Terror in the Night: A highway event that shouldn't happen

In Ontario during 1984, there were 194,782 reportable accidents involving motor vehicles. During that same year, 1,011 persons were killed and another 66,101 were injured with the property damage exceeding half a billion dollars. In fact, highway accidents accounted for 48% of all accidents in Ontario and nearly two-thirds of those drivers were sober. Of all accidents, 31% occurred during darkness and 2% of the accidents were a result of driving through fog, mist, smoke or dust.

Those who have driven on an expressway, find that such an experience can be arduous at best but driving at night, during a fog and on rain slicked roads, is an experience that puts most drivers in a state of terror.

Terror In The Night is a composite of several accidents that occurred in various places in Ontario at various times in 1984. No one such accident happened in this manner, but each element of this accident did take place somewhere in Ontario that year. The date, the highway and the names have been chosen arbitrarily but the essential story is real. The terror experienced by the drivers in this story is similar to those who are compelled to drive under arduous conditions that common sense dictates would be better done at another time or in another manner. This story is the sort of nightmare that can happen at any time, anywhere and to anyone and happens quite frequently around the world.

Yet none of the human errors depicted in this story need have happened. None of the drivers were impaired by alcohol or drugs. Accept for the strange quirk in fate which brought them all together in one place on the highway at the same time, they could have continued to drive in the careless and inattentive manner they had been driving all their driving lives and probably got home safely if it wasn’t for the fog.

Years ago, I investigated hundreds of serious traffic accidents for insurance companies. Nearly every crash, was traceable in one way or another to someone's bad driving habits or lack of concern for the condition of their vehicle or of the roads. What follows is a grim and graphic account of the anatomy of an accident.

Driving along the roads that cross through the gentle rolling lowlands of Southern Ontario can be a driver's delight for surrounding him is farms, forests and beautiful lakes. But anyone faced with driving along highway 401 that runs from Windsor to the Quebec border, at night time, is denied all the beauty that surrounds him. The beauty is replaced with blackness, interspersed with twinkling headlights in the distance which increase to a maddening white glare that all but blinds him to what lay ahead. Such an experience makes one tired and ill tempered and with that combination, caution fails.

On May 17th, 1984, when Willy Foster, age 22, was driving his father's 1981 Marmon HTD transport, (cab over tractor with a sleeper attached) from Chicago to Montreal, he chose to hit Windsor at about nine at night because he knew that he could drive through Ontario before the sun rose, thereby evading all the truck stations in that province that are closed at night.

He was carrying $100,000 worth of television sets. He moved down the highway at 110 kilometers an hour in the right hand lane, (the lane truckers generally stay in when on the 401) because he knew that the police seldom, if ever pull a transport over for speeding at night.

He was approximately 15 minutes east of London when he came to the realization that he had better slow down as there was a light drizzle beginning to hit the asphalt. He knew that the first ten minutes of a light drizzle are the most dangerous because the mixture of the oil from dripping vehicles and the dust on the road become greasy when the rain hits it and it would take at least ten minutes if not more for the rain to wash that gook off the asphalt. He reduced the speed of his 24.5 tonne rig to the speed limit of 100 kilometers (62 miles) an hour as the visibility was getting worse from the mist closing in on him.

Maria Diaze, age 22, who lived in London, was driving with her two-year-old son Marcus, to Toronto where she was going to stay with her parents. Normally, she wouldn't be driving this late at night but the violence of her husband was more than she could take, so to her, the trip was a necessity. She was nervous when driving her 1978 VW Rabbit towards Toronto because a year earlier, her car suddenly surged forward at a high speed for about ten seconds without any reason at all and she subsequently nearly lost control of her vehicle when it rounded a curve. She was told that that problem would be fixed at Volvo's expense but since she hadn't experienced that problem again, she ignored it. Tonight she was doubly nervous because of the fog warnings coming out of her radio. She should have done something about her tires also because three of the tires had a tire tread depth of less than 1.6 mm. With that kind of tire tread, driving on dry pavement is risky but on wet pavement, it's outright dangerous.

Like all dutiful-minded parents however, she had strapped her son in the car seat which was secured at the left side of the rear passenger seat.

She was approximately midway between London and Woodstock on the 401 when she drove into a heavy mist and light drizzle. Since she was driving only eighty kilometers (49 miles) per hour, twenty shy of the speed limit, she chose to stay in the right lane for fear that if she moved to the passing lane, she would get struck from behind by another vehicle that might be going the speed limit of 100 kilometers (62 miles) an hour.

David Bates, age 45, was already in the fog that had filled in a basin just a few kilometers ahead of Maria. He had pulled his 1976 Pinto over to the right shoulder and stopped there. Earlier, the warm air had come in contact with the surface of the cold ground in that immediate area, causing a considerable increase in the relative humidity of the air. It reached a point where the water vapor began to condense and become visible, thereby creating a mist. But as the minutes ticked by, the droplets grew smaller and finally became so small and condensed, it would take a million just to create one rain drop. This put the visibility factor at zero. He put on his hazard lights as a warning to other motorists that he was parked on the shoulder. He then sat back and listened to his car radio.

