Another truck turnover at an Off Ramp.

[Guest Peeves]

Another today ! Dozens doing the same stupid thing, driving too fast.

Surely there needs to be a speed bump or a series of them coming to a ramp, or something that governs the speed?

7 or more now in a couple of weeks!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/03/26/toronto-highway-accident.html

[Wild Bill]

Another today ! Dozens doing the same stupid thing, driving too fast.

Surely there needs to be a speed bump or a series of them coming to a ramp, or something that governs the speed?

7 or more now in a couple of weeks!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/03/26/toronto-highway-accident.html

You know Peeves, I've been wondering if there has been some change in the engineering expertise of the provincial Highways Dept. For the first 40 years of my life I think I saw a truck overturn on a ramp maybe once!

It was almost unheard of! Then, a few years after Bob Rae's term as Premier, they re-did the QEW-403 connection north of the Skyway Bridge, where if you are leaving the QEW Niagara you have the choice of going to Brantford or Toronto. I don't think they opened the new construction for more than a week and they had had several truck topplings on one of the ramps. It wasn't hard to see why. The ramp was coiled tight for someone in a car! A large semi would have to slow down to less than 10 kph to make the turn safely!

Some remedial work was done, some warning signs were put in place and a very slow speed limit sign was posted for trucks. Yet it seems that every so often we hear about it happening again.

I wonder if we found out where the trucks involved came from it would tell us something. I suspect that domestic truckers get the word fairly quickly but perhaps a trucker from the USA, new to driving in Ontario, ends up flopping over because never in his career has he come across such tightly curved ramps!

Or am I just once again being too cynical?

[TheNewTeddy]

They should charge these people for the traffic they cause

[Wild Bill]

They should charge these people for the traffic they cause

Yeah, but how would the food you eat and the very computer you used to make your post have gotten to your local store without them? Star Trek transporter?

You know, there are taxes on diesel fuel, too! If you were to increase the taxes on trucking, they would have no choice but to raise their rates. This eventually means a higher price for your food and your computer.

Is that what you are calling for?

[TheNewTeddy]

No

I'm calling for drivers - of any vehicle - when they make a dangerous driving decision, and, when said decision leads to a crash, and, when said crash leads to traffic; that said drivers should be held fiscally and morally responsible.

Lets say you are out driving, when peeves cuts you off on the 401. You get mad so you pull along side him to give him the finger. While doing so you don't notice that my car is broken down on the shoulder, nor do you notice that the lane has ended, and you smash into my car, which hits Peeves car and sends all 3 of our cars into the highway's active lanes.

Now you got traffic.

I say that the court should add up the time lost (estimate it) of every vehicle that is delayed, the gas burned due to that time loss, and not just on the 401, but on the alternate routes. Likely this would be millions upon millions of dollars. The proper response is to use that figure to beat you over the head and make you feel bad (kind of like a mother would do) while displaying it in the media (sort of like, haw-haw, look at this idiot, you don't want to be HIM do you) and then tag on a reduced number like $300 a month for 5 years, and make you pay that to the transportation department, as well as make you host commercials talking about how bad it feels to have been driving dangerously.

Many, though not all, truckers, work for larger companies. Eventually they'll get sick and tired of their name being dragged though the mud and tell their drivers to behave.

I fail to see why our tax dollars should play to the lowest common denominator by building huge flashing signs telling people that it might be a good idea to slow the @$%!@ down.

[Wild Bill]

No

I'm calling for drivers - of any vehicle - when they make a dangerous driving decision, and, when said decision leads to a crash, and, when said crash leads to traffic; that said drivers should be held fiscally and morally responsible.

I see some merit in that! I think it doesn't have a hope in hell of ever being implemented, because of the politics, but for myself I could see some good in it.

However, that has nothing to do with my premise about truck turnovers at off ramps. My point was that if the engineers at the Highway Dept are responsible for a dumb design then it is not the driver's fault. Even worse, it is almost forcing accidents to happen.

