While many internet viewers of a salting/sanding truck dragging a passenger car on Hwy 401 in Toronto were horrified, there could be a simple explanation.
There could be a simple explanation why a video showed a salting/sanding truck pushing a car into a guardrail in Toronto.
As the truck driver explained, he was attempting to steer into the right lane and did not observe the car. If the car was located at his right front wheel then the results of testing shown by Gorski Consulting in an article a few days earlier could explain why the car was not visible to the truck driver. If the truck contacted the left side of the car and behind the car’s centre-of-gravity this would cause the counter-clockwise rotation of the car such that the left-front portion of the car would come to be positioned across the right front end of the truck. Due to this positioning the truck would experience greater resistance to motion (i.e. “drag”) at its right front wheel and this would cause the truck to be dragged toward the right and toward the guardrail. This is what was visible in the video. Thus the exaggerated motion of the truck toward the guardrail may not have been a deliberate act of the truck driver but due to the higher resistance to motion at the right front of the truck.
Many persons watching the video and observing the car being pushed toward the guardrail have made the assumption that the observed motion was carried out on purpose as some kind of road rage action. But that is likely not the case. There could be a logical explanation for the observed incident that could place little blame on the truck driver if he was incapable of detecting the car if the car entered into the truck’s blind spot. While there is insufficient information at this time to be certain what took place, police need to review all the available evidence/data and not rush to conclusions like so many have.
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