Fire After Impact of Lamp Post Is A Dangerous Outcome Independent of Driver Impairment
The fact that a driver was drunk seems to make all the difference in a vehicle fire. That would seem to be the case in a collision on Oxford Street at Guildwood Blvd in London yesterday evening, October 5, 2019. An unidentified passenger vehicle struck a lamp standard on a centre median of Oxford Street and continued onto a lawn where it came to rest.
Witnesses claimed that just before the impact the driver was “swerving all over the road”. After the impact witnesses removed the driver from the vehicle before it went up in flames. The driver was charged with impaired operation of a motor vehicle and, since there were no serious injuries it was deemed a matter of minimal importance.
Photos of the front end of the vehicle showed a prominent, narrow crush in the centre of the bumper which also reached the front edge of the hood. Such crush would be viewed as moderate at least. Certainly not a situation where a fire should have been inevitable. So why did the fire start? Is that not a relevant question? What if the vehicle was not occupied by an impaired driver but by a mother transporting three of her children? What if there were not witnesses to remove the mother or the children? Would that not be a tremendous tragedy? So why is this not relevant? The fact that no one was seriously injured or burned to death was simple circumstance and luck. Officials should not be relying on circumstance and luck to protect the public as obviously that luck will change. Incidents like these must be documented throughout Ontario and Canada and they must be investigated to make sure we are not causing unnecessary injuries and deaths.
Another Fire-Related Death in Collision on Simcoe St North of Oshawa Ontario
Another fatality related to a post-collision fire has occurred this morning, October 3, 2019, on Simcoe Street just north of its intersection with Old Simcoe Road, north of Oshawa, Ontario. While police reported that this was a head-on collision it was not quite so. A white pick-up truck had been heading northbound on Simcoe Street when its driver likely lost directional control of the truck causing it to rotate into the southbound lane and into the path of a white Volkswagen, reportedly occupied by an elderly couple. There was substantial, direct-contact crush across the complete front end of the southbound car confirming that it was not a typical, front-end to front-end impact. Typical front-end to front-end impacts would involve off-sets of the striking ends and therefore you would see more crush at one corner than the other, there would be bowing of the non-contacted corner and the profile between the direct and induced damage would be clearly imprinted in the vehicle’s front end. The characteristics of damage on the car’s front end was indicative of an impact to the side of the Pick-up and this could be confirmed by looking at the bowed right side of the Pick-up even though police had covered it in a tarp.
Screen capture taken from news media video showing the striking vehicles at their final rest positions on Simcoe St.
A roadside interview of Constable George Tudos, representing Durham Regional Police, confirmed what would be expected in the manner that the police investigation was carried out. Instead of focusing on why the Pick-up truck caught fire and therefore caused the fatal injuries to its driver, Constable Tudos focused the media’s attention on their attempts to determine if speed, alcohol or slippery road conditions may have led to the collision. This is typical of the actions of police who fail to understand the importance of collision-related fires and the need to document them so they may be prevented.
Earlier today Gorski Consulting reported how another, double-fatal collision occurred on Hwy 406 in the Thorold area and where the possibility of a fire leading to the deaths of two occupants was not properly discussed. When police do not provide the essential information, and when news media no longer have the investigative capabilities to conduct their own inquiries, the public is kept in the dark. Post-collision fires appear to be occurring in more numbers than they did years before yet no one who has the capability to identify the extent of the problem.
Reporting of Collision Fire Death Is Crucial to Public’s Safety
We must stop hiding fire deaths in collisions because this prevents action from being taken that might prevent future deaths. Another example of this problem relates to a head-on collision on Highway 406 at Glendale Ave near Thorold, Ontario.The OPP reported that a vehicle was travelling the wrong way on Highway 406 which is an access-controlled, freeway. The vehicle collided, head-on with an SUV. In their brief Twitter message the OPP provided the photo below showing the damage caused to the wrong way vehicle.
Showing this non-burned vehicle to the public is not helpful when the reason why two persons perished could be related to a fire.
While the above photo shows that the wrong-way vehicle sustained substantial crush that should not be the focus of the OPP’s reports to media. Two persons died in the SUV yet, the media spokesperson for the OPP, Sergeant Kerry Schmidt, was quoted as saying “The vehicle that was going the proper way ended up starting on fire. The two occupants in that vehicle were pronounced dead at the scene”. There was no connection made by Sergeant Schmidt, that would properly inform the public whether the reason why the two occupants of the other vehicle died was because their vehicle caught fire. That is an important point. Because if they would have survived, except for the fire, then the commencement of the fire should be the primary matter of concern.
Two other photos are shown below which provide views of the burned vehicle but they are of minimal assistance as they do not show the occupant compartment where the persons died. If the occupant compartment was shown then one could assess whether there was sufficient crush that extended into where the occupants were seated. In that case we might suspect that the fire was not the cause of the deaths. But the two photos below do not provide such information.
It is well-known that larger mass and taller structure result in better odds of survival in a severe head-on collision. In the present example the wrong-way car was likely lighter and lower than the SUV and therefore the odds of the driver’s death were greater than the occupants of the SUV. Yet the reverse occurred. Thus this leads to the suspicion that the deaths did not occur from the impact force but likely from the subsequent fire. Yet the OPP has been silent on this issue.
There have been great advances in occupant protection in recent decades. This has likely been the greatest contributor to the large reductions in fatalities in motor vehicle crashes since the mid 1970s. Yet all these advancements become nullified when the occupants survive the crash but are then consumed by a vehicle fire that they cannot escape. This is why North American safety standards provide for testing of the flammability of vehicles after they have been involved in a controlled test. Yet there is a very limited amount of that testing and it cannot replicate the complicated collision scenarios that exist in the real world. Thus it is left to police investigations to capture those incidents of inappropriate fires through reports that they should be completing. Yet the official, standard, police report in Ontario does not provide a code which can be used to notate that a fire had occurred as part of a collision event. Thus there is no way for anyone to track this important and lethal potentially result.
