As typical no photos are available from a collision that occurred on November 26, 2025 on Adelaide Street north of Cheapside Street in London, Ontario. Photos produced by news-gathering organizations are copyright and even though they might shed some light on an unrecognized safety problem, they cannot be shown on this website. London Police could have posted a photo on their website but again this is a rarity.
The subject collision was covered by the local CTV News and several long-distance photos were attached in their article. Such coverage failed to provide a reasonably detailed view of the struck driver’s side of a passenger vehicle that was struck by the front end of a pick-up truck.
A subsequent photo displayed by the London Free Press showed a closer view of the side of the struck vehicle. This additional photo showed clear signs that the structure of the driver’s side of the vehicle had become separated. For example the centre roof pillar (called a B-pillar) was driven backwards until it was near the left-rear wheel. No mention was made of this in any of the news media articles or by investigating police.
An individual was reported to sustain “serious but non-life-threatening injuries” but there was no mention where that occupant was located or in which vehicle. This is the kind of “helpful” information that is typically reported to the public. Such developments are not new. Safety problems that ought to be recognized and publicized are not and they persist, sometimes for decades.
Little understanding is provided to the public that motor vehicle occupant safety is dependent on a scientifically-designed vehicle structure that should absorb the kinetic energy of a collision, at a proper time, at proper locations and in a controlled manner. When a vehicle structure separates it is not an intended result and this has injury consequences. The occurrence of vehicle structural separations has existed for decades and has often been overlooked or purposely hidden.
As far back as the mid-1980s Zygmunt Gorski recognized that structural separations were occurring during his collision studies at the University of Western Ontario Multi-Disciplinary Accident Research Team. This prompted communications sent to Transport Canada to draw awareness to the problem. An example of such a communication is shown below, sent to Transport Canada in February, 1990:
The chart accompanying this correspondence is shown below:
These problems were discussed further in a research paper (“Practical Problems Related To Side Impact Field Data Accuracy And Its Importance To Side Impact Protection Assessments”) authored by Zygmunt Gorski in 1991 and presented at the Society of Automotive Engineers Congress in Detroit, Michigan. One of the examples discussed in the paper was a Honda Civic that was split in half after a side impact and the two photos below accompanied the discussion in the paper.
The text from the paper accompanying these photos was as follows:
“The problems resulting from structural separations in real-life collisions are demonstrated in Figures 4 and 5. These figures show a Honda Civic which was torn in half at the B-pillar as a result of a side impact by a Pontiac Lemans. The right front occupant of the Civic was wearing her seat-belt. The retractor and outboard floor anchor to the lap belt remained attached to the rear portion of the vehicle while the inboard anchor at the buckle remained attached to the front half. As a result the occupant was trapped in the belt as it was torn apart. The injury information provided to the investigators was worded as “Severe cranio-cerebral trauma” and the source of the injury was coded as unknown. No other injuries were identified to the investigators, yet, examination of the seat-belt webbing (Figure 5) showed there were very deep abrasions in the webbing with portions of clothing material actually melted into the webbing. Clearly this fatally injured occupant also sustained major seat-belt injuries, as a result of the vehicle separation, which were not documented in this file.”
The above comments were made over 35 years ago. Subsequently incidents of vehicles structural separations have been evident in various news media and police photos. Various inaccurate comments are made suggesting the presence of tremendous collision forces and speeds. Without a properly detailed technical analysis such comments have often been inaccurate. More recent availability of data from event data recorders (“Black Boxes”) means that the precise collision severity can be known along with vehicle travel speeds. Unfortunately most collisions are documented/investigated by police who often do not have the interest or training to recognize such inappropriate structural failures. Police are generally focused on evidence that might support charges against a driver and fail to understand their equally important duty to protect the public from all harm regardless of where or how it originated.
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