Much like the universe the internet has no bounds. That appears most obvious in areas surrounding rumours, misinformation and gossip. When official information is not released about a collision this does not prevent public speculation about what took place – it merely emphasizes the gossip that is generated. Such may be the case in a recent school-bus-involved fatal collision just west of London, Ontario on December 16, 2024.
From an official standpoint London City Police are the entity that should have the most knowledge about how a 7-year-old boy, Dante Caranci, was struck and killed after exiting a school bus on Longwoods Road near Murray Road just before 1600 hours on December 16th. The problem originates with the lack of information about what transpired. In their post on the London City police website police indicated: “Members of the LPS Traffic Management Unit continue to investigate the serious collision involving a pedestrian that occurred earlier this week. The young boy transported to hospital by paramedic services, has succumbed to his injuries.” The fact that the collision involved a school bus was not even mentioned in the police notification.
Official news media have also not reported any useful information although they are at a disadvantage if police refuse to release that information. Yet in the past when professional, investigative journalism was in existence, news persons were able to snoop around the official circles and exteract the details that were not officially released. That is no longer the case.
Objective, unbiased information about what happened is not just for the purpose of satisfying the curiosity of the public. Such information plays a crucial role in determining if mistakes were made, if policies and procedures need to be changed and in educating the public about preventing future tragedies.
Traffic collisions are complex events. They are advertised as being caused by one or two major factors while the reality is that many others have an influence that could have prevented a collision from occurring. This reality never reaches the public psyche. Information that is spread through unofficial sources provides some benefits but it is often unreliable. The source of unofficial information may be a “witness”, or someone who claims to be so. But it may also be someone who has no knowledge about the incident and is simply spreading rumours for many reasons. Information that is actual misinformation is not just a nuisance but it can be detrimental to public safety when the unsuspecting public comes to believe something that did not occur or could not occur.
Without any knowledge about what happened in the actual event it is the duty of Gorski Consulting to refrain from spreading gossip and provide some broad comments, without suggesting that they apply to this actual case.
Some School Bus Safety Facts
School buses operating in the Province of Ontario are required to be of a minimal safety level that is beyond the norm for typical, privately operated vehicles. Unlike drivers of private vehicles school bus drivers must complete a “circle check” of their vehicle every morning before taking it onto the road. Import issues views such as the status of what exists in the engine compartment, the condition of the steering system, suspension system and the bus wheels/tires.
The lighting of most modern school buses can be checked by simply pressing a lamp-check button on the instrument panel. This button activates all the lights on the bus in succeeding/alternating fashion. So the school bus driver needs to step outside the bus and walk around it as the lighting comes on and off. Every light that functions on the bus is turned on and off when it is functioning properly during this test. When a driver sees that a particular light is not coming on he/she must report it is a log book and to the bus operator/mainenance so that the problem can be repaired. Some malfunctions can be minor and some major. If a major malfunction exists, such as the failure of the red, flashing, overhead lights, the bus cannot be driven until the malfunction is repaired.
School buses are generally large vehicles. They are as wide as a typical tractor-trailer truck combination and they are about 2 1/2 times longer than a typical passenger car, or about 12.5 metres in length. Even the smaller, 20-seater, van-based school buses are of the size and weight of the heaviest, full-size passenger van.
The floor of a full-size school bus is just over 1 metre above the ground and thus the seats of the bus are well above the height of a typical passenger car. This means that when an impact occurs with most cars and light trucks there is minimal likelihood that the side of the bus will be crushed into where the students are seated.
The front axle of a full-size school bus is located up to a metre behind the front bumper and its engine also exists in front of the driver’s seating position. The bus driver generally sits about 2.4 meters behind the front bumper. These features protect the school bus driver in many serious, frontal impacts that may involve substantial crush.
The height of a typical school bus may be a little more than 3 metres. The overhead lights on a typical, full-size school bus are generally about 2.8 metres above the ground. While this is higher than almost all light-duty vehicles it is not as high as some heavy trucks. Many tractor, semi-trailer combinations are operated with a typical, box, semi-trailer whose height is taller than the height of the overhead lights of a school bus and this can be a problem.
When coming to a stop a bus driver must activate certain lights that warn other drivers of that imminent action. Typically amber warning lights are activated usually more that 5 seconds before the actual stop but how early that occurs is dependent on the preferences of the individual driver.
Once the bus has come to a stop the driver presses an “Open” door button or toggle switch. Older buses still exist where the doors are opened by the driver pulling on a manual handle that is attached to the doors. Regardless, once the doors begin to be opened the stop sign located on the left side of the bus rotates outward and flashing lights on the perimeter of the stop sign begin to flash. Also there are alternating, overhead, red lights that come on. The actual arrangement of actions and responses varies slightly from one bus to another.
Some Details About The Longwoods Crash Site
While no information has been released about how the 7-year-old boy was killed at the Longwoods Road crash site, some comments can be made based on the known features of the site.
Longwoods Road is the new name for the old Provincial Highway #2. This road was the primary artery for carrying vehicles east/west in South-Western Ontario for many years until the Highway 401 expressway was built in the early 1960s. To this day Longwoods Road still carries a substantial amount of traffic including heavy trucks. City of London traffic volume data indicates that approximately 6 to 8 thousand vehicles pass along Longwoods Road near Murray Road every day. While the setting is generally rural it has progressively been changing to suburban elements as the edges of the City of London have grown progressively closer to the site. A Googlemaps view of the site’s location with respect to the City of London is shown below.
A closer view of the site is shown in the next Googlemaps view.
