Previously, I wrote about the accident at the Costco store in London, Ontario, Canada and the death of six year-old Addison Hall.  Coverage by the press has been heavy, and when I was interviewed I was able to speak pretty plainly because I had already seen and read so much about the accident.

I was notified of the publication of the interview and I found that the coverage in which it appeared was excellent.  First I noted that the article  is tagged "No Rules Exist for Parking Bollards."   And then I was impressed by the headline:  "Installing the storefront bollards between a parking area and a building is left to the owner’s discretion." 

This tragic accident was totally preventable.  Installing bollards but installing them too far apart is like building two wings for an airplane -- and putting them both on one side.  This type of case, where a large corporation who should do so much better continues to put employees and customers at risk, is exactly the reason that Mark Wright and I started the Storefront Safety Council.  And the lack of local codes and ordinances is exactly why so much time and effort has gone into the new ASTM test standard WK13074 for safety barriers and bollards.

More will be coming out about this story over the next weeks -- how did the car get moving backwards at high speed, what were the causes, who has the legal liability.  All of that is important of course. 

But not as important as Addie Hall.


I have pasted the article (without the video) below.  To see the video and get links to other articles and video clips, click HERE

News Woodstock & Region
DEADLY COSTCO CRASH

Installing the storefront bollards between a parking area and a building is left to the owner’s discretion
By Jennifer Bieman, The London Free Press

Tuesday, July 29, 2014 2:15:20 EDT PM

Ontario has no rules governing placement of storefront barriers like the ones a car reversed through last week at a London big-box store, a crash that led to a six-year-old girl’s death.

Common at giant retailers and fast-food drive-thrus, the post-like barriers, or bollards, are meant to protect buildings and pedestrians from being hit by vehicles.

But Ontario has no rules on where the posts should go, or how far apart, nor does the city of London.

One American expert says it’s time that changed — that too many vehicles are slamming into buildings, sometimes — as in the London case — with tragic results.

“(The collisions) are way more common than people might think,” Rob Reiter, a storefront collision expert in California and co-founder of the Storefront Safety Council in the U.S., said Monday.

Reiter, who’s testified as an expert witness on building safety in many court cases, said parking barriers such as the ones at the south-end Costco where last Friday’s crash occurred should be no more than 1.5 metres (five feet) apart to be effective.

The bollards at the Costco, which wrap around the angled entranceway of the giant warehouse-style store, are 3.7 m (12 ft.) apart.

Why and how the car reversed into the entrance way, striking a family from behind and sending six people to hospital, remains unclear. Police are still trying to figure that out.

“This is going to be a lengthy investigation,” said London police Const. Ken Steeves.

“We would love the answers overnight,” he said, “but an examination has to be done on the vehicle. We don’t have a lot of the answers yet.”

In Ontario, installing the concrete and steel posts — often the only barrier between a parking area or a lane of traffic and a building — is left to the owner’s discretion.

“There’s nothing in the Ontario Building Code that requires bollards to be installed,” said Peter Kokkoros, London’s deputy chief building official.

“A bollard is an item that protects the building. The building code doesn’t get into that.” Kokkoros said/

The bollards at the Costco would have done the job had the car not got between them, said Gary Bryant of Toronto-based Ontario Bollards Inc., which distributes and installs the barriers.

Bryant reviewed images from the scene and pegged the ground-embedded posts at about 20 cm in diameter.

“If the car had hit one of those red bollards, it would have stopped the vehicle.”

Over the weekend, a Costco spokesperson said it was premature to comment on a safety review of the store in London on Wellington Rd., south of Hwy. 401.

Calls to Costco for comment Monday at its head office were not returned.

Reiter said it’s not difficult to buy or put up the post-like barriers, but many businesses opt out as a cost-cutting measure.

“They don’t realize that over time they’re going to spend more in costs and (potential legal) settlements than they would have spent doing it right the first time.”

Outside major retailers, he said, bollards can be staggered to both protect against traffic and still allow customers pushing carts or large purchases to get through to parking areas.

Two years ago, a California appeal court ruled against Costco, upholding partial liability, after a car reversed into an outdoor food court at a Burbank, Ca., store in April 2007, injuring three people.

The court held the crash was “not categorically unforeseeable,” citing factors such as driver medical problems or intoxication and mechanical failure, and the food court wasn’t adequately protected by barriers.

On average, Reiter said, there are more than 60 vehicle-building collisions a day in the U.S.

He said retailers are slowly making their facilities safer for pedestrians.