This problem is becoming more important as vehicle fleets are changing with more computers, modules and general electrical power requirements. Everything from heated seats to windshield defrosters require electrical energy and this has resulted in changes in vehicle electrical systems. When a crash occurs it is essential to know whether those systems are increasing the potential of the eruption of a fire.
In a June, 2019 article by Lindsay Brooke, (“Protecting High-Voltage Circuits”) of the Automotive Engineering magazine, several enlightening comments were made regarding the increased electrical power of modern vehicles and the resultant increase in potential fires. In the opening paragraph the author provided this general observation:
“As OEMs develop their next-generation electrical architectures aimed at new hybrid, EV and autonomous vehicles, engineers are focused on delivering systems that are even more robust and “fail-safe” than those used today. Handling more power safely is a given, experts say, as more power-gobbling heated seats, electric turbos, active suspensions, lidars, onboard data processors and other safety sensors are added.”
Further in the article there was discussion of arcing:
“Arc intensity is directly related to voltage, current, and the rate of separation of the contact terminals. Arc event likelihood increases as voltage and current increase in circuit.”
“Arcing creates damage – and potentially fire” explained Eric Varton, chief engineer of advance development for Yazaki North America Core Engineering.
“He then showed video clips of two arcing events demonstrated in the Yazaki laboratory. The first demo, conducted with a 48-V, 11-amp; circuit – the load of a typical heated seat – shows a flash of near-MIG-weld intensity. The second demo was of a 500-V, 2-amp circuit – the arc erupted into fire in about four seconds”.
Unfortunately our collision reporting systems are not keeping up with these changes and advancements in automotive engineering and we may not be recognizing the extent of the fire problem. This era is accompanied by a reduction in independent reporting of collisions by the mass media and there are fewer and fewer investigative journalists and independent media outlets that have historically been the canaries in the public’s coal mines. Police are the only agency that now provides information about how and why a collision occurred. The police culture is one where the focus is on driver error at the expense of reporting other potential threats to public safety. This monopoly is simply unhealthy when new threats to public safety emerge and information about those threats is slow to reach the general public.
Bus Multiple Fatalities At Utah’s Bryce Canyon Illustrative Of Continued Systemic Problems
The public is not receiving the critical facts in multiple-fatality bus crashes that continue to exhibit obvious deficiencies in roadways and bus crashworthiness. This is clearly exemplified in the latest crash at Utah’s Bryce Canyon on Friday morning, September 20, 2019.
The photo, shown below, provides the clear fact that the bus rolled and slid on its side along the flat road surface and the only obstruction it encountered was the roadside guard rail. But look at the massive extent of intrusion of the bus roof into its occupant compartment. That is simply and clearly not acceptable.
A simple rollover on a level surface should not result in the massive intrusion of the bus roof into its occupant space.
When a vehicle rolls over on a level surface the rate of deceleration it experiences is about half a “g”. This rate is lower than what would be experienced if a driver applied maximum braking and slid to a stop. Would you expect multiple fatalities to persons sitting in a vehicle during maximum braking? Clearly not. So why should we expect multiple fatalities in this bus crash which likely sustained a deceleration lower than from maximum braking? Clearly and obviously the key issue is the collapse of the bus roof into the occupant compartment. A collapse that occurred during a simple rollover which should have resulted in minimal force to the bus structure. How much more obvious need the problem be before someone reports and accepts this fact?
While some injuries may have occurred due to occupant ejection, how can be blame that ejection for the multiple deaths when we see the obvious roof collapse of the bus?
As is typical, the details of how the fatalities occurred remain hidden. So it is possible that some occupants of the bus my have been ejected. That is a crucial shortcoming of bus passenger transportation in that seat-belt use for adults is critical to their survival. Although restraint use for children is just as vital, unsupervised children placed in “adult” seat-belts run the additional danger of sustaining abdominal injuries and thus this needs additional discussion.
But regardless of the restraint or seat-belt issue, how can we deem it acceptable that persons who might be properly restrained in their seats, are exposed to the completely unacceptable crush of the roof into where they are seated? This is not a monstrously, massive deceleration into a rock wall. It is a rollover that occurs over many seconds, during which the bus should be slowly reducing its speed and causing minimal forces on the properly restrained occupants inside. This result is simply appalling in the needless death that has been inflicted on innocent road users.
Body Falls on Van: Van Catches Fire – Does That Not Require Further Explanation?
Should vehicles catch fire because they make contact with a human body?
Suicide from jumping off a highway overpass is believable. And noting that the victim fell onto a passing van is also possible. But having the van subsequently catch fire seems a bit questionable. Particularly when news media such as CP24 News reported that police told them they were called to the suicide location because of a car fire. That information was later changed in by other news outlets to a police call because a witness saw a person on a bridge acting suspiciously. All this confusion may be explained if news media no longer have the editorial staff of that past that made sure a story was correct before it was made public. Perhaps a little more clarity is needed?
What seems to be consistent is the death of a man occurred on Hwy 410 at Derry Road in Mississauga sometime in the early hours of September 6, 2019. The news media also seem to be consistent with the fact that Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) has invoked its mandate to conduct a further inquiry.
If it is becoming commonplace for vehicles to catch fire because they make contact with a human body maybe we should expect fires whenever a pedestrian is struck. Is there no concern that such a fire might cause injury or death to persons inside the vehicle?
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