of the bus, the barrier is very low. The barrier could not possibly stop the bus from tipping, or tripping over it, thus exposing the upper deck of the bus to a tree impact. The tree itself was likely much too close to the busy highway. The large orange circle in the above photo shows the evidence where the left-front corner of the bus likely struck the barrier and then the bus was rotated over top of the barrier.
Professor Shalaby was also right in confirming that speed might have been a factor in the crash but he also highlighted the issue of “Lack of crashworthiness”: the degree to which the design of the structure of the bus reduces the probability of injury and death to its occupants. Such crashworthiness has been enshrined in passenger vehicle and light truck safety standards since the 1960s. Yet, crash after crash demonstrates that there is almost no safety design in the structure of large, intercity coaches, worldwide.
That lack of bus structure crashworthiness becomes obvious when examining the above photo and considering the characteristics of the damage where the upper deck of the bus became opened up like someone used a can opener to cut off its lid. The important evidence is that the tearing and rupturing of the sheet metal is not accompanied by any buckling or crush of the structure next to it. When a structure is strong or stiff it will buckle and crush before it finally ruptures and separates. Because the surrounding structure near the tears and ruptures is almost undamaged it is an indicator of the weakness of that structure – the fact that it separated without much force being applied to cause that separation. This occurrence is reminiscent of a similar occurrence in a multi-fatal bus crash with a train near Ottawa in 2013 where the bus structure was separated with minimal evidence of any disruption in the vicinity of the separation.
Professor Shalaby has been raising this issue of lack of bus crashworthiness through mediums such as the Canadian Parliamentary Committee on Bus Passenger Safety this past spring. His report (co-authored by Zygmunt M. Gorski) highlighted this issue of lack of bus structural crashworthiness. Unfortunately, the Canadian federal election caused a disbanding of the Parliamentary Committee and therefore there has been a delay in the Federal government’s action on this important issue.
We must understand that collisions such as the one in Hong Kong are not that different from what could occur in Canada. The same lack of compatibility of the roadway infrastructure and poor bus crashworthiness exists here and will likely rear its ugly head in the next, multi-fatal, bus crash much like the one involving the Humboldt Broncos collision in Saskatchewan in April, 2018. These may be difficult issues with costly price tags. But they need to be discussed with the Canadian federal government joining the Provinces in a joint strategy along with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), U.S. States, bus manufacturers and all other interested parties. A change must occur because there is a dire need for that change.
How Effective is Re-Paving In Improving Poor Road Conditions?
Poor road conditions can lead to collisions. But what is a poor road condition? Gorski Consulting has been conducting testing on various roads in Southern Ontario to provide an answer to that question. Recently a roadway that contained some of the worst conditions was re-paved. This provided an opportunity to demonstrate how much of an improvement re-paving can make. This article will focus on the roadway, Sunningdale Road in London, Ontario.
In 2014 Gorski Consulting conducting testing on a number of roads and highways in London and South-Western Ontario. One of those roads was the 2.4 kilometre distance of Sunningdale Road between Clarke Rd and Highbury Ave on the north-eastern edge of London, Ontario. The testing was to document the extent of upheaval caused in the motion of a test vehicle travelling over those roadways.The figure below shows some of those roads where testing was performed.
The location of sites in London and to its south-west where testing was performed in February of 2015.
The testing involved driving a vehicle equipped with multiple video cameras through the roadways. An App (Sensorlog) loaded on a iPhone was set-up to document the vehicle’s motion. Part of the gathered data included the lateral and longitudinal motion of the vehicle. The figure below shows the results of that testing.
This chart shows that the longitudinal and lateral motion of the test vehicle was much higher while driving along Sunningdale Road compared to any of the other sites were testing was performed.
The above chart shows that the motion of the test vehicle was much greater along the Sunningdale Road site as compared to any of the other highways where data was obtained. The numerical values shown in the chart describe the motion as a “rotation” about the lateral and longitudinal axes of the vehicle. This rotation is in the form of “radians-per-second”. One radian is equal to 57.3 degrees. So a value such as 0.0500 rad/sec is equal to about 2.865 degrees per second. For vehicle stability the lateral motion is often the most critical because it can lead to a yawing of the vehicle. Yaw is the rotation that occurs about a vehicle’s vertical axis and it is the motion that precedes vehicle loss-of-control and rollover. Because a vehicle motion can be like a pendulum, motions to the left and right average out to be zero and therefore displaying those values is not meaningful. It was decided that taking the standard deviation of that motion provides a proper indication of its magnitude. It has been determined from previous testing that the quality of roadways can be categorized into three primary groupings
Values below 0.0200 = A good quality of roadway with no major safety problems.
