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.