Cruise control at fault?
Coroner has questions after cyclists hit, killed
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/05/2010 (5620 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
ROUGEMONT, Que. — Accident investigators for the Quebec provincial police, already trying to determine the cause of an accident that killed three bicyclists Friday, saw their caseload increase dramatically in less than 24 hours as two more collisions brought the death toll on the province’s roads to seven.
Three people in their 20s, two women in one car, a man in the other, were killed Saturday after their cars collided head on while travelling on a highway just north of Montreal at about 3:40 a.m.
That crash followed a head-on collision on Friday night between a car and a heavy truck on another highway near Val D’Or, about 520 kilometres northwest of Montreal, that left the 54-year-old male driver of the car dead.
In all three cases, the cause of the accidents have yet to be established.
However, the coroner investigating the Rougemont accident, where a pickup truck driven by a 29-year-old volunteer firefighter rear-ended a group of cyclists travelling east along Highway 112, said he wants to examine whether the vehicle was on cruise control at the time of the accident and if that could have played a role.
“It has to be asked whether the use of cruise control diminished the concentration of the driver,” Andre Dandavino told the LCN news network. “We know there’s a zone (along the highway) where photo radar has been installed and people have a tendency to… use cruise control not to exceed the (speed) limit.”
Dandavino also noted the driver of truck was “in his lane, travelling in a straight line at normal speed… it seems he just didn’t see the cyclists in front of him.
“There was no sudden manoeuvre, no (excessive) speed, no alcohol involved… we have to find out what happened so it doesn’t happen again.”
Dandavino said his report would be filed after provincial police have completed their investigation.
The issue of road safety figured prominently in the condolences to the families and friends of the three women who died Friday that were posted on the Facebook page of the Club de Triathalon de St. Lambert, the centre where the trio trained.
“My sympathies to the families of the victims of this tragic accident,” wrote one mourner. “I’m a road cyclist myself, and the roads aren’t always safe for us. I’m almost scared to take out my bike.”
— Canwest News Service