0.0200 to 0.0500 = A roadway that is in relatively good condition in the vicinity of 0.0200 rad/sec but likely contains some safety problems, along some portions of the tested road segment, as the value approaches 0.0400 and toward 0.0500 rad/sec.
Greater than 0.0500 = A roadway that contains safety related concerns through a substantial portion of the tested road segment.
Looking at the above chart, Sunningdale Road contained levels of lateral motion that were above the critical level of 0.0500 rad/sec. No other roadway showed that magnitude of induced motion in the test vehicle.
A substantial amount of testing was done since the testing shown in the above chart. This has revealed, for example, that the vehicle motion is dependent on the speed of the test vehicle. Not surprisingly, the vehicle motion is higher when the vehicle is travelling over the same surface at a faster speed. Interestingly the relationship seems to be more prominent in lateral motion than it is in longitudinal motion. So one preliminary conclusion might suggest that speed could be important in loss-of-control collisions because, as the speed increases, the lateral motion increases, and the tire force becomes more divergent between the left and right side tires. This leads to yaw and loss-of-control collisions.
A few years before the testing shown in the above chart the condition of Sunningdale was even worse than what the data shows. Some of those conditions are shown in the photos below.
An example of a rupture in the surface of Sunningdale Road in February of 2011 before the surface was repaved in 2012.
An example of a rupture shows a vertical drop in the surface of almost 3 inches (7 centimetres).
The shadow of the carpenter’s level is the best indicator of the extent of depression of the surface of Sunningdale Road in this photo taken on February 23, 2011.
In 2012 parts of the roadway became re-paved in the areas where the conditions were the worst. So the data in the above chart does not illustrate just how bad the situation was before that re-paving. In fact school buses regularly used this road segment and videotape taken before 2012 showed how these buses were being bounced around, to the point of possibly rolling over, just from riding over the very large ruts and depressions.
It was fortuitous that in the summer of 2019 this segment of Sunningdale Road between Clarke Road and Highbury Ave was re-paved again. Not only were the worst portions re-paved but the full length of the segment was repaved. Upon driving on the re-paved surface it was apparent that the safety issues were finally corrected. This re-paving provided an opportunity for further testing to show how effective the re-paving was in reducing vehicle motions. Thus shortly after the re-paving, on July 21, 2019, Gorski Consulting returned to the site and performed another round of testing, similar to what was performed in 2014.
View looking westbound on Sunningdale Road on July 11, 2019, shortly after the surface was re-paved.
The table below shows the results of the testing from February, 2014 when the original testing was performed, and July 21, 2019, after the surface of Sunningdale Road had been re-paved. As usual the numbers are the standard deviation in the lateral rotation of the test vehicle. In other words we are looking at the amount of sideways motion of the test vehicle.
Note that the relationship between speed and vehicle motion still holds true after the re-paving. As the test vehicle travels faster the lateral (sideways) motion increases.
What should be remarkable however is the degree to which the lateral motion has been extinguished after the re-paving. Before the re-paving, at 80 km/h the lateral motion was 0.0479 (westbound) and 0.0532 (eastbound). But after the re-paving the motion drops to 0.0184 (westbound) and 0.0172 (eastbound). This is a massive difference in the motion of the vehicle. It not only explains how re-paving can improve the safety of a roadway but it also helps to illuminate how poor the road conditions were on Sunningdale Road in 2014, even though the worst conditions were removed in the re-paving of 2012. Drivers were subjected to this “hell on earth” for a number of years without much public outcry. Why such conditions are allowed to exist for such prolonged times is often a function of poor communications passed onto the public by police and city staff who see little obligation to report and act on poor road conditions.
Police are not trained to understand the relationship between poor road conditions and collision causation. Although they may periodically conduct skid tests at collision sites those are used to estimate the speed of a collision-involved vehicle and to determine if charges for speeding should be applied. Police also have no way of determining whether ruts, depressions or undulations are of sufficient magnitude that they should be viewed as a cause in a loss-of-control collision. This makes the validity of police records questionable. Yet many decisions about public safety are made based on the assumption that police collision data is unquestionably accurate.
The Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) runs an annual “Worst Roads” campaign where the public can submit their choice of roads meritting the classification of “Worst Road” in Ontario. But such choices are based on subjective opinion and there is no objective analysis to determine how one road compares to the next.
Minimum Maintenance Standards (MMS) have been developed in the Province of Ontario by defendants in civil suits (Municipalities and the Ontario Ministry of Transportation). The purpose of these standards is to protect these defendants from civil liability. Many of these standards are so weak that they do not provide for essential driver protection. As an example, a “Surface Discontinuity” or vertical difference in road surface must be at least 5 centimetres (2 inches) before there is a requirement for its repair. Depending on the speed of a vehicle, suspension and tire characteristics and how its tires contact such a vertical wall the results can be catastrophic or insignificant, without much legal recourse available to the driver.