“Wal-Mart and Target, most of the time now, put their bollards close enough together.”

jennifer.bieman@sunmedia.ca

twitter.com/BiemanatLFPress

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ONTARIO BUILDING COLLISONS

2011: 165 vehicles struck buildings

32: Resulted in injuries

133: Damaged property

0: Deaths

Source: Ontario Ministry of Transportation

A sad and tragically completely preventable tragedy at a Costco in London, Ontario Canada has claimed the life of a six-year-old girl named Addison Hall and severely injured three members of her family.

" At noon Friday, a red Monte Carlo driven by a woman in her sixties suddenly backed in to the entrance way of the busy big-box store – reversing between two pillars outside before smashing through the glass doors and inside the building.

The car struck Addison, her 3-year-old sister Miah and their pregnant mom Danah McKinnon Bozek – all who remained in hospital all weekend -- before crashing to a halt against the pole between the next set of doors leading into the store.

Miah is still listed in critical condition as is a baby delivered by emergency caesarian-section on Friday.   McKinnon Bozek's condition has been upgraded to fair, police said on the weekend.   Two other people who were hurt in the crash, as well as the driver of the car, have been released from hospital."  (See the excellent overage from the London Free Press HERE)

How was this accident preventable?  Because Costco does not take simple and affordable steps to protect their customers and employees.  Injury accidents like these are not rare for Costco (Maui and Burbank being obvious previous examples) but for some reason the company continues to choose not to follow the example of other leading retailers like Sam's Club, Target, WalMart and many others who install steel bollards or other protective devices to prevent out of control vehicles from crashing into their store entrances.  And as was the case in the London Ontario store, even when bollards are installed, they are installed NOT to prevent these types of accidents, but rather to prevent customers from pulling vehicles up onto the apron to load up their purchases.

GOAL POST BOLLARDS

As the photo above shows, bollards that are installed ten feet apart may prevent parallel parking, but an oncoming car can easily navigate between them.  A sedan like the Monte Carlo in this incident is only a little over six feet wide --  four foot tall bollards ten feet apart look more like goal posts to pass between than barriers meant to stop an out of control vehicle.  Their concern that carts full of merchandise be free to pass between the bollards apparently outweighs their concern that  vehicles can crash into customers and employees at the store entrances.

Why does Costco (with sales of over $100 billion annually, with 465 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico, 87 in Canada, and a number of others in Europe and Asia) continue to put customers and employees at risk?  By not taking simple and very affordable steps to prevent them, such foreseeable accidents will continue.  I can only think of three reasons;  they do not care about their people or reputation, or, they are completely unaware of these incidents at the corporate level, or, they have made a budgetary decision to not spend the $10,000 or $15,000 per store it would take to prevent them and take their chances that injury claims and wrongful death lawsuits will cost less over the long haul.

I  hope that some enterprising member of the press in London, Ontario gets a chance to ask a corporate officer or member of the Costco Board of Directors why they allow a known hazardous condition to persist at their stores.  I hope that a store manager or someone in the risk management department has the courage to ask the question.  I am sure that there are any number of attorneys who would jump at the chance to ask that question.

I for one would like to know the answer.  And I am sure that Addison Hall's family would like to know as well.

The driver of a Lexus ended up 90 feet inside of a AAA office in Fresno California this afternoon according to the Fresno Bee.  Seven people were injured, and the car traveled 90 feet inside the building before being stopped by a support column.  See the Bee's great reporting from the scene (at photo credit) HERE.

While this is reported to have been a case where the driver had the car in drive instead of reverse, and somehow panicked and pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor, the question still needs to be asked:  how do we know when a car is out of control NOT because of driver inputs, but rather my mechanical or software flaws in the vehicle itself?  Lawsuits are being fought right now, and NHTSA and other federal agencies are hard at work studying the problem.  But for the people trying to understand what happened from media reports, this is a limitation that needs further study.

The Storefront Safety Council is starting a research project on this topic of vehicle failure versus driver error.  We are doing so for a variety of reasons, the most basic of which is that it is important to be accurate about causation in order to be accurate about prevention.  In terms of preventing injuries to people on sidewalks or inside stores, the causation of a vehicle-into-building crash is less important than the means of protecting people and property against errant vehicles in the first place.  Bollards or safety barriers do not care if the vehicle has jumped the curb due to being in the wrong gear, or the driver under the influence, or a mechanical or other failure with the car -- the bollards just stops the crash from happening.  But in terms of understanding what is going on and for policy makers to make best use of information, that information and underlying data needs to be accurate.

Recent high profile accidents that have had these types of issues are many -- our resources are limited but we will do our best to find out what we can and report the results here and on the Storefront Safety Council website.

