Drivers Need To Take Resposibility For Their Own Stupidity

[George7941]

You are showing extreme ignorance of the horrible accident that killed this woman. The Highway 8 had an unplowed ramp of sold snow that had turned to ice on the outside of the 2nd lane. There was no margin for error at all and her car was the SECOND ONE that flew off the highway to land 80 feet below! the first car was a taxi, yah those guys never try to drive beyond the conditions, but taxi driver was injured but survived. Less than 3 hours between the first car plunge to the next one.

The Ontario Provincial Police should have closed the 2nd lane of the flyover before the 2nd car plunged off the bridge, they didn't and now there will be a lawsuit. The issue is that there had been no regular snowplowing of the shoulder of the 2 lane bridge, and the snow accumulated and froze to make a perfect ramp to launch any car that went over the yellow line.

I hope the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ministry of Transport Ontario get their teeth kicked in when this finishes the trial.

I have not been following the accident closely and am just going by what I see in the photo. The lane itself had been ploughed. She must have been going well over the safe speed to climb up a four foot ramp and launch herself over the barrier.

 

[MNgopher]

You are showing extreme ignorance of the horrible accident that killed this woman. The Highway 8 had an unplowed ramp of sold snow that had turned to ice on the outside of the 2nd lane. There was no margin for error at all and her car was the SECOND ONE that flew off the highway to land 80 feet below! the first car was a taxi, yah those guys never try to drive beyond the conditions, but taxi driver was injured but survived. Less than 3 hours between the first car plunge to the next one.

The Ontario Provincial Police should have closed the 2nd lane of the flyover before the 2nd car plunged off the bridge, they didn't and now there will be a lawsuit. The issue is that there had been no regular snowplowing of the shoulder of the 2 lane bridge, and the snow accumulated and froze to make a perfect ramp to launch any car that went over the yellow line.

I hope the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ministry of Transport Ontario get their teeth kicked in when this finishes the trial.

Don't know the specifics or the timeline here, but some real world perspective from an agency that deals with similar issues.

I can think of a few instances where cars have launched themselves off of bridges here where a large bank of snow was present on the bridge.

Our typical process here is that during the snowfall, we get the snow pushed to the shoulder on the bridge (if there is one). We don't push it over the side of the bridge, particularly if there is another road or train track or trail underneath it. Often we have a "No Wake" sign at the start of the bridge as a reminder to operators to slow down and not push the snow over the rail.

After the snow stops, we move into cleanup operations. For bridges, we bring out the blowers and either blow the snow off the bridge into the non-road, trail, railroad areas that can be reached. If we can't do that, we load the snow into trucks and haul it to a dump site. For small storms we can have this done within a day of the end of the snow event. For larger ones, we can be at it for almost a week to clean all of this up.

What it will come to is what are the circumstances? Was there a larger than usual storm event that happened before the incident, and how long did it take for the agency to address it - and was that within the "reasonable" realm.

 

[tcp71]

You are showing extreme ignorance of the horrible accident that killed this woman. The Highway 8 had an unplowed ramp of sold snow that had turned to ice on the outside of the 2nd lane. There was no margin for error at all and her car was the SECOND ONE that flew off the highway to land 80 feet below! the first car was a taxi, yah those guys never try to drive beyond the conditions, but taxi driver was injured but survived. Less than 3 hours between the first car plunge to the next one.

The Ontario Provincial Police should have closed the 2nd lane of the flyover before the 2nd car plunged off the bridge, they didn't and now there will be a lawsuit. The issue is that there had been no regular snowplowing of the shoulder of the 2 lane bridge, and the snow accumulated and froze to make a perfect ramp to launch any car that went over the yellow line.

I hope the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ministry of Transport Ontario get their teeth kicked in when this finishes the trial.

How many cars successfully navigated the conditions between the first and second car? If it's more than zero, the ones that flew off weren't driving to the conditions.

 

[MCompact]

When I presided in district court and I had a party wanting to benefit from their stupidity I would issue a Toyota verdict- You asked for it, you got it.