Barreling along the 401 from Detroit, (his destination was Toronto) at a speed of 115 kilometers (71 miles) an hour, was Mike Parker, 48, with a Transtar conventional (engine ahead of the cab) with a gross train weight of 25.5 tonnes. He was carrying a shipment of car batteries. He was called Madman Mike by other truckers because of his propensity to speed, tailgate and weave in and out of traffic. His call signal on his CB was "Madman Mike" so when any truckers heard him calling, they moved out of his way. He liked the sense of power one develops when driving a huge rig. His eye level was 2.75 meters (9 feet) above the road and that made the cars ahead of him look puny. He hated puny cars.

A study in the United States showed that one out of every seven motorists involved in accidents needed psychiatric outpatient treatment and one out of every twenty suffered from a mental illness severe enough to require them to be hospitalized in a psychiatric facility. Mike did seek psychiatric help once for bad nerves but other than being aggressive on the road, he was for the most part, what his friends called, 'normal'

Barry Lumley, 35, had been visiting his sick mother in London and was now returning to his home in Toronto. His 1980 Volvo had been giving him problems and when his windshield began fogging up, (his defroster wasn't working) he opened up his side window to let the cold air rush in to get some of the moisture off of his windows. He too encountered the drizzle and as the rain flew through his open window, he closed it. Within a minute, his windshield fogged up again and he began the annoying task of having to wipe it clean every thirty seconds in order to see through it. But as he sped down the passing lane of the highway at 115 kilometers an hour, his visibility gradually diminished. Unbeknown to him, he was entering the fog that was surrounding David's Pinto a few kilometers ahead.

Robby McCarthy, 35, was driving his Mack RW Super Liner tractor, (with sleeper attached) along the 401 and was pulling a tanker full of diesel fuel from Alberta to Quebec. His gross train weight was 32 tonnes.

He had pulled over at the truck stations several times during his trip for a couple of hours shut eye but relied on his wake-up pills to keep him going to the end of his trip. He knew he was getting tired and driving along 'boredom trail' at night wasn't helping him in any way so he sang to himself, turned on the radio and even opened his window as a means of keeping awake. He thought of pulling over to the shoulder to walk around some but he knew that that would entail the nasty job of gearing up for four kilometers (2.4 miles) just to get back to his cruising speed. He nixed that idea as soon as it entered his mind. He just continued to tailgate the truck ahead of him.

Fate, being as it is, has an uncanny way of bringing people together for the first time in their lives. These six drivers never would have met if it wasn't for the fact that each one of them, while driving eastbound on the 401, had done something they shouldn't have done, or in the alternative, had not done something they should have done.

It was 11:00 p.m. when Maria Diaze was approaching David Bates' Pinto which was still parked on the shoulder half a kilometer ahead of her. She had just driven into the dense fog before she realized it and instinctively put her foot on the brakes to slow down. She slowed from eighty kilometers (49.miles) to sixty kilometers (37.2 miles) per hour.

Behind her, and approaching at now 80 kilometers an hour, was Willy Foster with his 24.5 tonne rig. He was a quarter kilometer (820 feet) away from her and was closing in on her every second. His visibility varied from 8 to 12 meters because of the increasing denseness of the fog so naturally he was totally unaware of Maria's vehicle ahead of him.

Behind Willy's rig, was the rig driven by Robby McCarthy. He had been following Willy's rig twenty meters (65 feet) behind him for the past ten kilometers (6.2 miles) because he figured that if the driver ahead of him could see the road through all that drizzle, he could follow in his tire tracks in safety. He didn't realize that Mike Parker was fast approaching the rear of his own rig.

Mike was still driving at 115 kilometers an hour when he suddenly found himself almost directly behind Robby's rig. He didn't see Robby's tail lights sooner as the spray from Robby's rig almost inundated his windshield--and the fog intensified his visibility problem even more.

Mike swerved to the left to avoid Robby's rig just as Brian Lumley was coming up on his left in his Volvo. Brian was still wiping his windshield when he seen Mike's transport coming into his lane. He swerved into the median to avoid hitting the transport. He was now moving along the grassy median at the same speed of 110 kilometers an hour when he realized that he was heading right towards the roadway on the other side of the median.

When he was two meters from that roadway, he pulled his steering wheel sharply to his right in order to swing back into the lane he had just left. Although his front wheels were now turned to his right, his car continued moving in its original direction. The left front wheel began digging into the grass and dirt like the blade of a grader and within an eighth of a second, the left front part of the vehicle had stopped while the right rear of the car began rising upward, propelled by centrifugal force. In one second, the vehicle had done two and a half cartwheels, corner over corner before it landed upside down in the centre of the west-bound curb lane.

