The Hamilton Spectator
ONTARIO - A young man is dead and at least two drivers suffered minor injuries in a multi-vehicle (crash) on Highway 6 at Concession 12 East this afternoon.
A driver, whose name and age have not been released, was travelling southbound on Highway 6 when he swerved into oncoming northbound traffic, hitting two vehicles, said Const. Graham Williamson, adding the second vehicle sustained a major impact.
Police do not believe road conditions caused the (crash), Williamson said.
“At the time, the road was clear. There was a very light sprinkling of snow … The roads were wet if anything,” he said.
Police were called to the scene just after 2 p.m.
The young driver has died while the 47-year-old Guelph resident who was driving the second vehicle, a four-door Chevrolet, suffered minor injuries, Williamson said.
“Right now, as we speak, (those two vehicles) are embedded in each other … on the east shoulder of the roadway.”
The (incident) resulted in a five-car pileup involving a pickup truck and a large delivery van.
Two people have been transported to hospital with minor injuries, Williamson said.
The OPP are still investigating the collision, he said. It’s not known if there were passengers in either vehicle.
8 comments:
Hwy 6 is a 24 km deathtrap. It is deceptive and treacherous. There was no margin of error for the boy.
If you look at the statistics, I am certain that it is the deadliest stretch of road in Ontario, if not the nation. I would love to be a part of a task team that would strive to find solutions.
The Dad
The unit, called a community patrol unit, disbanded in late 2005 because some officers were sent to a different detachment. Two months later, six people were killed in two crashes on the highway.
Tyios is worried fatalities will continue to increase unless police step up their enforcement again.
"Highway 6 needs two officers doing enforcement on it every single day. Or more. End of story," she said. "If you don't have the support of the police, it's going to get worse."
Detachment commander McElary-Downer doesn't disagree.
"I wish I had people fully dedicated to the highway every day," she said. "I just don't have it. The community patrol unit that used to have it full-time, they had a significant impact on 6."
After the fatal crashes in 2005, the detachment did an analysis of fatalities on the highways it covers, which include large sections of highways 403 and the Queen Elizabeth Way.
It found the average number of crashes over a 10-year period was no higher on Highway 6 than on other highways, but officers were spending a disproportionate amount of time on Highway 6.
Averaged over 13 years, the OPP found, Highway 6 had three fatal crashes a year. That was the same average number as the 80-km stretch of QEW the detachment patrols from Grimsby to the Oakville-Mississauga boundary -- some of the busiest highway in the province.
Now the OPP has moved away from dedicated units on certain highways. Instead officers move around to different "hot spots" -- sections of highway with a high number of crashes. They re-evaluate them monthly.
Recently, that hot spot has been a six-kilometre stretch of the QEW through Oakville.
But McElary-Downer said officers are back on Highway 6 at the start of each school year because of concerns over drivers not used to seeing school buses on the road. They are also helped by a RIDE unit, which conducts roadside alcohol screening stops evenings and weekends, but does speed enforcement during the day.
"Is it enough?" McElary-Downer asked. "For the number of incidents we have, that's a tough question."
The community group Safe on Six has no plans to reassemble, Rusnak said.
"We probably should go back and do that, but we wouldn't have the resources," she said. "We were in the right place at the right time with the right group of people. I'm not sure we could pull that off again."
But Winslade wants to see public attention return to the road, whether it's through tougher enforcement or even photo radar to help stop the rising number of fatal crashes along Highway 6.
"I don't know how they can't take a hint and do something" she said. "I think they have enough proof of the lives that were lost on that highway."
"I would love for the MTO to drop a barrier on it," said McElary-Downer. "But I don't know if that would be realistic."
Eventually, the province hopes to move Highway 6 west to run around Morriston -- where the highway narrows to two lanes -- to join up with Highway 6 north to Guelph.
Those plans, which date back to the 1970s, could still be years away. The province is negotiating with the City of Hamilton on a cost-sharing arrangement for the interchange and waiting on Ministry of Environment approval for the new alignment of Highway 6, MacKenzie said.