In other instances municipalities conduct secret testing of the road surface friction and fail to inform the public when such friction falls below acceptable standards. This was highlighted recently in Hamilton, Ontario when a report of substandard friction data became “lost” and then re-found several years later, leading to a 250 million class action lawsuit. A spokesperson for the City of Hamilton, Jasmine Graham, stated that “there are no set Canadian or provincial friction standards, and the Ministry of Transportation’s specifications are not clear”.
In this realm of confusion, secrecy and deceit, the public is treated like rows of mushrooms in an isolated greenhouse, kept in the dark and fed manure, as the saying goes. Technical reports and research that is in the hands of Municipalities and Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation are kept secret even though they are paid for by public taxes and their content may expose important safety issues. Furthermore independent testing, such as that conducted by Gorski Consulting is often met with resistance as officials believe that they have a monopoly on conducting testing on public roads. Friction testing for example would be impossible to conduct independently without police being called to stop any such activities. The advantage of the vehicle motion testing conducted by Gorski Consulting is that it cannot be prevented because it involves the normal travel of the test vehicle, no different than any other vehicle that has the right to use public roads.
The result of the Gorski Consulting tests is that the public is given objective information about the quality of road conditions independent of those who would wish to have that information hidden. While additional information such as friction testing cannot be done there is sufficient information contained in the Gorski testing to make it useful in comparing the safety conditions of one roadway to another. Over the years a Road Data database has been uploaded to the Gorski Consulting website which provides details of the testing along many roads in Southern Ontario. The public, or anyone, is free to examine the data and draw conclusions as they wish.
There is additional data that has been gathered that would be too voluminous to upload to the website. This includes video footage and parameters such as accelerations and test vehicle angles with respect the three vehicle axes (x,y,z). The angle data is useful to explore issues such as the cross-slopes and superelevations of roadways and the downslopes of roadsides such as shoulders. All this data is obtained because the iPhone is such a successful spying technology such that the actions of persons carrying an iPhone can be easily determined by anyone with access to the data. So while the iPhone can be used for malicious purposes it can also be used for ethical purposes as well.
The testing by Gorski Consulting is totally independent of any outside interference or funding. Not many firms or research institutions can make that claim. In these days when research and reports are paid for by entities who expect a certain result, there is no such connection in the Gorski research results. No public money has ever been delivered for our studies and our retainments on individual collision reconstruction assignments are narrowly focused on those assignments, never filtering over into the independent research that we do for the general benefit of our community.
Your Child (And Puppy) Could Die From Lap-Belt Induced Abdominal Injuries
This puppy, and your child, could die from lap-belt induced injuries if the belt is worn in this manner.
Undoubtedly Peel Regional Police meant well when they posted the above photo with a caption indicating “Seat belts dramatically reduce risk of death and serious injury among drivers and front-seat passengers”. While the puppy photo is cute it fails to highlight the importance of proper lap belt positioning. Improper positioning could cause death, not prevent it. Furthermore, adult seat-belts are not meant for children, or puppies. This is why children need to be in infant carriers, child seats or booster cushions.
As a parent there is no need to panic as Peel Regional Police are correct, seat belts dramatically reduce risk of death and serious injury, it’s just that it requires a parent’s participation in ensuring that children, puppies and all living beings in a vehicle are as safe as they can be. That requires vigilance so that, if you see a seat-belt being worn improperly, you must bring that to the wearer’s attention. Like with alcohol impairment, we do not let drivers drive drunk and we do not let persons ride in a vehicle with an improper restraint or let proper restraints be used improperly.
Vehicle Drowning in Peterborough? No One Knows
How much confidence is given when police search for a submerged vehicle and find a second one? Where did this second vehicle come from? Was there an unreported drowning?
Photo uploaded on the OPP Twitter account showing the SUV that was located in Peterborough’s Otonabee River.
The OPP reported on Thursday, December 12, 2019 that they attended the Otonabee River on Monaghan Road and Crawford Drive in Peterborough, Ontario due to reports that a vehicle had entered the river. An SUV was found in the water and a man was “rescued” though the meaning of that phrase was not made clear. What appeared surprising is that police found a second vehicle in the water at that location.
OPP photo of a second vehicle found in the Otonabee River.
This finding a second, black car is a little strange. The photo shows that it is located very close to the edge of the river bank. Presumably the vehicle did not leave the roadway at same time as the SUV but that information was never provided. Traffic and pedestrians on Monaghan Road and Crawford Drive should be have been quite close to this location so it seems strange that the vehicle was not located if it was there close to the river bank for an extended time.
