Woman Killed By Bouncing Tire On QEW - Friday, September 15, 2006

A 41-year-old Oakville woman is dead after her car was hit by a tire on the Queen Elizabeth Way near Oakville last night. The woman was traveling westbound near the Third Line when her Mercedes was struck shortly after 9 p.m. The tires had come off the back of an eastbound tractor-trailer unit and bounced across the median, said Ontario Provincial Police Const. Dave Woodford.

Another random death, right?

Wrong!

Strictly speaking, this is a collision : "Any event that finds any part of the vehicle other than the tread of the tyres, in contact with anything other than the defined driving area of the roadway". In this case the windscreen of the car came in contact with a tyre.

You think it is an accident ?

Wrong!

An accident is "An event that is without apparent cause, or is unexpected".

This will turn out to be human error, although not the human who died.

This will turn out to be a defective (or non-existent) act of maintenance, or something as banal as a bad batch of steel.

It may not be the truck-driver's fault at all. Large trucking firms have maintenance staff who are supposed to make sure everything is safe; the truck driver's job is to drive safely.

It may be a cheap tyre whose casing worked loose, in which case a budgeting clerk will be the cause.

It may be that the tyre was jarred loose after running over debris on the roadway, in which case the cause can be traced back to another vehicle shedding its load.

I feel sorry for the friends and family of the woman who died. She was on her way home, or setting off to work, and was expected to return home to family and friends.

Not her fault.

Could have happened to any one of us.

But it was not an accident.

I'll stand by that.

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