"That project is not funded in the current year's construction program, but is recognized as a future highway expansion."
Local residents say they have been waiting years for safety improvements to the highway. But even with the current construction, traffic continues to speed well past the 80 km/h speed limit.
From their home beside the busy highway, Gerry and Cornelia Plumtree hear the constant sound of transport trucks blowing their horns to warn motorists they won't be able to stop for a red light at the base of the escarpment.
Speeding trucks have worsened since construction crews removed a flashing light that warned motorists of the approaching traffic lights, the couple says.
"When they come down that hill they fly," Cornelia Plumtree said. "It's unbelievable. I don't know whether people are basically stupid or they just don't care."
So many vehicles have used the Plumtree's lawn to turn around on the highway that the couple had to remove a tulip garden because it was getting crushed by traffic.
They are worried that plans to essentially turn the highway into a freeway will only allow traffic to speed faster, leading to more accidents, especially among transport trucks that use the highway as their main route from Waterloo Region and Guelph to the U.S. border.
"You've got to be really careful when you're on that highway now because they just don't wait. They're just gone," said Gerry Plumtree, a former truck driver. "When they find out they don't have to stop, this is going to get wild down here."
The OPP are not doing enough to enforce the speed limit on Highway 6, said Dawn Tyios, a former Burlington OPP officer who led enforcement on the road through the 1990s as part of the now-disbanded community group Safe on Six.
"They used to see us out there. They didn't know where we were going to be, but they knew we would be out there all the time," she said. "Now they're not."
When Safe on Six formed in 1996, it brought together police, medical professionals, politicians and traffic safety experts who successfully pushed for safety upgrades.
The group mapped out every collision to show the ministry that rear-end crashes were actually chain reactions caused by vehicles stopped to turn left, said Barb Rusnak, former chair and a former traffic collision technician.
The group pushed successfully for a centre turn lane and improved lighting on stretches of the highway, as well as a centre median at one intersection to prevent people from turning left into a nearby gas station.
Tyios said the OPP started an ongoing enforcement blitz on the stretch of road.
The detachment often had four officers patrolling the road for speeders and aggressive drivers. They put up complaint boxes where people could write down descriptions of aggressive motorists for police to follow up. Offending motorists often got a call and sometimes charges, she said. Police rode school buses in September to charge motorists who didn't stop.
At least 12 of the fatal collisions on Highway 6 in recent years have been head-on crashes.
One of those was Ryan Taylor.
Taylor was a safe driver who routinely drove that stretch of highway without incident, Winslade said.
"I think he knew that was a bad highway," she said. "I think everyone realizes it. You just never think it's going to be you."
On Aug. 27, 2007, Taylor was on his way home from the Stoney Creek office where he worked as a private investigator. He was due home at around 8 p.m. He was rarely late and by all accounts was going to be on time that day.
At 7:19 p.m. he was heading north on Highway 6 near Maddaugh Road, south of where the four-lane highway narrows to two lanes. A Lincoln car that had been behind Taylor's Kia SUV was passing him when the two somehow collided.
Both vehicles spun into the southbound lanes, striking a pickup and a Volkswagen Jetta. The collision sent both the Lincoln and the Kia airborne into the ditch, where both burst into flames.
The driver of the Lincoln survived, but was airlifted to hospital with life-threatening injuries and burns. No charges have been laid.
Police told Winslade it wasn't the initial collision, but the second blow -- from the pickup truck in the southbound lanes -- that resulted in Taylor's death. She wonders why a barrier between north and southbound lanes is not part of a multi-million safety improvement project underway along the highway.
"It's awful to think that maybe Ryan wouldn't have passed away if there was just that barrier, because he got the brunt end of everything." she said.
The Ministry of Transportation is spending $34 million to upgrade three southernmost kilometres of the highway from Highway 5 to Highway 403.
