On October 9, 2026 the local CTV News channel in London, Ontario posted a detailed article about the need for school transportation and grief counselling reform. This was related to a collision that occurred on May 23, 2025 at the intersection of Thorndale Road and Cobble Hills Road north-east of London, Ontario. What little is known about the collision is that an SUV driven by school teacher Mat Eckert was travelling northbound on Cobble Hills Road when it entered the intersection with Cobble Hills road just as a westbound “transport truck” approaching. The subsequent collision caused the death off Eckert as well as all of its four school-age passengers.
No useful information was revealed by either police or official news media that could explain how and why the collision occurred. That lack of transparency led Gorski Consulting to attend the collision site on June 1, 2025 and an article was posted on this Gorski Consulting website about our findings on June 8, 2025. Some of the physical evidence was presented and explained however this led to more questions than answers. Even when a transport truck is involved it is rare that a collision would result in the death of all five SUV occupants unless the impact was extremely severe. Yet the physical evidence at the site did support this notion of an extremely severe collision. Yet even basic information about the collision was kept from the public’s knowledge. Nothing can be learned from this tragedy if no information is available to consider.
Over the past year there were several articles posted about the identity of the collision victims, but again, nothing was written about the collision or how we could prevent a similar tragedy. There was a recent attempt however to address the safety issue in the CTV News article of October 9th. In that article Jessica Ford, the mother of one of the collision victims, Kaydance, was asking for reforms to how school children will be transported for school events in the future. It was reported that Jessica wrote a fourteen-point letter to the Bluewater District School Board in which she requested that all transportation for school bus activities involve a school bus.
What is interesting in the CTV News article is that “… she holds no blame towards Coach Eckert”. Yet it was Eckert’s SUV that was controlled by a stop sign while the transport truck’s direction of travel was uncontrolled. And there was no indication that the transport truck driver was ever charged as a result of the collision. So was someone at fault for causing the collision? In the Gorski Consulting article we presented evidence that the line of sight was restricted by some large signs and some trees but we were not in a position to conduct an investigation whether those were a contributing factors in the collision. But the lack of official discussion about this is loudly silent.
The use of school buses for transportation of students is not always an efficient solution. In the case of transporting just five passengers a full-size school would have many empty seats. A small-size school bus might be suitable but then how much different would the collision consequences have been if such a smaller bus was struck by the transport truck? Obviously what we need is details about the collision to understand what might be the best solution. It is a common thread on this Gorski Consulting website that secrecy is an enemy of public safety.
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