Off course, the driver could never sue the engineers. The government protects them. He could sue the province, of course. The province would then spend a zillion dollars of OUR TAX MONEY to defend themselves. Since they have far more money than any truck driver or even truck driving company it's obvious that regardless of justice they would win.

[Guest Manny]

People are too aggressive and drive to fast. You city slickers are a bunch of a*holes when you get behind the wheels of a car. Last time I went out to the GTA everybody was driving 120 kph even in the rightmost lane, and they're right up your a**. Between that and overloaded trucks which have a marginal design for carrying capacity, it's a simple equation.

[Michael Hardner]

However, that has nothing to do with my premise about truck turnovers at off ramps. My point was that if the engineers at the Highway Dept are responsible for a dumb design then it is not the driver's fault. Even worse, it is almost forcing accidents to happen.

Off course, the driver could never sue the engineers. The government protects them. He could sue the province, of course. The province would then spend a zillion dollars of OUR TAX MONEY to defend themselves. Since they have far more money than any truck driver or even truck driving company it's obvious that regardless of justice they would win.

1. There's no proof that the roads in Ontario are anything less than excellent. Having driven all over North America and Europe, they certainly rate up there.

2. The engineers are not personally liable, nor should they be. They work for an organization that absorbs the risks and rewards, if any, for engaging in this kind of work. Secondly, the organization should always be charged with managing a process that ensures that designs receive an adequate measure of internal and external review.

3. Ontario doesn't have zillion dollar lawsuits, as the US does, for a variety of reasons.

[Michael Hardner]

People are too aggressive and drive to fast. You city slickers are a bunch of a*holes when you get behind the wheels of a car. Last time I went out to the GTA everybody was driving 120 kph even in the rightmost lane, and they're right up your a**. Between that and overloaded trucks which have a marginal design for carrying capacity, it's a simple equation.

Country driving and city driving are two different sets of driving art.

Driving in the city requires sizing up your road companions and figuring out if they are: sane, mostly sane, slightly sane, slightly insane, insane, or cab driver.

You also need to keep in mind that many Toronto drivers learned to drive in former Soviet states, packed markets in downtown Jakarta, or goat paths in the mountains of Pakistan... before they came to Canada to drive an airport limousine for 18 hours a day.

The city driver makes that assessment in a sub-second before he/she makes his move.

Country driving, to a city person, is more terrifying. This is because the city driver is aware that he's a stranger and that all the country drivers are thinking ... who is that ? That ain't Jeb's car ! It looks like it, but there's no Dale Junior number 8 in the rear window ! What did that guy do with Jeb ???

I prefer the anonymity of the city, and the comforting knowledge that the person who is about to cut me off and send me into the oncoming lane is only doing it because they are incompetent behind the wheel and not doing it on purpose.

[Wild Bill]

1. There's no proof that the roads in Ontario are anything less than excellent. Having driven all over North America and Europe, they certainly rate up there.

In the main I would agree with you, Michael. However, I'm talking about a specific area, the design of off ramps. Even more, the off ramps from the QEW and 400 series highways around the junction of Hamilton and Burlington.

I have lived here all my driving life. As I said, I never even heard of a truck toppling on an off ramp until a new one was built to take traffic from the QEW onto the 403 Brantford. I could see with my own eyes that the ramp was so flippin' tight a coil that even a car at less than 40km would have trouble!

So as a techie, who is fully aware that such ramps are not designed by perfect gods but by fallible human beings, I can't help but wonder if somewhere along the way something in the process has changed. Maybe someone was assigned a role for which they are not competent. Or a rule was changed in the Handbooks which was poorly thought out.

Or maybe we are all just imagining that the ramps coil too tight!

Edited April 10, 2012 by Wild Bill

[Michael Hardner]

So as a techie, who is fully aware that such ramps are not designed by perfect gods but by fallible human beings, I can't help but wonder if somewhere along the way something in the process has changed. Maybe someone was assigned a role for which they are not competent. Or a rule was changed in the Handbooks which was poorly thought out.

