News and Information

Fatal Collision on Highway 8 South of Cambridge, May 30th, 2010 - Review of Evidence

Thirty-two-year-old Laurie Banks of Troy, Ontario was fatally injured in a head-on collision on Highway 8, just south of Cambridge, Ontario on Sunday, May 30th, 2010. It was reported that a Mercedes 500 SL, driven by 77-year-old Richard Schiedel, was travelling westbound and the vehicle cross the roadway centre-line and collided with Ms. Banks' eastbound Hyundai Accent.  Remarkably, a toddler in Ms. Banks' vehicle only sustained minor injuries. I will review the evidence at the site and provide some comments about its meaning.

First, here is a view looking westbound at the area of impact in the eastbound lane of Highway 8. The photo was taken on May 31st or just less than 24 hours after the occurrence.

You will note an area of prominant gouges in the eastbound lane in the foreground indicating the point of impact. You will also see a variety of fluid stains in the background where the Mercedes came to rest.

Below is another view of the gouges at the point of impact taken from the south shoulder, looking northward.

Upon impact the Hyundai was pushed toward the bottom right of the photo, or toward the south shoulder. The evidence you see here is very typical of what you would expect in a major head-on collision on a rural highway.

Below is a view looking westward at the evidence at the final rest position of the Mercedes in the eastbound lane.

When examining this evidence the investigator must come to understand what was created as a result of the impact versus what was created by emergency or towing personnel. Sometimes that is not  easy. But here it is fairly obvious that the Mercedes came to rest in the eastbound lane and the tow truck than pulled the vehicle across into the westbound lane and then westbound. The white colour material you see is often an absorbent that is placed by emergency or towing personnel to soak up any greasy or oily substances that could be slippery.

The evidence of the Mercedes being towed away is clearly visible in the photo below which is a view looking on a diagonal from the Mercedes rest position along a dark, narrow trail of fluid which is likely the engine oil from the front of the Mercedes.

The scraping you see on the asphalt is from some part of the Mercedes underside which was dragging while the vehicle was being moved. It is not surprising that persons coming onto the accident scene might be confused and believe that this gouging would indicate the area of impact.

Below is another view, looking toward the south shoulder where the Hyundai came to rest.

The scraping that you see in the gravel of this south shoulder is from towing personnel as they pulled the Hyundai out of the ditch. This is fairly typical of what you would expect to see.

The more educational evidence is revealed when we look at some of the debris that was left scattered on the ground. For example, below is the energy absorbing filler (foam core) that forms part of the front bumper of the Hyundai. This would be the foam-like material that would be located just behind the plastic facia of the front bumper. What should attract you is that this energy-absorbing material is essentially intact.

Now recall that this is supposed to be a head-on collision that resulted in fatal injuries to the driver of the Hyundai. So the front of the Hyundai shoulder be receiving the brunt of the impact force. Yet this there appears to be no deformation/fracture of this material. Here is another view from the left end of the foam core.

Alas, after careful study you discover that indeed there is some damage to the left end of this foam core. But is it consistent with a major frontal impact that would cause the death of a young driver? Lets look at the backside of this foam core, as shown below.

Above we are showing the backside of the left end of  the foam core. Again, some damage is visible at the left end, but not much. I would think you should be questioning why this is so.

Think about a Mercedes approaching at highway speed supposedly into the front end of this Hyundai and assume that the Hyundai is equipped with functioning air bags and a driver's seat belt (which we will assume for now was worn properly by the young woman). How does the Mercedes cause so much injury to this woman yet the foam core at the front of her car is relatively undamaged? Let me show you another piece of debris lying on the roadside. The photo below is of a hub cover, likely from the left front wheel of the Hyundai.

If you look closely at the transfers onto this plastic you will likely observe a distinctive blue colour of some of those transfers. Investigators in Ontario recognize this blue colour because it comes from the blue colour of Ontario license plates. Ah, the plot thickens.

Why are there blue license plate transfers on the hub cover of the Hyundai left front wheel? This can only come from the centre of the front end of the Mercedes. But why is the centre of the front end of the Mercedes located at the left front wheel of the Hyundai in this severe head-on collision? Me give you a likely explanation that matches what has been observed at the foam core of the Hyundai.

The young driver of the Hyundai attempted to avoid the Mercedes by steering toward the right, or toward the south shoulder. This caused the Hyundai to be pointing at a slight angle toward the right shoulder. The two vehicles made initial contact such that only a small portion of the Mercedes left-front end made direct contact with a small portion of the Hyundai's left-front end. This was a very narrow zone of direct contact that would likely be coded something like 12FLEE-? in the Collision Deformation Classification (CDC). I use the "?" mark in the deformation extent zone because the rearward displacement of the direct contact along the Hyundai's front left side could be substantial and could result in structural intrusion into the driver's space.