But we also do not know if this photo portrays the actual facts. It is not the first time that police would have pulled the vehicle partially out of the water before a photo was taken. The confusion that is generated when no explanation is given is often of little concern because the public does not have the right to know. Its a privilege, it seems.
Once the black car was pulled out of the water a reporter from the Peterborough examiner, Clifford Skarstedt, was able to take several photos, close-up. Unfortunately these photos cannot be shown on this website.
It is interesting to note how police do not seem concerned about the photographer being present, and photos being taken. Yet, at other similar sites the public and reporters are kept away, sometimes several kilometres away, from the subject vehicle. So what was the harm in the reporter’s presence. Was there some dire threat that critical evidence would be damaged or stolen by the reporter?
If Mr. Skarstedt had been a reporter with the Aylmer Express Newspaper he would have been thrown in jail. A similar incident on June 24, 2017, occurred on the shore of Lake Erie when newspaper reporters John and Brett Hueston were arrested by the OPP as they refused to leave the site where a similar vehicle was being pulled out of the water.
John Hueston and his son Brett, were arrested by the OPP at a June 24, 2017 accident site, similar to the one in Peterborough.
The Lake Erie incident was slightly different as there was skepticism as to how the driver came to his death since police were “following” but reportedly not chasing him. His plunge into Lake Erie was officially claimed to be a suicide yet a checkerboard warning sign, that would normally be required at the end of a roadway, was non-existent and a warning of the cliff at the edge of the lake was not provided. So there was some sensitivity to the issue and the OPP were not independent observers to the circumstances.
With respect to the Otonabee River site, there is also no lack of controversy. The fact that a second vehicle was found at that location may not be just coincidence but a matter that the City of Peterborough should have prioritized as a potential safety hazard. The Googlemaps view of the site, shown below, indicates the approximate location where the two vehicles were found (orange circle). This is precisely at the end of Crawford Drive.
The next three Googlemaps views show the approach along Crawford Drive toward the T-intersection at Monaghan Road and the edge of the Otonabee River just beyond. Imagine travelling at night, with headlights on, and consider what visibility would be provided of the stop sign and the presence of the river.
By passing through the right curve the headlights of a vehicle would not project toward the stop sign. The only illumination of significance could be the overhead lighting and its ability to light up the face of the stop sign could be in doubt. But furthermore, if a driver were to miss seeing the stop sign and travels at full speed toward the river there is nothing in the way of a barrier or even a checkerboard sign that would either prevent a vehicle from entering the water or warn the driver of the end of the road. This is not much different than the site on Lake Erie shown in the Googlemaps views below.
At the Lake Erie site we see that Springfield Road ends in a gravel roundabout which is located about 75 metres from the edge of a cliff to the Lake. The last photo shows the driver’s view upon approaching the gravel roundabout and it can be seen that there is no Checkboard sign which would warn drivers of the termination of the road and the presence of the cliff just beyond.
These are the kinds of facts that the public ought to be made aware of. At neither site have police ever made the public aware that there are dangers that could lead future drivers to their deaths.
Another Rear-End Impact of TTC Bus and No Information Available
We should be thankful to Global News for posting two photos of a school bus that rear-ended a TTC bus in Toronto because no one else publicized this important incident. Unfortunately we cannot show these photos here.
There has been an increase in concern over bus passenger safety since the Humboldt Broncos tragedy in Saskatchewan. Similarly two fatal collisions in the Ottawa area, one involving train and the other involving an impact to an overhanging structure at a bus station, have also contributed to that concern. At the same time the CBC’s Fifth Estate produced a documentary discussing the need for seat-belts on school buses.
The current collision of the school bus and the TTC transit bus would have been an important matter to document and describe to the public as this would be a teaching exercise to demonstrate what injuries could be expected. Unfortunately this opportunity was missed as only Global News covered this story and its description was very limited.
While Global news reported that the bus showed “extensive damage” this is a comment made by a person unfamiliar with vehicle crush and injury-producing collision severity. While there appeared to be significant damage above the front bumper the bumper itself was merely rotated and was positioned relatively close to its pre-impact location. The crush at the bumper level is the most important evidence because this is where the stiffest portion of the structure is located. However without any specific information about the injuries sustained by the occupants of the school bus it is difficult to discuss whether seat-belts might have been effective in this instance.
This demonstrates once again how little information is passed onto the public so that they can obtain some basic, unbiased information about what is important in bus passenger safety. Parents may send their children onto a school bus and families or hockey teams may travel on inter-city coaches but their education about what may kill them or their children is needlessly miniscule. Information and objective evidence is there, in large quantities, due to the unfortunate circumstances of bus crashes, yet we refuse to allow that information and evidence to used to educate ourselves. That is an additional tragedy.
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