Dangerous Trailers In Canada

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Cautionary evacuation on Highway 221


Cautionary evacuation on Highway 221

Last Updated: October 25, 2010 7:59am


Several homes in the Meadows area were evacuated Sunday after a trailer filled with anhydrous ammonia went into a ditch.

RCMP said emergency crews were called to the scene on Highway 221 northwest of Winnipeg about noon. The trailer, being hauled by a pickup truck, came loose and went into a ditch, police said.

Const. Miles Hiebert, a spokesman for Manitoba RCMP, said the trailer turned over but didn’t leak.

Traffic in the vicinity was shut down and approximately 10 area homes were evacuated as a precaution. The ammonia was pumped into another trailer and the highway re-opened to traffic before 5 p.m.


Friday, August 14, 2009

22 Year Old Driving Bus With Trailer Bus involved in crash belonged to Queen's charity



NOTE: Should a 22 year old be driving a bus pulling a trailer?

Again... we have no standards, no training on how to tow.

What if the actions of this driver would have killed a child?

Bus involved in crash belonged to Queen's charity

Posted By THE WHIG-STANDARD

Posted 1 day ago


The bus involved in a crash Tuesday morning in Centre Hastings belonged to a Queen's charity that sponsors camp vacations for low-income and troubled youths.

Camp Outlook, a charitable foundation based in Kingston that puts on summer and winter camping trips for young people, was the operator of the bus that was carrying 16 campers on a day trip to Algonquin Park.

No one was seriously injured in the crash, which happened north of Madoc, but the 22-year-old driver of the bus was charged with careless driving.

The passengers of the vehicle, which was pulling a trailer loaded with canoes when the accident occurred, were taken to the Bancroft General Hospital for examination, where they were treated for minor injuries and released.

No one from Camp Outlook was available to speak about the accident yesterday.

The camp, which will mark its 40th anniversary next year, is run through private donations and the support of the Ontario government, which this year gave it $30,000 to buy a new bus to transport campers.

Most of the Camp Outlook participants are teens referred to the charity by a social agency or school, and more than 130 young people take part in the camps each summer.

Outlook was started in 1970 by Ron Kimberly, a Queen's University medical student, who was a camping enthusiast and a believer of the therapeutic value of the wilderness for young people.

Trailer came unhitched on Ring Road in Regina



Police responded to the northbound Ring Road as it crosses over Victoria Avenue Thursday morning after a trailer came loose from a truck.

Photograph by: Marlon Marshall, Leader-Post


REGINA — Police have charged the driver of the truck for having an unregistered trailer and for improper hitch assembly after his trailer came unhitched on the Ring Road around 10 a.m. Thursday morning.

The male driver of the truck was travelling northbound on Ring Road, driving on the Victoria Avenue overpass when the incident occurred. Police said the pin on the utility trailer's hitch snapped and sent the trailer down the road on its own.

The trailer made it just past the overpass before it veered off the road and rolled into the ditch

The wheels have come off... From a Homemade Utility Trailer


Reporting by Kyle Mullin


Russell Hayward walks past his overturned trailer next to the Trans-Canada highway on Wednesday afternoon. The Nevers Road man was unhurt in the single-vehicle accident. Hayward entered the eastbound lane of the divided highway at the nevers road intersection hauling a small, homemade trailer loaded with three logs destined for a sawmill. “i was on my way, and she just started swayin’,” he said of the trailer. The left wheels flew off of his trailer, sending him into a tailspin straight into the ditch.



Comments

Similar situation as last week with the travel trailer. Too much weight on the rear of the trailer judging by the size & length of the logs. This causes the "tail wagging the dog". In this case, it probably swayed to the point it either rolled the tires off the rims or broke the rims away from the axle hubs completely.

Prevention is the name of the game with proper weight distribution. However if it does occur, take your foot off the gas and slow down gradually. Jamming on the brakes will generally cause the trailer to beat you to your destination. If you have trailer brakes and the presence of mind, you can apply those brakes only to get whoaed up.



Robert Clinch, St. Stephen on 13/08/09 08:29:11 AM ADT
Homemade trailer..probably need engineered correctly. two sets of axle not lined up properly + heavy load will do this. Sometimes it's better to let the professionals do the job. Especially when public safety comes into play...



