Almost no one took notice when Gorski Consulting reported on two drownings that took place near Cherry Street of the Toronto harbour area this past December. After all there are far more important matters in everyone’s lives. So when a third driver was reported to have drowned near the vicinity of Cherry Street at Toronto’s harbour likely nothing will be done or changed. News media showed various images of the latest drowning site, images that cannot be shown on this website because those images are copyright. And police provided no images of their own. So it becomes difficult to provide an efficient comment about the dangers that might have existed.
What little has been reported is that on January 20, 2024, at approximately 0845 hours a collision occurred between two vehicles. CP24 News of Toronto reported the following:
“According to police, a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee being driven by the 18-year-old was travelling west on Lake Shore Boulevard when he lost control and struck an eastbound 2023 Ford F150. Police said the Jeep subsequently left the road and plunged through three inches of ice on Keating Channel, a 1,000-metre waterway near the mouth of the Don River.”
What becomes puzzling is that news media quoted investigating police that the drowned driver was travelling westbound on Lakeshore Boulevard before the collision while the water of the Keating Channel was located across the roadway to the left. The eastbound and westbound lanes of Lakeshore Boulevard are normally one way only, and they are separated by a very large and complicated centre median. If the Jeep was travelling in the westbound lanes then somehow it had to pass through the median, then impact the eastbound Ford F150 Pick-up truck and then travel into the water. But there is also a guardrail here between the eastbound lanes and the water. So the Jeep would have to pass through that guardrail to reach the water. Guardrails are not installed to make the roadside look pretty, they are there for the specific purpose of protecting vehicles from dangers that exist beyond the guardrail, in this case, the water of the Keating Channel. So how could the Jeep successfully pass through the roadway centre median and the guardrail without being diverted from reaching the water?
When you are electrocuted by your toaster or poisoned by some prescribed drug it is certain that there will be an investigation about that. But if you drown because a guardrail malfunctioned are you out of luck? Do we now wait for the next driver who will drown, or meet some other method of demise, because no one bothered to Investigate? Where is the explanation for how the Jeep was able to pass through the centre median?
As no one has provided any useful examination of this latest drowning, we can only post some generic views of the site from Googlemaps which, up to now, has not threatened to sue users of their imagery.
Below are several views taken along Lakeshore Boulevard just east of Cherry Street. As best I can determine from the poor images of the background provided news media, this is likely where the drowning victim was travelling along Lakeshore Boulevard.
As shown in the above Googlemaps views, Lakeshore Boulevard has been recently under construction. We have no official confirmation but we hypothesize that due to the construction activity the westbound lanes could have been closed and all traffic was using the eastbound lanes. Thus this would provide the explanation how the Jeep passed through the centre median because it was already travelling on the south side of the median likely because of construction activity. None of this has been explained by police or the news media.
If there was road construction taking place, and if the eastbound lanes were mutually shared by opposing traffic, then it can be more easily understood how an impact could have occurred between the westbound Jeep and the eastbound Ford F-150 pick-up truck. However this still does not explain how the Jeep was able to pass through the guardrail and into the water of the Keating Channel.
On December 5, 2023 a Gorski Consulting article was posted on this site entitled “Second Incident of Driver Drowning At Cherry St Bridge At Toronto Harbour”. This mentioned that there were two drowning collisions after vehicles passed through a bridge railing. The sites of these drownings were only about one kilometre away from the present one. The investigations from both of these drownings provided no warning to the public that roadside barriers were being overwhelmed and that the barriers needed upgrading. Much like the previous two drownings it is our belief that nothing will be said, or done, in the present case. No one will mention that a guardrail should have prevented the Jeep from crossing into the water. No one will explain why the guardrail did not prevent the Jeep from entering the water. No one will explain whether construction activity had anything to do will the guardrail being compromised. Investigating police who ought to be documenting these dangers, and making them public, are not doing so. News media that ought to be recognizing that police was not making these dangers known are also complicit in hiding these dangers.
When investigating a situation where a vehicle has passed through a guardrail a very basic activity would involve taking a measurement of the height of the guardrail. This action would only take about 1 minute of the investigator’s time. This measurement is extremely important because it would illuminate whether the rail was too low. If this measurement was taken it was not revealed to the public. So this very basic inaction is causing the public to be uninformed about a potential deadly danger. The only warning being provided is by this infrequently visited website of Gorski Consulting.
We await any possible further information from police or news media and whether anyone will properly report these dangers to the public. If so we may add a further update to this article.
UPDATE: January 22, 2024; 2010 Hours
No new information has been reported by police and news media up to this time. However several typos have been corrected in the above text, generally in the last 2 or 3 paragraphs.
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