A 24-year-old driver was killed today, August 12th, when a wheel separated from a trailer and crashed into the windshield of his van on Highway 401 between McCowan and Markham Roads near Toronto. Although a tarp was placed over the windshield and roof areas the extent of intrusion was still obvious. Yet this demonstrates the randomness of fatal consequences.
Only a few days earlier, on Highway 400, a scant message on the OPP Twitter account showed a similar mishap, with massive crush to the roof area, from a similarly separated wheel, as shown in the two OPP photos below. No further information was available including the precise location of the incident.
The fact that there was no publicity about the earlier incident on Highway 400 is because the three occupants did not sustain any serious injuries. Yet looking at the photos of the roof and windshield there was certainly potential for fatalities.
This is the problem when we publicize incidents based on their results rather than their injury potential. In situations that are less obvious, injury and death is often escaped just because of circumstance and luck. Yet the potential for major injury and death could be detected if the incident was properly evaluated. Yet we only publicize dangerous incidents after a tragedy has occurred rather than before. At Gorski Consulting we attempt to comment on many of these potentially dangerous incidents before they take their toll and we encourage others to bring about more awareness of the need to do so.
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