That stretch of road climbs down the steep Niagara Escarpment and was chosen because of swelling traffic volumes driven by population growth in neighbouring Waterdown.
The upgrades include an extra northbound lane for slow-moving trucks heading up the hill, a concrete median and a noise barrier. Crews are closing intersections at York and Plains roads, replacing stop lights with a full interchange just before the 403.
The changes will essentially turn that section of highway into a 400-series freeway.
"In effect, Highway 6 will be built basically to controlled-access freeway standards," said ministry spokesperson Will MacKenzie.
The improvements, which opened in the fall of 2008, are several kilometres south of where Taylor died -- and south of the area where the majority of fatal crashes have happened.
Most of the fatal crashes have been north of Highway 5, where the province installed a centre turn lane, but no concrete barrier to stop crossover traffic.
The section of road from Highway 5 to the 401 has seen 602 crashes, killing 22 and injuring 365 people between 2000 and 2007. That's more than one crash a week.
MacKenzie said the ministry has long-term plans to turn a set of lights at Highway 5 into a full interchange and replace the centre turn lane with a concrete barrier for 1 km north to Parkside Drive.
The barrier would end more than 15 km south of where Taylor died and the province has no plans to extend the barrier farther north because much of the road is still considered a local access route, MacKenzie said.
"There's numerous concession roads and driveways (in the area)," he said. "Highway 6 will remain Highway 6."
Police also want to see a concrete barrier down the length of Highway 6. But constructing a median isn't as simple as it sounds. Intersections would have to be shut down and new access roads built for the homes and businesses fronting the highway.
Despite a vocal community push for a crackdown on speeders and millions of provincial dollars already spent on highway upgrades, the death toll along Highway 6 continues to mount.
Police who patrol the highway say they struggle to find the resources to keep up enforcement since a patrol unit dedicated to Highway 6 was disbanded more than two years ago because of staffing cuts.
"I wish I could take a full platoon and put that on 6, but you work with what you have," said Insp. Robin McElary-Downer, detachment commander for the Burlington OPP, which patrols the stretch of highway. "You try and do your best. It's a balancing act. Yes, I want more resources. Will I get them? Probably not."
This section of Highway 6 is one of the common routes for the more than 5,000 commuters who, as Taylor did, regularly travel to work between Waterloo Region and the Hamilton-Burlington area.
The long, straight stretch of four lanes beckons motorists to step on the gas as they travel between the high-speed 401 and 403. But they do so without the safety of a concrete barrier separating the north- and southbound lanes.
"I often think with 6, why does it seem to have the high fatals it does?" McElary-Downer said. "I think people don't make that mental adjustment that they're on a different highway without a restraining barrier."
Thank you for the posts Cindy.
The accident that ended the life of my son, David, on Dec 11 was on the stretch around Freelton where there is no middle turning lane nor a divider. Hence, there was no margin of error. We are talking about a 2km stretch that could certainly use a concrete median.
From what I understand, Dave's accident is not the first on that stretch.
Contra one of the earlier articles you posted,regarding the 6, it would still seem that the death rate per km of road is unsurpassed.
If anyone has suggestions of how I can maximize my advocacy,I would appreciate it. I would suspect that in time I will raise it strategically at the media level, but I would want to leverage it with workable proposals.
It seems that there needs to be an engine for the creation of poltical will to put this issue back on people's radar screen.
I just met with the OPP last night to finish their report and they agree that this cursed stretch of Hwy is a horror show. They absolutely hate it.
So, you have an advocate, here. It took a tragedy to make me a convert, but I am in with both feet. Just help point me in the right direction.
Rob,
I noticed you have your email on your Blogger profile.
I'll drop you an email.
Here is the original article I pulled those quoted comments from:
http://news.therecord.com/article/411303
Below is an article I found interesting by the man who co-chairs the Safe on Six south committee:
http://www.haldimandcounty.on.ca/uploadedfiles/Residents/Emergency_Services/Policing/OPP_Media_Releases/20091118%20-%20Ride%20Along%20Experience.pdf
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