We commonly see fatal injuries to drivers such as Ms. Banks in these types of collisions. Often the collisions occur when the offending driver (Mercedes) loses directional control of his vehicle but that may not be the case here as it could also be a simple passing action by that driver. Further analysis including examination of the damage patterns to both vehicles would reveal what actually caused this.

What is more relevant is that many manufacturers and government agencies are slow at responding to this type of occurrence. For decades these agencies have been conducting full-frontal crash tests into immovable barriers that are completely devoid of any relationship to real-life collisions. This was necessary in preliminary years when researchers were attempting to relate vehicle crush to energy dissipation, change-in-velocity and injury potential. But the thought should have been there long ago that these tests were not going to replicate actual, real-life collisions and some kind of meshing of the different results should have been made. Certainly NHTSA,
Transport Canada and others have been collecting data on real-life collisions for decades. As an example, the U.S. NASS program confirms that it contains data on something like 150,000 real life collisions since 1979. Thousands upon thousands of crash tests were performed with little focus on matching them to real-life incidents.

Only recently have I seen a research paper entitled "Fatalities in Frontal Crashes Despite Seat Belts and Air Bags" (by Bean, et. al., 2009) that admits the following:

"..the main reason people are still dying in because so many crashes involve poor structural engagement between  the vehicle and its collision partner: corner impacts, oblique crashes, impacts with narrow objects, and under-rides."

"...few if any ...crashes were full-frontal or offset-frontal impacts with good structural engagement."

Just yesteday (June 8th, 2010) I referred to this paper while presenting my own at the Canadian Multi-Disciplinary Road Safety Conference in Niagara Falls. There I indicated that we apply too much focus on documenting the crush in order to estimate the amount of energy dissipated by the vehicle structure. Instead, we should be focusing on the deformation of the vehicle by documenting how the vehicle shape has changed compared to its undamaged state. Focusing on deformation still always to identify the crush but more importantly deformation analysis allows you  to understand the type of collision that the vehicle was involved in by marrying the characteristics to the physical evidence including the scene evidence. Thus we no longer simply talk about a head-on collision but we become more specific and separate head-on collisions into their many types.

It is akin to the observation that eskimos have many words to describe "snow' while in the English language one can say there is only a single word. It comes from being familiar with the physical evidence and appreciating that there are many different kinds of head-on collisions like there are many different kinds of snow. The pattern of damage in one type of head-on collision is different from another and this is important. It is not to say that change-in-velocity is not an important factor. But if we are to better understand how and and when structural intrusion occurs and defeats air bags and seat belts, the next step to gather information about the actual deformation of the vehicle. This is something that I have preached since I began studying the details of vehicle deformation at the UWO Accident Research Team in the 1980s. But I've yet to see any movement in the official research communities toward that thinking.

News Media Reports Fail to Inform About Accident Causes

The Victoria Day holiday weekend has turned ugly as there have been reports of numerous major collisions in our area, some of them fatal. It is enlightening to read the coverage from several newspapers that fail to address additional issues that may not be obvious.

For example news reports from the Toronto Star and Hamilton Spectator described a collision involving fatal injuries to an 85-year-old Flamborough woman, Doris Meisner. This collision reportedly occurred at 10:30 A.M. on Friday, May 2st, at Centre Road and Concession 8 East, presumably in Hamilton. The husband of the deceased was driving while the deceased was seated in the passenger seat. When there is only one passenger then that is almost always a right-front passenger unless we are dealing with a taxi. This northbound vehicle was struck by an eastbound pick-up truck.

This may not sound unusual until you create a mental picture in your head of the vehicle orientations. It was reported that the Pick-up truck came to a stop at a stop sign and then proceeded crossing the road when the collision occurred. Thus the speed of the Pick-up truck should have been fairly low, in the vicinity of 20 km/h. If this was a typical intersection collision the the front end of the Meisner vehicle could have struck the right side of the Pick-up or the front end of the Pick-up could have struck the left side of the Meisner vehicle. But in either condition the right front passenger would have been a long distance away from the area of impact. So why do we have fatal injuries? Frailty due to age could be an influence but that does not have to be so in this lower severity impact. It is not uncommon for unexpected injury mechanisms to occur. We are dealing with more and more elderly drivers on our roads and the public is entitled to know when these drivers come to their deaths in unusual circumstances. As is typical the reporter failed to fill in the obvious gaps.