Or maybe we are all just imagining that the ramps coil too tight!

I'll give you this, WB, the process (processes) are completely invisible to outside eyes, which is not as it should be. The public should be able to see a project plan for all of these projects - before, during and after execution.

[Guest Peeves]

I'll give you this, WB, the process (processes) are completely invisible to outside eyes, which is not as it should be. The public should be able to see a project plan for all of these projects - before, during and after execution.

I'm convinced the ramps are engineered for cars and never considered trucks. It's tough to make an exit on some at marginal speed even in a car. Bill might be right.

[Wild Bill]

I'll give you this, WB, the process (processes) are completely invisible to outside eyes, which is not as it should be. The public should be able to see a project plan for all of these projects - before, during and after execution.

I don't know if that would do much good, Michael. One of my early jobs as a young lad was working for a civil engineering firm as a field inspector for concrete, reinforcing steel, soil compaction and the like. We bumped up against municipal and provincial engineering all the time. I quickly learned that most of the public has not even a basic understanding of how such engineering works!

One of my favourite comic strips was Calvin and Hobbes. In one, little Calvin is in the back seat with his Father driving and his mother in the passenger seat. They cross a bridge and Calvin notes the load limit sign of 10 tons.

"Dad!" says Calvin. " How do they know the load limit of a bridge?". "Easy son," replies his father. " They just keep sending heavier and heavier trucks across the bridge until it collapses, then they weigh the truck just before that and use it's weight as the limit."

"OH!" says Calvin, as his mother snaps "If you don't know the answer then don't invent such a silly one!"

The general public just takes all highways and structures for granted, with a childlike faith in the competence of the people involved, the strength of the materials and the stresses and strains of weather and the environment.

There are Handbooks and Codes which are written and revised by human beings. Moreover, sometimes politics creeps in and over-rules engineering.

Even good engineering can be found to be flawed. Lab testing can sometimes be an inaccurate substitute for actual time spent standing in the real world. Your tests can say that a material should be good for 40 years but in the field you might see cracks develop after only 20.

House roofing shingles are a good example. There are complaints being heard everyday that shingles that came with a 25 year warranty are coming off a roof after less than 10. Then the warranty fights start, with manufacturers blaming installers, installers blaming manufacturers and the home owner caught in the middle with no redress.

Yet older homes are seen all over town with roofing shingles 30 or even more years old that are perfectly fine!

What happened is that within a decade or two many of the materials used in roofing shingles were declared as POSSIBLY dangerous to the environment! So they were banned. That left manufacturers with the problem of finding substitutes that worked as well or better. (Such substances are ALWAYS banned before even a search for substitutes!). Shingles made since then are still in a developmental cycle. There hasn't been a long enough history yet to show if they will actually stand up as long as lab tests predicted.

Sometimes conflicting new guidelines and rules occur. Perhaps someone somewhere declared that the minimum space for an off ramp should be reduced, to leave more room for roadside development. He may work in a different department from the engineer who actually has to design the off ramp. That engineer would have no choice but to tighten up the curve and hope that sufficient banking may keep it safe.

To sum up, I guess my point is that the only way to ensure safety may be some sort of litigation or other responsibility for design failures from public works. It's just not always possible to do all that's necessary ahead of time.

I don't have a good answer as to public transparency, except to hope that some citizen somewhere might take the trouble to pay attention and also be competent to judge. I agree that's rather lame and vague but maybe the reason we see troubles today when we didn't before is that changes have been made that ended up not to be positive. If that's the case maybe they could just be reversed?

[jacee]

You know Peeves, I've been wondering if there has been some change in the engineering expertise of the provincial Highways Dept. For the first 40 years of my life I think I saw a truck overturn on a ramp maybe once!

