HUMBOLT BUS CRASH  
                     

If you click on the underlined words or sentences, you will get more information

Accidents involving large trucks and tractor-trailers rank among the most dangerous crashes for other motorists on the roads in all countries. Accidents involving large trucks and tractor-trailers rank among the most dangerous crashes for other motorists. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, large trucks can weigh up to 30 times more than passenger vehicles, which put people in those smaller passenger vehicles at great risk for catastrophic outcomes. Collisions involving large trucks and tractor-trailers rarely result in minor injuries. Tragically, many of these collisions result in severe and permanent injuries or death. This is especially applicable when a large truck and a bus carrying many passengers sre involved.

 Many large truck accidents occur as a result of the truck driver's negligence. Other large truck accidents occur as a result of the trucking company's failure to properly train its drivers or maintain its vehicles. 

In this article, a truck driver was definitely negligent and as a direct result of his negligence, sixteen people were killed and thirteen injured—most of them seriously on April 6^th, 2018  when a northbound coach bus struck a westbound semi-trailer truck near  Armley, in the Province of Saskatchewan, Canada.

Traffic on Highway 35, running north–south, has the right of way at the intersection and a speed limit of 100 km/h (60 mph). Traffic on Highway 335, both westbound and eastbound, has a speed limit of 100 km/h (60 mph) dropping to 60 km/h (35 mph) at the intersection, which has stop signs with flashing red lights. The signal lights were installed after a fatal traffic collision at the same intersection in 1997 in which six members of a family from British Columbia were killed in collision in that intersection. Six memorial crosses in the intersection's southeast corner commemorate those deaths which also warns motorists that they are approaching a dangerous and deadly intersection.

From 2011 to 2015, Saskatchewan had 13.2 traffic deaths per 100,000 people, the highest rate of any province or territory in Canada and over double the national average.

Truck driver Jaskirat Singh Sidhu was travelling westbound on Highway 335 in a transport truck pulling two trailers loaded with peat moss. He was the only person in the vehicle, travelling at between 86-96 kilometres (53 miles-59 miles) per hour. The bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos hockey team was travelling northbound on Highway 35 at approximately 96 kilometres (59 miles ) an hour.

Sidhu’s truck was completely blocking the intersection when the Broncos’ bus slammed into the lead trailer at just before 5 p.m.

Now I want to make a point here and I speak as an authority in accidents. I drove cars for fifty years in Canada, the United States, Hawaii, Mexico, Central America and Italy. Further, for five years, I was hired to investigate serious motor vehicle accidents for insurance companies. And on top of that, I was at fault when I drove into an intersection in a country road and was T-boned by another car that had the right of way. Subsequently, I was hospitalized for several days.  I then decided to give up driving and if I have to go anywhere, my wife will drive me in her car.  Further, I wasn’t seat belted. The airbag bag was what prevented  me from being seriously injured.

The summer before the accident, Sidhu took a short training course and got a commercial truck driver’s licence. In mid-March 2018, he began driving for a small company in Calgary. He drove with another driver for the first two weeks, then he was on his own. Clearly, he had not enough time or experience under his belt to be driving in unfamiliar territory on his own with a transport truck pulling two trailers.

Sidhu had not been in the area before. He got lost. Someone gave him directions. About ten minutes before arriving at the fatal intersection, he noticed the wind was getting under a tarp covering his load and it was flapping so he pulled over, fixed it and started on his way again.

Soon after, he was distracted as he focused on the tarps and his trailers. He spent more time looking in his two side mirrors and checking on the trailers behind him, than he did looking forward. Sidhu saw the signs warning of the coming stop, but they didn’t register in his mind because he was concentrating more on the flapping tarps. As a result, he didn’t slow down and stop and instead he entered the intersection just as the bus did.

As far as I am concerned, the bus driver was also at fault. He should have slowed down while he was approaching the intersection. If he had slowed down and looked towards the truck that was approaching the intersection, he would have noticed that the truck wasn’t slowing down as it approached the intersection while the driver of the truck was facing a flashing warning red light.  Instead, he drove into the intersection on the presumption that because he had the right of way, and any driver on the cross road would let him go through first. That false presumption killed him and fifteen others. in his bus. 