And again the London Free Press reported that three males in stolen car crashed onto porch on Langarth Street in London, resulting in fatal injuries to one occupant and critical injuries to the other two. We are further distracted by the news that the three were likely involved in the hold-up of a local variety store. Little attention is paid the following phrase: "Police said the car was travelling well in excess of the speed limit on the quiet residential street when it hit a small dip i nteh road and went airborne - possibly four or five feet in the air".

A small dip in the road? Hmm. There are many police cruisers that, during emergencies, travel through residential streets at very high speeds. Would it not be a concern if the cruiser hit a small dip in a road resulting in a police fatality and possibly two officers with critical level injuries? Yet the reporter never questions whether this should be something that should be accepted. Presumably because the persons involved were robbers and so speed is the cause, not the dip in the road.

These are examples of how little knowledge the average reader gains from reading these news reports. What really happened in either of these cases is anyone's guess. Who What, Where, Why and How. It's those last two, particularly the "How", that many reporters seem to have skipped in journalism class.

Interview on Rogers First Local News of May 5, 2010

As arranged through contact by Rogers news, I was interviewed on site on Veterans Memorial Parkway to follow up on my presentation to the Argyle Community Association of April 22, 2010. At that meeting one of the points that I discussed was the condition of certain portions of Veterans Memorial Parkway such that there was an excessive edge drop-off, the lane edge line was at the edge of the pavement which itself was broken away, and there was an excessive slope leading into the grass median. These points were videotaped and broadcast on today's First Local news. Here are a couple of photos showing some of the issues. First, a photo taken on January 13, 2010 showing the edge drop off on the median (left) side of the southbound passing lane.

And second, the same view but taken on April 21, 2010, showing the approximate same area but a north (opposite direction) view.

At the Association meeting I had noted that such an edge drop off should be repaired as soon as possible. Particularly because Veterans Memorial has a higher traffic volume.

I thought the news segment was well balanced in that it included my opinion that the problems on Veterans Memorial are not unique and the City of London has many roadway issues that it must deal with and prioritize. I become concerned sometimes when the story that I expect to be covered takes a dramatic right turn, sometimes sensationalizing something that need not be. But I felt Rogers handled this story very well and I would be happy to associate myself with them again.

Deer Collision A Close Call For Ford Focus Driver

This morning the northbound driver of a Ford Focus encountered a deer running westbound across Clarke Road, just north of the bridge over the north branch of the Thames River. The aftermath is as shown in the photos below.








My Thoughts. We have seat-belts and all kinds of air bags to protect us but note that the last photo shows the air bag did not deploy in his impact. That is not surprising nor is there any defect involved. But it is a reminder that collisions involving the intrusion of heavy objects into the vehicle interior will cause us injury regardless of these safety devices because they cannot protect us from many of these intrusions. Something to think about next time you see that "Deer Crossing" sign and wonder whether you should ignore it.

Was Yesterday's Fatal Collision on Highway 4 North of Lucan a Suicide?

I In perfect weather conditions and on a straight and level rural highway the driver of a northbound Ford Escort crossed the centre-line yesterday at about 1245 hours and collided with a southbound truck. This morning's London Free Press head-line read "Head-on fatal a mystery" and the police comment "We're still trying to figure it out".

Below are views of the area of impact. First looking south, and then looking north.

Update: May 1, 2010

To continue, collisions with vehicles travelling in opposite directions on rural roads generally occur in a few common patterns. A loss of directional control by one driver will generally cause the vehicle to rotate considerably before it enters the opposing lane. Judging by the pattern of damage visible in the single photo  (London Free Press) of the car this is not what happened. Besides such loss-of-control collisions often occur after a vehicle passes through a curve and there in no curve nearby.

Another common manner of occurrence is that a driver attempts an ill-advised  passing motion because the driver was unaware that an opposing vehicle was approaching. Again, the opposing vehicle in this case was a large truck and it would have been visible for a long time and distance. Besides, we do not see any significant skid marks from the truck and it has not moved out of the way, suggesting the truck driver may have been inattentive, but more likely he was not given enough time to attempt such avoidance actions.

What happens in suicide cases is that the driver who wants to end his life will pick a site such as this, one where there is considerable time and distance to line things up. And choosing a large truck is common because of the certainty of the result.

We also see the vast devastation to the Ford Escort confirming the very large change-in-speed that it sustained. It suggests the Escort driver did not attempt to slow down or steer away to avoid the impact but may have accelerated to be certain of the outcome.