It was almost unheard of! Then, a few years after Bob Rae's term as Premier, they re-did the QEW-403 connection north of the Skyway Bridge, where if you are leaving the QEW Niagara you have the choice of going to Brantford or Toronto. I don't think they opened the new construction for more than a week and they had had several truck topplings on one of the ramps. It wasn't hard to see why. The ramp was coiled tight for someone in a car! A large semi would have to slow down to less than 10 kph to make the turn safely!

Some remedial work was done, some warning signs were put in place and a very slow speed limit sign was posted for trucks. Yet it seems that every so often we hear about it happening again.

I wonder if we found out where the trucks involved came from it would tell us something. I suspect that domestic truckers get the word fairly quickly but perhaps a trucker from the USA, new to driving in Ontario, ends up flopping over because never in his career has he come across such tightly curved ramps!

Or am I just once again being too cynical?

That interchange links the 403, QEW and 407, and it is a death trap. I notice also that highway construction quality seemed to deteriorate in the mid '90's,

"A few years after Bob Rae's term as Premier", which of course would be during Mike Harris' term as Premier, Bill. Why not just say that?

In fact, the 407 highway opened in 1997, two years into Harris' term, to immediate concerns that the planned finishing touches hadn't been done, things like protective barriers around overpass supports. The finishes were done on the cheap - plastic barrels of sand instead of the usual engineered guardrails.

Then Harris sold it in 1999:

Toronto - Rob Sampson, Minister without Portfolio with Responsibility for Privatization today announced the sale of Highway 407 for dlrs 3.1 billion, making it the largest dlrs 3.1 billion, making it the largest privatization in Canadian history. Highway 407 will be sold to a consortium of Grupo Ferrovial and its subsidiary Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, SNC-Lavalin, and Capital d'Amerique CDPQ, a subsidiary of the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec. The consortium will purchase from the province the right to own and operate Highway 407, along with the obligation to finance, design and build west and east-partial extensions to the highway. Highway 407, along with the obligation to finance, design and build west and east-partial extensions to the highway".

http://www2.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=54540

So the extensions, including interchanges, were built by the private consortium, not government.

And ...

Owned by Cintra, it is not officially considered part of the King's Highway Highway system.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/400-series_highways#section_5

Now, I'm not exactly sure what "not officially" means, but I suspect it might have something to do with the construction standards.

Here's a key fact:

The 1990s reconstruction of the Freeman Interchange (QEW-403-407) from its original semi- directional T configuration to incorporate the extension of Highway 407 ...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hill_Valley_Parkway#section_4

In other words, the original design of the interchange was 'adjusted' to accommodate the 407 with the result that it is a weird and dangerous place.

I think it would be fair to say that the privatisation era has not had positive effects on highway safety.

Edited April 10, 2012 by jacee

[Topaz]

We have one trucker go off the road about ten years ago. He was over tired, was drifting off and kept going to the right side of the road, took off our mailbox, just missed a natural gas meter, and kept going until hit hit the bottom of a deep ditch and rolled the truck. Many of these truckers use drugs to keep away and coffee, which can't be good. They have a time limit to get where they are going so that doesn't help matter either. Most of these accident are done at night, and there are rules how many hours you can drive, and how many you have to be off before driving again.

[TheNewTeddy]

Truckers are overworked. We should be locking up their managers.

[Guest Peeves]

Truckers are overworked. We should be locking up their managers.

Indeed, it's hard work getting out of those upside down cabs.

[Guest Peeves]

We have one trucker go off the road about ten years ago. He was over tired, was drifting off and kept going to the right side of the road, took off our mailbox, just missed a natural gas meter, and kept going until hit hit the bottom of a deep ditch and rolled the truck. Many of these truckers use drugs to keep away and coffee, which can't be good. They have a time limit to get where they are going so that doesn't help matter either. Most of these accident are done at night, and there are rules how many hours you can drive, and how many you have to be off before driving again.

I'm referring to a dozen or more trucks tipping on ramps in this one region, not accidents driving on hiways.