Enough is Enough, Clearview on 13/08/09 01:50:24 PM ADT
Do these trailers have to pass some kind of inspection? If not, why not?


RA EL, Fredericton on 13/08/09 08:42:55 PM ADT
A trailer has to pass a motor vehicle inspection each year, same as your car. However I think all they check is lights, tires, wheel bearings and brakes (if applicable). Structural integrity (excessive rust, etc) would probably come into it as well. I'm not a mechanic, but I did learn to drive 40+ yrs ago towing a trailer, so I have some experience that way.

But as the previous poster implied, if it isn't constructed properly in the first place, i.e. axles not lined up, that may not be picked up during an inspection.

While that could very well have played a part in this case, looking at the length of the trailer and the size & length of the logs, I suspect there was too much weight aft of the axles which will cause the tail wagging the dog every time.


Robert C., St. Stephen on 14/08/09 08:00:28 AM ADT
Oops, sorry I forgot to mention that they also inspect the coupling mechanism

Friday, July 25, 2008

Furniture spill causes chaos


Furniture spill causes chaos
By: The Mississauga News
July 23, 2008 07:59 AM - There is traffic chaos on eastbound Hwy. 403 this morning after a pickup truck lost its trailer, spilling a load of furniture across three lanes of the busy highway.
The accident happened between Hurontario St. and Cawthra Rd., just before 7 a.m. after the trailer of the pickup truck came loose and flipped onto its side, strewing furniture onto the road.
The left passing and HOV lanes of the highway are still open but the three other lanes are blocked.

Traffic initially had to get by on the shoulder of the road until Ontario Provincial Police and other emergency services arrived on the scene.
There are no injuries.

OPP Const. Sally Stewart told The News from the force's Orillia traffic headquarters that the roadway is expected to reopen about 8:30 a.m.
jstewart@mississauga.net

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Trailer breaks loose and crashes into house








Trailer breaks loose and crashes into house: narrowly misses sleeping man

By Danielle Mario, TheStarPhoenix.com

Published: Thursday, March 13, 2008




Trailer breaks loose and crashes into house: narrowly misses sleeping man

By Danielle Mario
TheStarPhoenix.com

Keegan Miller lays on his bed, where a trailer burst in just over where he was sleeping.
CREDIT: Richard Marjan/The StarPhoenix
Keegan Miller lays on his bed, where a trailer burst in just over where he was sleeping.
Keegan Miller's basement bedroom this morning, where the end of the trailer came through the wall.
CREDIT: Richard Marjan/The StarPhoenix
Keegan Miller's basement bedroom this morning, where the end of the trailer came through the wall.
Police investigate the path of a trailer that came unhitched and hit a house at the corner of Avenue V and 29th Street West. Police are looking for the driver.
CREDIT: Richard Marjan/The StarPhoenix
Police investigate the path of a trailer that came unhitched and hit a house at the corner of Avenue V and 29th Street West. Police are looking for the driver.

Saskatoon police say a 31-year-old man turned himself into police this afternoon after a runaway trailer crashed into a west-side house. The driver had fled the scene after the crash, and police had been on the lookout for him today.

Keegan Miller was sleeping in his basement bedroom, when he was rudely awakened by a loud crash and pieces of something falling on his face.

Shocked, Miller tried to sit up, and banged his head on something hard just a few feet above his pillow. It was a sheet of drywall. Something big had crashed through his bedroom wall.

"I thought my friends were just playing tricks on me and putting something on my face," said Miller, an hour after the ordeal. "I was totally out of it."

The 19-year-old University of Saskatchewan agriculture student didn't know it at the time, but he just had a close call with a flatbed trailer.

Around 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, a stucco company was driving westward on 29th Street West towards a job, when its tandem axel trailer came off the hitch. A witness saw the runaway trailer crash through a school zone traffic sign, nearly miss a tree stump and tree in the yard, and crash into the east side of the home, located on the corner of Avenue V North and 29th Street West. Miller lives there with his mother, Shona Gryba.

"I woke up to insulation hitting me in the face, and chunks of drywall," Miller said, taking off his hat and shaking debris from his hair. "I came outside and the trailer's in the side of the house. It happened so fast that the back wheel was still spinning."

Once a tow truck hauled the trailer out of the side of the home, the family of two peered through the hole, assessing the damage.

