A 69-year-old Ontario man is fighting for his life in hospital after his car was crushed by a fly-away truck tire on Highway 400.
A set of tandem tires dislodged from a transport truck heading southbound on the highway near King Road Wednesday morning and bounced across the northbound lanes, landing on the hood of a GMC Yukon and trapping the driver under the crushed metal. It likely happened too quickly for the driver to react, says OPP Sergeant Kerry Schmidt, as it does in most such tire accidents.
"[A tire is] such a small object coming at you so quickly, and in an area you'd never expect, that by the time you realize it's on a collision towards you, it's too late," he said.
No charges have been laid and an investigation into the accident is ongoing.
There were 127 reported incidents of wheels separating from their commercial vehicles on Ontario roads in 2015, according to the Ministry of Transportation. Included in this number is the tire that smashed through Kimberly Coordes's car on Highway 401 last November, killing her. A van carrying a group of Boy Scouts was hit by a stray tire on the same stretch of road just six days later – luckily, none of its passengers were hurt.
But this is still far fewer than the 215 incidents in 1997, the year the Ontario government cracked down on unsafe commercial vehicles by introducing daily inspection requirements and amending the Highway Traffic Act to make flying vehicle parts an absolute liability. This means that commercial vehicle drivers and owners cannot use a due-diligence defence if they're charged after losing a wheel on the highway. Such an accident is punishable by fines of up to $50,000.
And Ontario's Ministry of Transportation introduced "Operation Wheel Check" last December, which includes multiple day-long mass inspections of the wheels on commercial vehicles travelling along Ontario highways. Commercial drivers must also stop at inspection stations along the routes they travel, where their vehicle undergoes a safety check by ministry enforcement officers. Trucks with faulty tires are taken off the road immediately, according to a Ministry statement, and are not allowed back into operation until fixed.
"Wheel separations from commercial vehicles are almost always caused by poor maintenance, improper tightening/installation of wheel fasteners or defective parts," says the statement.
Brian Patterson, president and CEO of the Ontario Safety League, says fly-away tires are 100 per cent preventable through proper safety and inspection, and that the majority of truck fleets have taken an aggressive approach to training and conducting maintenance.
"The core group we still have to deal with are those that will not conduct proper maintenance or do not understand the maintenance level required to operate a commercial vehicle in this province," he says.
The number of reported wheel separations has grown from just 47 in 2010 to more than 100 in each of the past three years.