Parklets are all the rage right now….they can be found in cities from Boston to San Francisco, from Chicago to Houston, and all kinds of cities and town in between.  Basically, they are platforms that are built to occupy an existing street parking space or spaces – a parklet provides additional sidewalk space and seating space, and are often used for small meeting areas, for outdoor dining areas, and for places for pedestrians to rest and residents to linger in nice weather.  In busy urban areas, they provide much needed space and help to pedestrianize streets and neighborhoods.

There are many examples of parklets and there are many shapes and sizes, and they have many purposes.  All of them abut the existing curb, all of them are parallel to the curb, and all of them are enclosed in some way or another to keep people in and (presumably) to keep intruding vehicles out.

We think that parklets are a GREAT idea – they can be relaxing places, they can be money makers for small businesses, and they can change the dynamic of a neighborhood by giving pedestrians a reason to visit and a place to linger.  They are a win-win for everybody – provided they are designed to protect the very people that are encouraged to sit and linger.  People should never be targets.  (Above photo courtesy of oneironaut11 via Instagram.)

As you can see from the press coverage and video of the Los Angeles accident (HERE) a DUI vehicle impacted the end of a parklet that was being used for outdoor dining at a popular late night restaurant.  Reports show that a diner, an employee, and a pedestrian were struck by debris and injured.  All were taken to the hospital and all have been released.  Significantly, the vehicle did not seem to strike any of the three – it was debris from the parklet itself and the planters around it that were propelled into the injured people.

Basic design and basic safety principles seem to not have been taken into account by designers of this parklet.  See our earlier post on the topic of SAFETY BY DESIGN.  Vehicle impacts are probably some of the best studied events studied in the world of transportation.  In terms of building a fixed structure subject to impact by a 5,000 LB vehicle traveling at street speeds (say 30 MPH) designers and safety engineers have three main tools to deal with the impact energy;  absorb the energy using attenuating materials and designs;  rigidize and secure the structure to make it stronger than the effects of the impact; or do some of both.

This kind of approach can be seen in the design of modern cars and trucks.  In a front end impact, the front area of the car crushes into itself, absorbing much of the impact energy.  At some point, the crushing stops and the rigid cab of the vehicle remains as secure as possible to protect occupants, but if required, airbags deploy to attenuate the remaining energy that is pushing the occupants forward and into the rigid structure.  From the video and press reports of this accident, more should have been done so that as the car struck the parklet and planters, those items were not propelled towards the seated customers by the front of the car.

As is evident from the slide show below, whatever the car struck was easily propelled forward and into the seating area.  As the photos show, this was very loosely constructed and not at all engineered structure – there is no sign of rigidity, no sign of being well-secured to the street or sidewalk, and the car simply pushed planters, decking, seating and railing in front of it until it came to a stop with its front wheels off the ground.  Lives were saved NOT by good safety engineering, but by debris that piled up in front of the car – no wonder people were injured.

The most obvious solution to the problem of parklets is to install inexpensive and effective safety barriers on sides exposed to oncoming traffic.  It does not have to look like a castle or fortress, nor does it have to look uninviting.  This approach stops the car BEFORE in comes in contact with the structure where people are sitting – simple, safe and proven.  ASTM has a proposed standard for safety barriers in street and parking areas such as these,  called WK13074.  You can read all about it HERE.  Steel bollards or barriers could easily have stopped that car before striking the parklet and the people – and done so for only a few thousand dollars.

Either you stop the car just in front of the parklet, or you have to build the parklet so strong that it resists the impact.  Either way, the facts are quite simple -- you either stop the car, or everyone sitting, standing, working or passing near the parklet is at risk at any time.

SLIDE SHOW ( Photo credits and more information on the parklet damaged in this crash HERE)

Thanks to my friend Patrick Breen in Las Vegas for reminding me that there was more to the story than just the video of the truck crashing through the store (see previous blog post HERE.)

While the video was very instructive, it does not tell you what the OUTSIDE of the store looked like,  what direction the pickup truck came from, or what safety barriers (if any) the truck might have encountered before it slammed through the store.

The answer:  there was NOTHING between the road and the storefront that would have slowed that truck down even by a fraction of a mile per hour.  As Patrick pointed out to me, there was nothing in front of the store to stop the truck, but they sure did have bollards around the power pole in the parking lot to protect at least one vulnerable fixed object.....

I have put together a slide show  to help give a clearer picture of what happened:

When you watch the video report courtesy of KFYR TV5 in Bismark North Dakota, try doing the old timing trick from when we were kids -- count to yourself "one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand...."  What you will realize was that the truck was through the front of the store and impacted the back of the store faster than you can complete the first one one thousand......