A hundred meters (300 feet) ahead of Willy Foster, was Maria Diaze and her VW Rabbit. Suddenly, without warning, the Rabbit lurched forward and began to pick up speed. Remembering the similar terrifying experience she had undergone the previous year, she jammed on her brakes. She slowed down sharply but because her tire tread was below 1.6 millimeters, she began sliding along the pavement which was still greasy from the oil, dust and rain mixture. She felt the rear portion of her vehicle beginning to sway to her right as the bald-like tires aquaplaned over the millimeter of gook between her tires and the surface of the road. Within three seconds, she was stopped, perpendicular to the highway, her vehicle straddling the dotted line dividing the two lanes.

Willy Foster, like all motorists, needed to be able to see 12 seconds ahead of him along his intended path of travel in order to perceive, react and then apply his brakes so that he wouldn't hit anything that might be stopped ahead of him. Because of the density of the fog, he couldn't see more than 8 to 12 meters ahead of him so he didn't see the stationary VW Rabbit directly in front of him until he was ten meters (32.8 feet) from it.

He would have needed one and a half seconds to react and begin depressing his brake pedal but at his speed, he would go at least 17 meters (55.7 feet) before his foot would reach the pedal and another 42 meters (137.7 feet) to come to a complete stop. At this point, all that was purely academic. He hadn't even got his foot close to his brake pedal when the front of his tractor hit the smaller vehicle at 80 kilometers (49.7 miles) per hour. It hit it with a resounding crash that was heard two kilometers away by a man walking his dog. The combined kinetic weight of the tractor and trailer when it hit Maria and her baby at that speed was 270 tonnes. The car disintegrated, the flaming gasoline from the ruptured tank spewing everywhere.

The impact and the braking on the part of Willy slowed his vehicle down to fifty kilometers (31 miles) an hour. Robby McCarthy was too sleepy to be aware that Brian's rig had suddenly slowed down after hitting Maria Diaz's vehicle and by the time Willy's brake lights did go on, Brian hadn't enough time to apply his brakes. He smashed into the rear of Brian's trailer a quarter of a second after Brian had smashed into the VW Rabbit. He wasn't seat belted in so when he left his seat during the rapid deceleration, the kinetic weight of his 200 pound (90.7 kilograms) body was increased to 2200 pounds (907 kilograms) by the time he hit his near horizontal steering wheel at 8.3 meters (27.3 feet) a second.

David Bates had been aware that there were vehicles approaching him from the rear when the reflection of their lights bounced off the fog surrounding him but he figured that they were probably going only about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) an hour. It was only when he heard the two loud crashes and saw the fog behind him suddenly turn a bright orange that he sensed that there was something wrong. That's when he realized that he should not have remained in his vehicle to listen to his radio.

The sound of steel scraping along the asphalt was only three seconds in duration for at the beginning of the fourth second, the flaming monstrosity now weighing 82 static tonnes slid into that part of the shoulder where his Pinto was parked-- smashing into the rear of his vehicle at forty kilometers (24.8 miles) an hour. The Pinto's gas tank ruptured and in a split second, Robert felt an intense searing heat enveloping him as his vehicle was pushed along the shoulder of the highway as easily as a child's plastic toy is pushed along the floor.

Mike Parker had managed to stop his rig one hundred meters (300 feet) from the devastation behind him but only because it had jack-knifed and flipped over on its right side, cab and trailer alike.

It was ten seconds past eleven o'clock.

Mike spent almost five minutes trying to extricate himself out of the cab of his overturned tractor. He had broken his right arm when he was slammed against the right door at the moment his rig was flipping onto its side.

He walked back towards the red glow penetrating the dense fog. As he got closer, he could see the flames of the wreckage as the heat of the flames was now evaporating the fog in the immediate area of the crash.

There was nothing he could do for Maria Diaze, her baby, or David Bates. What was left of their vehicles, were enveloped in flames. Later when the firemen arrived, they would find their three bodies, dismembered and burned beyond recognition.

Mike then went to Willy Foster's rig. Willy was unconscious and wasn't revived until he reached the hospital an hour later. He suffered three broken ribs and a fractured skull. He would have fared better had he been strapped in his cab at the moment of the collision.

When Mike reached the cab of Robby McCarthy, he saw an unconscious form slumped to the floor. Mike called out but it was to no avail. When Robby's rig smashed into the rear of Willy Foster's rig, the impact of the rim of the steering wheel rammed against his chest, crushing his heart in a millisecond, thereby bursting it. Robby had felt no pain as his death was instantaneous.

Mike walked over to Brian Lumley's overturned vehicle--its rear wheels turning wildly in response to the still running engine.

Brian was still alive although he suffered torn ligaments
when his arms, legs and neck were thrashed about while his vehicle was doing its cartwheels. Mike couldn't assist Brian in his effort to free himself from his seat harness because of his own broken right arm.

As Mike sat on the cold pavement talking to the suspended man in the overturned car, he saw the fog beginning to brighten up in response to an coming vehicle's headlights. His heart began to beat rapidly. He prayed that the oncoming motorist was aware that this part of Highway 401 at night is one of the most dangerous to drive on because of the area's propensity to fog over. This sobering thought had now dawned on him for the first time in his years of driving on the 401. As Mike leaned over to Brian while the fog enveloped them, he said, "I hope that the person driving that vehicle, sees us in time."