Car Did Not Fall Over Bridge – But Close To Drowning

by | Feb 11, 2026 | News

This photo, taken by the London Fire Department, shows a car that fell into Dingman Creek from Wellington Road on February 9, 2026. News media reported that the car had gone over a bridge but that is an exaggeration. Yet the result could easily have been fatal in these frigid conditions.

Official news media reported that on February 9, 2026, a vehicle had fallen off the bridge on Wellington Road in London, Ontario at Dingman Creek on the City’s southern outskirts. A photo taken by London’s Fire Department show the vehicle sitting right-side-up in the creek with barely half of its wheels submerged in the shallow water. No mention was made of the extent of injury to the driver however it was noted that he was able to climb out his vehicle through the convertible roof so it would suggest that any injury would be minor. It would seem that, other than falling over the bridge, this collision was deemed a non-event.

Because of the description that the vehicle fall off the bridge I decided to make a further inquiry. During the recent extreme weather conditions it had been reported that snow was plowed against roadside barriers and several loss-of-control vehicles flew over these launchpad ramps. Police had blamed drivers for these occurrences while fault would appear to be more complicated. So I wanted to explore this new incident to see if it was similar to those previously reported.

I attended the collision site in the early afternoon of February 9th. Travelling along Wellington Road I examined both sides of the bridge at Dingman Creek and decided that evidence near the west side was likely related to the reported incident. I parked my vehicle on the west roadside, north of the bridge and then I took photo through my windshield toward the bridge, as shown below.

This view taken from my parked vehicle, north of the Dingman Creek bridge, shows that the snow on the west gravel shoulder had been plowed a substantial distance away from the pavement edge. However, a short segment of guardrail connecting to the north end of the bridge was difficult to see.

Using the measurement tool in Googlemaps I determined that a short guardrail attached to the north end of the bridge was about 26 metres in length. But this rail is difficult to see in the above photo. As I got out of my car and walked toward the bridge I took the next photo shown below.

This view was taken closer to the bridge. Although it is difficult to detect, I began to see faint evidence that the loss-of-control vehicle travelled through the plowed shoulder and toward the snowbank north of the north end of the guardrail.

There was evidence that several vehicles had recently parked on the snow-covered shoulder and this would be expected as emergency vehicles would have responded to the incident. Despite the trampled nature of the evidence I was still able to detect faint evidence that a vehicle had slid toward the snowbank in front of the guardrail.

One might see in the photo below that there is a difference in the character of the snow pile on the right which contains large chunks of snow and the snow in the centre and left of the photo where the snow is crumpled and no large chunks exist. This because the loss of control vehicle struck the snow.

The path of the loss-of-control vehicle can be imaged by looking at the character of the snow bank on the right which has large chunks in it versus the crumpled character of the snow just before the beginning of the guardrail.

Looking down at the crumpled snow there were a number of pieces of vehicle body materials strewn about, as shown in the photo below.

These small vehicle body parts strewn in the snow confirms that the underside of the vehicle and certain lower portions made contact with the snow bank on approach to the guardrail.

Coming closer to the end of the guardrail there was little evidence of contact of the snow bank, as shown in the photo below. So it suggests that the vehicle became airborne.

The lack of contact evidence in the first few posts of the guardrail suggests that the vehicle became airborne.

But further along the rail there was damage to three posts and this is likely where the airborne vehicle made contact, as shown in the northward view of the photo below.

Damage evidence the posts of the guardrail shows where the vehicle came down and made first contact with the rail.

Swinging around to face south again, the photo below shows that the last few posts of the guardrail were undamaged and therefore the vehicle fell down into the steep slope to the right of the guardrail before reaching the bridge.

Lack of damage in the bridge shows that the vehicle fell down the steep slope before reaching the bridge.

Looking up from the steep slope one can see that the vehicle fell a substantial distance.

This photo shows the substantial distance that the vehicle dropped after crossing over the guardrail.

looking toward the bottom of the slope there was evidence of a lot of foot traffic related to rescuing the vehicle and driver, as shown in the photo below.

The evidence of foot traffic in the snow near the bottom of the slope shows the operations of emergency personnel as they came to the assistance of the driver.

Looking down at the water where the vehicle came to rest it was confirmed that the level of water was very shallow. So long as the vehicle remained upright there was no chance that the driver would die from drowning.

This view shows the shallow level of the water in the creek.

However one must consider the substantial drop down the slope, shown again in the photo below.

It is fortuitous that the vehicle fell down the substantial slope yet the driver only sustained minor injuries.

There are a number of similar incidents like these where the outcome is far different and sometimes deadly.

It has been discussed many times before in previous Gorski Consulting articles where vehicles end upside down in shallow water. Even when a seatbelt is worn an injured or disoriented occupant finds it difficult to release the latch and ends hanging down. A situation where there is slightly more water depth could cause an occupant’s upper body to be submerged in the icy water. If these incidents occur on low-volume roads and in darkness there may be no one to detect the upside down vehicle. Eventually, over several hours of freezing temperatures the occupant dies from exposure, or drowning from having only the head submerged in the shallow water. So these are matters that need to be taken seriously.

Snow deposited on guardrails is a dangerous matter. Sometimes it is difficult to avoid due to large snow storms. However there also must be a recognition that such snow needs to be removed from those barriers as quickly as reasonably possible. One also needs to be aware that certain lengths of guardrail may be too short to prevent vehicles from passing by them. There is little point to spending the money to install a guardrail when it is too short and endangers too many drivers when a vehicle goes out of control.