See the video and the story coverage from KFYR HERE

Drunk drivers crash into all kinds of things -- mostly other cars and drivers, and tragically pedestrians.  But of course stationary objects take the biggest brunt -- poles, guardrails, fire hydrants, and houses seem to be the most common.  But storefronts take a beating too, and this is just one of four liquor store accidents from the weekend just passed that I saw in media reports.  Impaired driving of all kinds -- alcohol, drugs, and marijuana -- seems to be more and more common.  And it is a bigger factor than most realize for businesses along busy streets where vehicle traffic can pass by at high speed, or where intersections might point traffic straight at storefronts.

This video shows very clearly the great amount of damage that a 5000 LB vehicle moving at 25 to 30 MPH can do.  ASTM continues to document and complete a standard covering the testing of bollards and barriers and other safety devices for exactly this application, as regular readers of these pages are aware.

So ask yourselves -- could anyone standing in that store protect themselves?  Could they move out of the way of an oncoming pick up truck?  Of course not.....so why do we expect people to protect themselves against things that they cannot?  Local codes need to catch up to what is happening out in the world.  Sixty times per day or more, a vehicle crashes into storefronts.  People are injured and killed everyday.

And it doesn't have to be this way.

These pages have mentioned Starbucks any number of times.  Few large chains do so little to protect customers and employees from vehicle incursions -- the record of crashes and injuries and legal claims continues to pile up.  Eventually, action will be taken, but not yet apparently.

While Starbucks is only peripheral to this discussion, I want to call your attention to a recent crash at a Starbucks in Vestavia Hills, Alabama injured three people inside the store.  Nothing unique about the crash, the injuries, or the cause.  What I wanted to point out is that in this case was a very clear photo of the scene which clearly illustrates how useless wheel stops are.  Dangerous, ADA non-compliant, and useless -- why does anyone ever install wheel stops?

Wheel stops do not stop.  No car is stopped by a wheel stop.  If you are a store owner or a restaurant owner or a parking lot owner, if you think you are solving a problem by installing them you are wrong.  First of all, they are ineffective.  Second, they are dangerous and cause more trip and fall claims than anything else in a parking lot.  Third, they act as little launching pads so that if a car hits them at speed, the front of the car is lifted up and onto the sidewalk at a higher speed than if the curb was struck directly.

Thanks to WNCT 9 for their coverage.  See the coverage and additional photos HERE

So Starbucks -- and every other retail and restaurant chain -- please take a look at the facts.  Three people were injured at this store who were completely unprotected by wheel stops.

And it didn't have to be that way.

Thanks to KSAT 12 in San Antonio for their coverage of a simple accident that could have been much bigger news were it not for the effectiveness of a simple bollard.

Last night at a Shell gas station in San Antonio a driver apparently fell asleep at the wheel when she was exiting from a freeway.  Her car rolled through some road signs and into the gas station where it headed straight for one of the gas pumps. 

Fortunately for all concerned, this station was equipped with steel bollards installed directly in front of the gas pumps.  When the SUV struck the bollard, the front of the vehicle absorbed much of the impact energy (as cars are designed to do) and it is reported that the driver was not seriously injured.  It is unclear whether or not the airbags deployed on the vehicle, and while it is always hard to guess speed of impact from such limited information, I am going to just guesstimate from the damage that the SUV was traveling 20 to 25 MPH at the time it impacted the bollard.

See the video HERE.

What is clear was that a 6 inch diameter steel bollard, though scratched and leaning from the impact, stopped the moving vehicle and prevented the SUV from crashing through the gas pump.  At the very least, there would have been a big, messy Hazmat cleanup;  more often, fire erupts when gasoline flows out until the pump is shut off.  If the woman was unconscious and no one could reach her in time, the fire would have been fatal.

ASTM is completing work on a new test standard (WK13074) which takes on exactly this sort of threat scenario.   With so many deaths and injuries from vehicle/pedestrian and vehicle/building interactions, more and more communities are calling for such bollards or barriers in certain parking lots near retail and commercial buildings and pedestrian areas.  With no applicable performance standard to refer to, architects, engineers, or property owners have been having to choose products on their own, and therefore incurring liability in such instances.  ASTM will provide local authorities and building and design professionals with a clear designation with which they can choose effective safety devices from a variety of manufacturers in a variety of materials and fabrications.  See the ASTM website for more information HERE

As of this date the test standard will require that such safety bollards, barriers or other devices must be able to
withstand an impact of 30MPH from a test vehicle that  weighs 5,000 LBS -- in short, exactly what happened at this Shell gas station in San Antonio.  The fact that bollards were installed in front of these gas pumps may have saved a life;  going forward, many more lives will be saved by installation of such safety devices in other vulnerable locations.