In suicide cases I see evidence such as this, where the impact has not been avoided and the vehicle has come into collision at an unusually high speed. More importantly the impact is to the centre front of both vehicles. There are cases I am aware of where the official determination was of a suicide or homicide yet the impact to the truck is to its side and the collision severity is not huge. In those cases the investigator did not ask: Why was the suicidal driver so poor at doing himself/herself in? Why as the suicide driver not able to line the vehicle up "license-plate to license-plate"? It is easy when there are domestic disputes involved or when someone says that someone else did something deliberately, to develop tunnel vision and only focus on that.

Interestingly, while visiting the site of the present collision I noted that the face of the Escort's speedometer had been left behind on the roadside. This was an obvious opportunity to evaluate the discussion amongst reconstructionists whether the speedometer can still be used to search for a needle imprint that would indicate the vehicle's speed. Obviously more and more vehicles are equipped with event data recorders where the impact speed can be downloaded so the speedometer analysis is often ignored. Also modern day speedometers are manufactured differently making needle impressions less common and more unreliable.

Here is an overall view of the face of the speedometer.

Not unexpectedly the speedometer face contains some damage and various contacts. My tendency for analysis has been to use a variety of lighting techniques as I believe a single method does not work for every situation. The present photo was taken in outdoor sunlight as shown below.

Dynamic Road Surface Depressions Due to Frost are Sometimes Left Un-Detected

Over the winter months we have been tracking the road conditions at various sites around London, Ontario. As an example, Sunningdale Road, runs east-west across the northern portion of the City and is experiencing a higher level of traffic as the urban development is just reaching parts of its length.

In the eastern section of the road between Clarke Road and Highbury the traffic volumes are still quite light. While driving this  stretch westbound from Clarke Road this winter my first encounter was of a sudden bottoming out of my car near the first driveway which leads to a gravel pit. Yet no other problems seemed to exist. As winter progressed I re-attended the location almost daily and the road seemed to become more un-settled with each visit. Finally, near the end of the winter (in February) there developed a series of depressions that became extreme. The photo below is an example of one of these depressions.

The above photo was taken on March 5, 2010. It was impossible to travel the road at the speed limit of 80 km/h and 60 km/h was likely the maximum even in good weather. Shortly afterward the London area experienced an unusually mild spell of weather. As I returned to drive through the road I suddenly discovered that I could travel progressively faster without experiencing the near-bottoming-out of my suspension as occurred previously. As an example, the photo below was taken yesterday, March 26th, of the same location as shown above.

It was apparent that the warming temperatures were re-establishing the road to a level condition. Never-the-less I suspected the City was aware of the situation and I expected there would be a reconstruction this summer.

However this week I attended meeting our of local community association where the Director of Roads and Transportation, Mr. David Leckie, attended as our guest speaker. One of the items he brought with him was a mapping of all the streets in London showing the calculated conditions of the surface pavement. The pavement conditions were represented in two ways: a) a coloured line of the road, Green meaning good condition, Yellow marginal, and Red poor; b) a numerical value from 0 to 100 where the lower numbers indicated a worsening surface condition.

Looking at this map there was a large number of red lines and low numbers confirming Mr. Leckie's comments that the City was well behind in it road surface upgrades. But what struck me is that the portion of Sunningdale that contained the depressions had a green line and a value of "78" meaning a good surface condition. It was clear to me that this was an error as there was no other road in the City that contained such extreme surface depressions. When I questioned Mr. Leckie about this his confirmed that there were no problems on Sunningdale and that no reconstruction was scheduled for this summer. He also stated that he drove this road many times on his way to his golf club and from his personal experience there was no problem. He also assured me that the contractor used by the City used a variety of tests in determining the road surface quality including visual comparisions but also using compression instruments and GPS.

It can be seen how conditions such as winter frosting can be so easily undetected. Mr. Leckie was likely travelling the road to his golf club in warm, summer-like conditions when the frosting problem did not exist and so the depressions were not apparent. Yet, it is disturbing why a winter road patrol would not have detected the presence of these very obvious and severe depressions. A simple, uneducated look at the areas where these depressions existed should suggest to anyone that there was likely damage below the surface as evidenced by the localized cracking the pavement in the circular pattern.

Whether the City truly was unaware of the problem or simply would not acknowledge it remains an unknown. But it can be difficult to acknowledge, when a large part of the road system is in need of attention, there are not enough funds to deal with the problems and plaintiff lawyers are evaluating the wind drafts like vultures in the sky. The threats of law suits makes it difficult to have a down-to-earth conversation with City staff because any admittance of a problem can be used against them at trial. Yet the public needs to be appaised of these problems so they can have a say about what kind of road dangers they are willing to accept. It is a dilemma that has no easy solution.