The Googlemaps view below is a street view looking eastward along Longwoods Road towards Murray Road. It shows that the roadway contains a gentle curve in the vicinity of Murray Road.
A traffic volume of 6 to 8 thousand vehicles per day in an 80 km/h speed zone represents a challenging scenario for picking up and delivering students by school bus. When the roadway contains a curve additional complications develop whereby visibility becomes an added problem. In such circumstances attention must be paid to the selection of a proper stop location.
In the London region Southwestern Ontario Student Transportation Services is an organization that is responsible for organizing school bus services to the public and Catholic school boards. Their website provides the following description of their responsibilities:
“STS is responsible for planning and coordinating school bus service for close to 50,000 who live in Elgin, Middlesex, and Oxford counties and in the city of London. STS contacts school bus companies who are responsible for the daily service and the bus drivers are their employees.”
While several school bus companies operate in the London area it is actually the personnel at STS who design the routes and stop locations for every school bus. Each year the school bus routes are changed and prior to the start of the school year school bus drivers make preliminary “drive through” runs of the new routes to ensure that they can be completed in the times estimated by STS. Routes may involve as little as one stop or as many as 15 or more depending on what STS deems reasonable.
Often a school bus will complete a morning route to deliver children to high schools and then they will complete a second route for delivery of younger children to elementary schools.
In the afternoon school buses arrive at local high schools generally between 1400 and 1440 hours. After these routes are completed the buses then travel to the elementary schools around 1525 to 1535 hours where they pick-up the younger children. School buses generally leave the property of elementary schools around 1535 to 1550 hours.
It is not known for sure however the child who was killed may have attended Lambeth Public School which is just over 2 kilometres from the area where the reported collision occurred. The direction in which the school bus was travelling just prior to the collision would depend on the actual route assigned by STS.
Potential Collision Causal Factors
There are many factors that could potentially affect what occurred. One is driver distraction. It is generally agreed in bus driving circles that routes driven for elementary schools are more distracting. Not all situations are the same however high school students have been socialized over the years so that they generally stay in their seats while riding a bus. Elementary school children are often more difficult to keep in their seats and bus drivers must often keep an eye in their mirrors and tell children to sit down. Elementary school children are also more noisy, especially during the afternoon ride home. These distractions are more common when there are more children on a bus and they are more common in the early portion of a route when children have not yet been let off. As the route progresses and more children depart the level of noise and distraction generally dies down. Given the rural nature of the Longwoods Road collision site, the number of children exiting at any particular stop would be smaller than in the condensed areas of an urban stop. So it would generally be easier for a school bus driver to pay attention to any students exiting the bus because there would be fewer children to monitor.
STS goes to great lengths to create bus stops where a child exits “door side” rather than having to cross the road. That becomes more important on rural highways. News media reports and the content of the police news release suggest that there could have been other vehicles involved in the collision other than the school bus. But that has not been officially stated. Why such basic information is kept secret does not appear to make sense. If the boy was struck by another vehicle, and not by the school bus, then it is most likely that the child had to cross the road after exiting the bus. This is of particular concern because such a stop is highly avoided by STS, for good reasons. This why information about how and why the bus stop was selected needs to be publicly revealed.
A common procedure has been established that, where a child crosses in front of a school bus, the child is told to wait and get a signal from the bus driver before proceeding out onto the roadway. This is because the bus driver can see traffic behind and in front from an elevated position and the bus driver’s experience can help a child make a safe crossing. Again, nothing is known if the bus driver was ever aware of such a procedure or if it was taught to the school children at the school where the boy attended.
The photo below was taken several years ago at another site on the outskirts of London. It shows a typical example of a rural school bus stop. We can see an example of a child being escorted across the road by a parent. Behind the bus is a large tractor-trailer which has stopped a considerable distance away from the stopped school bus. This action by the truck driver, of stopping a long distance away from the bus, is an important action because the height of the truck could block the visibility of the school bus lights from the drivers of vehicles behind.
When school bus drivers see that a large truck has stopped behind the bus then a greater focus must be applied to be certain that the bus lights are not blocked by the truck. While uncommon, drivers can see a stopped truck in front of them and, without understanding why, they may try to pass the truck because they do not see the school bus. Again complications like these need to be considered and corrected if they apply.
Weather conditions might also need to be considered. On the afternoon of the collision date the temperatures were unusually high in the area of London: 7 to 9 degrees Celsius. While there were concerns that fog may have been one of the causal factors that does not appear to be obvious. The photo below, although out-of-focus, was taken on the collision date shortly after 1600 hours at a location on the west side of London. It shows that rain was falling and the presence of fog is not obvious. It is known that fog can exist, and can be more intense, in rural areas like Longwoods Road even though it is not obvious in the city itself.
Summary
The safety of children riding in school buses is understood by all involved. School personnel understand it, parents understand it, bus drivers and operators understand it, police understand it and so should all drivers on the road. Children are vulnerable to dangers that they cannot comprehend, often due to their lack of experience in the world. It is up to all persons and organizations to create the environment that is safe for children.
When a tragedy occurs it is often the regrettable response that persons are afraid that focus will be placed on them, their actions and their organizations for something that they may have done incorrectly. This is commonly seen in transportation collisions. The common response is that all those in control of information about what happened attempt to hide the information. The regrettable result is that, when a problem needs to be corrected, and a safety hazard needs to nullified, it becomes a tedious process, even the basic information is hidden. Such is likely to be the case with the current tragedy as it has been repeated numerous times before. It seems that even the safety of innocent school children is not important enough to change this cloak of secrecy.
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