It happens all too regularly.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/03/19/highway-403-crash-truck_n_1365272.html

[Wild Bill]

That interchange links the 403, QEW and 407, and it is a death trap. I notice also that highway construction quality seemed to deteriorate in the mid '90's,

"A few years after Bob Rae's term as Premier", which of course would be during Mike Harris' term as Premier, Bill. Why not just say that?

I think it would be fair to say that the privatisation era has not had positive effects on highway safety.

Well, unlike some folks (certainly not you, Jaycee!) I can like and dislike certain deeds from my political heroes. I don't blindly support everything they do or did nor do I believe that the "other guys" are always wrong or even evil!

Two things I will never forgive Mike Harris for are the 407 deal and amalgamation of suburbs into larger cities.

To be fair, the 407 deal began with Bob Rae. Even Wiki acknowledges that fact. Harris should have axed the deal! I don't care if it had gone so far that we would have paid a huge cancellation penalty. In the long run it still would have been cheaper.

I had some friends in the Highways Department when Rae took over. They were horrified at Rae's changes to the department and many of the experienced managers quit in disgust. They tended to be "farm boys", since they would be comfortable with heavy machinery and most important - a job with the highways filled in the winter months! So they could afford to walk away from the provincial job.

I talked with a few of these people and they all had a common story. They had always believed that politics didn't influence the roads department, since asphalt had to be laid, concrete poured, snow plowed and so on regardless of any political games. Rae's government never cared about making sure those things were done! They actually used the roads department to give laid off workers enough paid weeks to reach EI! These workers were short term so even safety courses were waived! They were sent out on make work projects, pouring concrete in bitter cold that had to be replaced in the spring.

So the old hands were given a reality check that killed their morale. They were the guys who knew how to actually do the jobs!

Perhaps Rae caused a "brain drain", leaving us with refugees from the 'B' Ark (Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy) running things. A simple lack of wit can explain many things. However, it may have been Rae's fault in the beginning but like the 407, no subsequent government has corrected the action.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Wild Bill

[jacee]

Well, unlike some folks (certainly not you, Jaycee!) I can like and dislike certain deeds from my political heroes. I don't blindly support everything they do or did nor do I believe that the "other guys" are always wrong or even evil!

Two things I will never forgive Mike Harris for are the 407 deal and amalgamation of suburbs into larger cities.

To be fair, the 407 deal began with Bob Rae. Even Wiki acknowledges that fact. Harris should have axed the deal! I don't care if it had gone so far that we would have paid a huge cancellation penalty. In the long run it still would have been cheaper.

I had some friends in the Highways Department when Rae took over. They were horrified at Rae's changes to the department and many of the experienced managers quit in disgust. They tended to be "farm boys", since they would be comfortable with heavy machinery and most important - a job with the highways filled in the winter months! So they could afford to walk away from the provincial job.

I talked with a few of these people and they all had a common story. They had always believed that politics didn't influence the roads department, since asphalt had to be laid, concrete poured, snow plowed and so on regardless of any political games. Rae's government never cared about making sure those things were done! They actually used the roads department to give laid off workers enough paid weeks to reach EI! These workers were short term so even safety courses were waived! They were sent out on make work projects, pouring concrete in bitter cold that had to be replaced in the spring.

So the old hands were given a reality check that killed their morale. They were the guys who knew how to actually do the jobs!

Perhaps Rae caused a "brain drain", leaving us with refugees from the 'B' Ark (Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy) running things. A simple lack of wit can explain many things. However, it may have been Rae's fault in the beginning but like the 407, no subsequent government has corrected the action.

You mistake me for someone who cares most about politics. I care most about what's best for us.

"Political heroes" is an oxymoron.

They are mutually exclusive, imo.

I'm of similar mind that they all do some things poorly and ... well ....

And I'll allow for a shared responsibility for the hwy sale.

But more on point, clearly hwys aren't safer in private hands.

[Guest Manny]

Well, unlike some folks (certainly not you, Jaycee!) I can like and dislike certain deeds from my political heroes. I don't blindly support everything they do or did nor do I believe that the "other guys" are always wrong or even evil!

Aymen