COPS NEED CRASH COURSE ON TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
Unfortunately, most traffic reports on most days tell us of an intersection or a road that has been closed for hours for investigation of a major traffic accident.
Unfortunately, too often these reports say the jam is caused by a disabled tractor trailer. Why is the 400-401 interchanges such a magnet for this?
Unfortunately, most drivers most days creep by the wreckage or where the wreckage used to be and wonder why the traffic couldn't be moving quicker and why there seems to be lots of cops just standing around when they could be sorting traffic.
It is ever thus.
I'm sure motorists have fumed at delays because of accidents since the first days of motoring. And we certainly have had a long history of traffic accidents, beginning when there were only two cars in the entire province of Saskatchewan and they collided one day at an intersection.
A few years ago at the annual meeting of the Ontario Safety League, a legendary copper named Cam Woolley complained to me about columns I had written about police not restoring a reasonable traffic flow at an accident scene as quickly as possible.
Woolley had 30 years with the OPP and became famous as a sergeant for his traffic anecdotes before he departed for CP24. In other words, Woolley knew what he was talking about. And he didn't think I did.
But then he conceded that he had arrived as the senior cop at accidents and wondered why the road was still closed. When he asked, the cops often conceded there was no reason. In fact, the road could have been cleared hours earlier. It just wasn't a priority for them.
I had plenty of time to think about this when I made my customary late trip home from the cottage. I watched the Jays game, and then Bill Maher, and figured that at 11.30 p.m. it would be an easy two-hour jaunt with the weekend rush cleared out hours before.
The trip took an hour longer. It did too for Mary and Mark who had left two hours before.
The problem was, 680 told me, that there was an accident in the left lane of west-bound 401 at Whitby. And when you managed to survive that, there was a really major accident featuring a huge tractor trailer that flopped like a dead whale in the right ditch.
In a reasonable world, the traffic in the passing lane should have been moving the slowest because the accident was on that side. Except that was the fastest lane, and the reason was that the radio report was wrong and and the accident was on the right side.
After 30 minutes or so, we rolled slowly past an accident scene of all manner of emergency vehicles with flashing lights which weren't doing much of anything. The emergency was over.
The next accident was really big, except it had been there for most of the day and it was now 2 a.m. There was too much time for me to witness that not much of anything was going on even though it looked like a scene from Hades.
I am not complaining about traffic speeding around scenes that are still dangerous,. The police, paramedics and firefighters should have all the time they need to help the wounded, and also a reasonable amount of time to clear the debris. But with modern digital technology that allows for the quick measurement and recording of an accident scene after the ambulances and fire trucks leave, are the Toronto police and the OPP really acting ASAP?
With the 400 series of highways carrying so much traffic, should the provincial government not have a major commission study how police act at major accidents? Perhaps we need the government to subsidize huge tow trucks located along the major highways which can quickly move wreckage to one side.
The TTC and GO process accidents, particularly the sad suicides, much faster than they did. For example, GO said the various police forces must stop squabbling over jurisdiction and also installed video cameras on locomotives to record the obvious suicides.
If only some of that approach filtered into the policies of policing and road management. Yet 401, for example, has been closed for hours because people have deliberately jumped on it from overpasses.
So what's the hurry anyway, police may ask? Just think of the cost in time, and the wear and tear on vehicles and tempers? What about the air pollution and all the missed deliveries and appointments? What about the accidents caused by frustrated motorists who speed madly away from traffic jams?
It just doesn't make much sense to build super roads which carry some of the heaviest traffic in the world only to have them crippled because of accidents which are allowed to fester like an untreated wound.
Unfortunately, most traffic reports on most days tell us of an intersection or a road that has been closed for hours for investigation of a major traffic accident.
Unfortunately, too often these reports say the jam is caused by a disabled tractor trailer. Why is the 400-401 interchanges such a magnet for this?
Unfortunately, most drivers most days creep by the wreckage or where the wreckage used to be and wonder why the traffic couldn't be moving quicker and why there seems to be lots of cops just standing around when they could be sorting traffic.
It is ever thus.
I'm sure motorists have fumed at delays because of accidents since the first days of motoring. And we certainly have had a long history of traffic accidents, beginning when there were only two cars in the entire province of Saskatchewan and they collided one day at an intersection.
A few years ago at the annual meeting of the Ontario Safety League, a legendary copper named Cam Woolley complained to me about columns I had written about police not restoring a reasonable traffic flow at an accident scene as quickly as possible.
Woolley had 30 years with the OPP and became famous as a sergeant for his traffic anecdotes before he departed for CP24. In other words, Woolley knew what he was talking about. And he didn't think I did.
But then he conceded that he had arrived as the senior cop at accidents and wondered why the road was still closed. When he asked, the cops often conceded there was no reason. In fact, the road could have been cleared hours earlier. It just wasn't a priority for them.
I had plenty of time to think about this when I made my customary late trip home from the cottage. I watched the Jays game, and then Bill Maher, and figured that at 11.30 p.m. it would be an easy two-hour jaunt with the weekend rush cleared out hours before.
The trip took an hour longer. It did too for Mary and Mark who had left two hours before.
The problem was, 680 told me, that there was an accident in the left lane of west-bound 401 at Whitby. And when you managed to survive that, there was a really major accident featuring a huge tractor trailer that flopped like a dead whale in the right ditch.In a reasonable world, the traffic in the passing lane should have been moving the slowest because the accident was on that side. Except that was the fastest lane, and the reason was that the radio report was wrong and and the accident was on the right side.
After 30 minutes or so, we rolled slowly past an accident scene of all manner of emergency vehicles with flashing lights which weren't doing much of anything. The emergency was over.
The next accident was really big, except it had been there for most of the day and it was now 2 a.m. There was too much time for me to witness that not much of anything was going on even though it looked like a scene from Hades.
I am not complaining about traffic speeding around scenes that are still dangerous,. The police, paramedics and firefighters should have all the time they need to help the wounded, and also a reasonable amount of time to clear the debris. But with modern digital technology that allows for the quick measurement and recording of an accident scene after the ambulances and fire trucks leave, are the Toronto police and the OPP really acting ASAP?
With the 400 series of highways carrying so much traffic, should the provincial government not have a major commission study how police act at major accidents? Perhaps we need the government to subsidize huge tow trucks located along the major highways which can quickly move wreckage to one side.
The TTC and GO process accidents, particularly the sad suicides, much faster than they did. For example, GO said the various police forces must stop squabbling over jurisdiction and also installed video cameras on locomotives to record the obvious suicides.
If only some of that approach filtered into the policies of policing and road management. Yet 401, for example, has been closed for hours because people have deliberately jumped on it from overpasses.
So what's the hurry anyway, police may ask? Just think of the cost in time, and the wear and tear on vehicles and tempers? What about the air pollution and all the missed deliveries and appointments? What about the accidents caused by frustrated motorists who speed madly away from traffic jams?
It just doesn't make much sense to build super roads which carry some of the heaviest traffic in the world only to have them crippled because of accidents which are allowed to fester like an untreated wound.
No comments:
Post a Comment