It is vitally important to understand what factors led to the tragic deaths and injuries in the Humboldt Broncos bus crash in the Canadian Province of Saskatchewan on April 7, 2018.
Previous collisions are an early warning that, if ignored, lead to current ones. And current collisions are a resetting of the alarm for future crashes. To date the Humboldt Bronco alarm has been turned off and the public has been told to get back to work. It is the public’s obligation to ask what set off the alarm in the first place. With the guilty plea of the truck driver who struck the Broncos bus those factors that were instrumental in the crash may never be made public. That secrecy becomes the enabler that allows dangerous conditions to exist.
What were the travel speeds of the vehicles on approach to the crash site? What was the speed of each vehicle at impact. What opportunity did each driver have to avoid the collision or lessen its severity? How much time did it require the truck to start from a stopped position and clear the intersection? How do other truck drivers pass through this intersection? What was the change-in-velocity of the bus and how does that match with the numbers of deaths and injuries? These are just some of the questions that need to be addressed.