The trees that lined the side of the yard were crushed into the four by two-metre high hole, leaving a near perfect rectangular 'window' above the student's bed. Splintered wood, insulation and broken objects were scattered throughout the bedroom. Chips in the blue paint on the opposite wall of the student's room indicated that objects had been hurled against the back wall from a shelf when the trailer burst through the wall.

Miller jumped through the hole from outside onto his bed to explore the scene.

"All my hockey trophies, my diploma, my grad pictures," he listed as he dug through the rubble. Miller picked up a broken sandcastle statue from the floor. Gryba explained that the sandcastle was from Miller's dad, who had passed away from brain cancer eight years before. Miller was speechless.

Richard Harder, a 16-year-old Mount Royal student, was following the truck and trailer on the way to school in his car, when he witnessed the crash.

"It looked like the truck was trying to pass the trailer in the left lane, and then I realized that the trailer wasn't hooked on to anything," said Harder.

"The truck was just going and the trailer fell off and mowed some stuff down and hit the house going about 50 km/h. For once, I had a good reason for why I was late for school."

Harder said that the truck stopped and the driver and front passenger got out of the cab, but they quickly got back into the truck and drove away. Harder spoke to Miller when he came outside to see what had crashed through his bedroom. He then proceeded to school to tell Gryba, who teaches Grades 10 and 11 at the high school.

"I thought he was kidding and was just trying to get a rise out of me," said Gryba. "So I walked outside and they pointed across the park to the house and told me I better go home."

The truck was back at the house by the time Harder returned to the scene with Gryba, and he said that there was a different driver behind the wheel.

Saskatoon Police spokesperson Alyson Edwards said the 31-year-old man who turned himself in is charged with one count of failing to remain at the scene of an accident and one count of driving while disqualified, along with seven Traffic Safety Act violations, which concern the improperly hitched trailer.

Two employees of Interprovincial Stucco, who were sitting in the truck while police investigated, said they had "driven around the block to look for the trailer," and that is why they fled. The third man claiming to be the driver was talking to police and later refused comment.

"I guess they won't hire us to fix it, hey?" said Jeff Whiteford, who stepped out of the back of the cab of the truck to light a cigarette.

"This just went from bad to worse," said Miller. " I'm mad. The guy that was driving even came up to me and said, 'I know you need to go through insurance, but just so you know, we do drywall'."

Miller said that he was just glad that he was sleeping later than usual, because he was missing class to help remodel his bedroom's connecting bathroom.

"Usually my mom comes down and checks on me in the morning. She's usually in my room at that time waking me for school, and she could have been standing right there and would have gotten taken full on in the face. I'm just glad she's okay."

"I just don't think the bathroom remodel is going to be a priority anymore."

dmario@sp.canwest.com




Thursday, February 7, 2008

Minivan smashes into cop car after boat falls off railer

Minivan smashes into cop car after boat falls off railer
Thu, October 12, 2006
By JOHN HERBERT, LONDON FREE PRESS REPORTER

An OPP officer is lucky to be alive today after yet another in a series of bizarre traffic accidents this week on Lambton County roads.

Wednesday afternoon, a car hauling a trailer with a 26-foot sailboat on Highway 402 in Sarnia fishtailed, then jackknifed when it was hit by a strong gust of wind, sending the vessel onto the highway.

Police closed Highway 402 east of Airport Road in Sarnia for about three hours.

While the road was closed, an OPP officer parked on the highway at the Airport Road exit — with his cruiser’s red warning lights activated — helped reroute traffic onto a ramp off Highway 402.

That’s when the serious trouble happened.

Const. John Reurink said the officer spotted a fast-moving minivan approaching the roadblock at about 6 p.m.

When it became apparent the minivan wasn’t going to stop, the officer ran for safety towards the median on the divided highway.

The approaching minivan hit the cruiser seconds later, flipped and rolled between the cruiser and the fleeing officer.

Fortunately, there were no injuries in the two mishaps.

The boat, extensively damaged, was eventually lifted onto another flatbed trailer. The cruiser incurred about $4,000 in damage and the minivan was demolished.

Sheryl Mendritzki, 51, of Watford, was charged with careless driving.

Norbert Lennartz, 47, of Montreal, has been charged with having an insecure load.