Vehicles approaching railroad tracks should slow down and stop to make sure that a train isn’t approaching the intersection between the road and the railway  Trains always have the right of way. Years ago, a woman stopped to let a train complete its way across the intersection. Just as the gate was lifting, she drove on the second set of tracks while completely unaware that there was another train approaching in the opposite direction on the second set of tracks.  Needless to say, she was killed instantly. That is why busses by law are required to stop at all railway crossings before they cross over the tracks.

If the driver of the bus slowed down and stopped if he saw the truck approaching the intersection at a high speed, no one would have been killed or injured. Instead, he hit the truck at a high speed with deadly results.

 Glen Doerksen, the Broncos’ bus driver, saw the transport truck heading into the intersection after ignoring  the red flashing stop sign so he hit his brakes 24 metres (78 feet) while moving at a high speed before the intersection, but there was no way for him to evade the truck that was already in the intersection. The bus struck the truck’s front trailer in a T-bone collision. The bus sustained massive damage, particularly at the front part of the bus. The driver and 13 passengers were killed immediately. Two others died of their injuries in hospital.

In my opinion, had the bus driver survived his injuries, I suspect that he would have been charged with criminal negligence at least.

Motorists should always slow down when they are approaching an intersection to make sure that motorists on both roads are not going to reach the middle of the intersection at the same time.  Had the bus driver done this, he and his 15 passengers who were killed, would be alive today.

On July 6, 2018, the RCMP (federal police) charged 29-year-old Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, the driver of the semi-trailer, with 16 counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death and 13 counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing bodily injury.

On January 8^th, 2019, Sidhu pleaded guilty to these charges and was later sentenced to 8 years in prison. Since he isn’t a citizen of Canada, he will probably be sent back to India where he is a citizen when he is released from prison. 

What really gets me angry are the sentences given to drivers who as a result of their negligence, get minor sentences after the negligent (or impaired) drivers who have killed other people because of the manner in which they have driven their vehicles in such a haphazard manner.

For example, if one person is killed, the average sentence is only five years. If that is the standard, then why when 16 persons were killed in the crash I have written about, did this driver get only eight years in prison? The crown (prosecutor) asked for ten years but the judge didn’t agree.

The judge said he was influenced with two factors that made him make the decision he did. First, the accused pleaded guilty right from the begging.  He had no other choice. The evidence against him was so obvious.  Second, he apologized to the parents of the victims.  So what? He hoped that his apology would soften the judge’s heart. It did.

Will this driver really serve the full sentence of his eight-year (96 months) sentence? No he won’t. In Canada, he can apply for parole after serving only a third of his sentence which is highly unlikely that such an early release will really happen in his case. However, by law in Canada, he will be released after he has served two thirds of his 96-month sentence. That means that he will be released after serving as little as 64 months in prison which is just a little over five years.  

What this means is that he is only serving four months and three weeks for the deaths of each victim he killed not to mention the severe injuries he brought about on the other victims in that bus crash.  

Is that really justice?  I suspect that not all the families of the victims  feel that eight months and three weeks is an appropriate sentence for the man who killed each of their victims.  

I realize that he didn’t kill those sixteen people in the bus  purposely but driving in a negligent manner is deserving of punishment—especially when he killed 16 people in the bus and caused  terrible injuries to 13 of others.

A pox on the driver of the truck and the judge who gave the driver such a sweetheart sentence.

The owner of the transport truck involved in the deadly Humboldt Broncos bus crash has admitted he did not follow provincial and federal safety rules. A lawyer for Sukhmander Singh of Adesh Deol Trucking pleaded guilty on his client’s behalf in a Calgary court to five charges. Singh, 37, was fined a total of $5,000. The trucking company is no longer in operation. The government should be very careful if Singh decides to licence this man again if he applies for a truck licence again.