Why are police and news media not informing the public that the harpooning of the vehicle by a guardrail where a fatality occurred earlier this morning is not an acceptable consequence?
Police and news media seem to be avoiding the obvious as a vehicle was reportedly harpooned by a guardrail in the northbound lanes of Hwy 400 north of Toronto, Ontario earlier this morning, February 25, 2018. OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt was quoted as saying that the vehicle “slammed into a guardrail”. That is a creative phrasing of the obvious fact that guardrails are meant to deflect the travel direction of a striking vehicle while reducing the vehicle’s speed in a gradual manner. How can the harpooning of the vehicle be called “slamming” as this provides a very obvious misinformation that a penetration of the vehicle occurred.
Yet this is the closest that anyone else has come to saying anything about what transpired as all news agencies appear to be silent on this issue. Where is the informative, investigative journalism that shouts out “Hey wait a minute, this is not supposed happen. How did this occur? Why did this occur?” This was a 19-year-old occupant of a vehicle that had a lifetime to live, and perished under questionable circumstances, does no one care about that?
Oddly, we had just completed posting the news item below regarding the dangers of harpooning when reports of the current tragedy came to light. However the harpooning of a vehicle by a guardrail when the impact appears to be along the length of the rail is quite peculiar. There have been numerous incidents of reported harpooning of vehicles when the end of the rail is struck and this was discussed on this webpage a couple of days ago with respect to the ET-Plus guardrail terminals.
But that does not appear to be the case in the present instance as photos of the guardrail in the present case appear to show that the rail separated somewhere along its length. This would normally suggest that there was a weak point in the anchorage of the rail, possibly where two lengths of rail are joined together. However this is all speculation as there have been no reasonable photos of the rail where it separated and there is no opportunity for anyone to examine it close up before it was repaired. This is a troubling situation as any defect of the guardrail could be hidden from public knowledge.