Fires that develop after any collision must be taken seriously even when no one is seriously injured. The obvious danger is that if occupants cannot escape the confines of their vehicles even minor collisions can turn deadly. An example of this is shown in the above photo posted by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) regarding a collision that occurred at the intersection of Plank Road and LaSalle Line in Lambton County on the morning of Friday, December 12, 2025.
The circumstances indicate that the school bus was westbound on LaSalle Line and came to the stop-sign controlled intersection with Plank Road. A Minivan was travelling north-west along Plank Road and as it approached LaSalle Line the school bus entered into the intersection. The Van struck the school bus in its driver’s (left) side and both vehicles travelled to the north-west roadside as shown in the above photo. At some point a fire erupted. All persons were able to exit their vehicles including two students on the bus. News media reported that subsequently the driver of the bus, a 68-year-old, was charged with “Fail to Yield to Traffic”. There were no serious injuries as a result of the collision or fire.
Given the evidence shown in the above photo It would appear that the Van caught fire first because it is totally consumed. The fire evidence on the bus is at a high level and suggests that the flames from the Van were transferred onto the bus. But this opinion would need to be confirmed by an examination of both vehicles. Regardless, the occurrence of a fire in a collision is a serious matter that should be investigated further.
An examination of the collision site via Googlemaps shows that there was a non-standard intersection which would cause the school bus driver more difficulty examining vehicles approaching on Plank Road, as shown in the figure below.
The conclusion that the bus driver did not yield the right of way can be erroneous if investigators do not have a good grasp of how long it takes a school bus to begin an acceleration and what rate of acceleration might be reasonable. There is not much information in the public domain, nor amongst collision reconstructionsts, as to what acceleration values to use. If the Van was approaching at high speed this could complicate the reconstruction because pre-impact braking by the Van may not leave any physical evidence. Unfortunately, when a collision does not involve major or life-threatening injuries police do not send out a reconstructionist nor do they employ a Crash Data Retrieval kit to download collision data. Because there is a limited supply of these kits they are not employed in almost all collisions except those of a life-threatening nature.
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