Canada's capital city is one where bus ridership on public transportation crosses a broad spectrum of its population. There are as many committed public transit users in Ottawa who choose to use public transit as there are those for whom it is the only option. It is a public service viewed as invaluable to a fairly large metropolitan population of about a million people. For the duration of our working life in Ottawa, my husband and I were among that large contingent of regular transit users on a daily basis.

The OC Transpo bus involved in Friday's crash at Westboro Station was towed from the scene, revealing extensive damage, on Jan. 12, 2019. David Kawai / Postmedia

"I have complete confidence in these [double-decker] buses. If there's new information that comes from the police investigation, obviously we will take that into account, but at this point, I have full confidence that our mechanics and our professional staff have done and continue to do everything they can to ensure our entire bus fleet is safe and reliable."
"I don't know the individual [bus driver] personally, I don't know the individual's track [driving] record, and I don't want to prejudice what the police department is doing by offering an off-based comment."
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson

"We are deeply saddened about the tragic accident involving an OC Transpo bus on Friday, January 11, 2019."
"On behalf of the members of [the Amalgamated Transit Union] Local 279, we send our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones. Our thoughts are with those who were passengers or were injured on that bus, or who might have witnessed this collision."
Clint Crabtree, union president

Both these public figures speak to a one-vehicle accident that occurred during the Friday afternoon rush-hour last week when a double-decker bus in downtown Ottawa en route to the west end of the city, carrying close to 90 passengers returning home from work on a routine weekday trip slid at speed into an Ottawa transit station, its overhang slicing right through the second story of the bus halfway the length of the bus before shuddering to a halt. It was not a pretty scene.


It was a scene where three people died and 23 others were injured, some sufficiently seriously that limb amputation resulted. A driver still on probation was at the wheel of bus 269. A year since her hiring, Aissatou Diallo was given the responsibility of delivering 90 people safely to their destination on a winter day. Bystanders attest to seeing the bus slide on ice and mounting a curb prior to the accident. She had driven the bus into a station that was not on her schedule.

First responders were swift to arrive at the scene of carnage, and area hospitals geared up their emergency protocol to receive the injured. At the scene, when police arrived, the driver refused to answer questions; her absent cooperation resulted in her brief arrest and detention. She has not been charged as no grounds exist that an offence was committed, while an investigation into the crash is ongoing with police collision investigators engaged in the process of detailing what had occurred to occasion the accident.

The speed of the bus, black ice on the roadway, driver's field of vision intersected by sun glare, the potential of mechanical failure all elements for examination in which video cameras at all stations will be of use. Double decker buses are known to be more difficult to operate safely than ordinary buses; their centre of gravity due to height impact maneuverability, it takes longer to stop these buses and other issues are involved.

They're favoured because they can hold twice the number of passengers as an ordinary bus, cutting the need of another driver, and the saving on fuel to operate one bus instead of two all factored in. But like the accordion buses that are also operated in the city, the appropriateness of these buses during an Ottawa winter is questionable and is now being questioned.

As for the driver, she has two previous accidents to her credit. Mere weeks before this collision the bus she was driving collided with another bus at a different station and firefighters responded to passengers trapped on one of the buses as a result, one of whom was later treated for a head injury. She was apparently enrolled in additional safety training after that collision.

And according to police spokesman Constable Chuck Benoit, "The Westboro (Friday's) collision is an ongoing investigation and very complex. We will not be able to comment on any person that is part of any ongoing investigations."

The public is not responding well to the mayor's disinterest in inviting the Transportation Safety Board to launch an investigation of their own. They had investigated a previous double-decker collision with a train at a train-bus crossing in 2013 when six people were killed. The intense scrutiny under which the buses and bus safety came by the TSB resulted in a number of safety recommendations none of which have since been implemented.

The bus in which six people died is towed away from the site of the fatal bus and train crash in Ottawa, Thursday, September 19, 2013. Six people died in the crash between a Via Rail train and a city bus on Wednesday.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand

"The painful path families of the Ottawa victims will take, has been the path taken by the survivors and families of victims of other preventable crashes such as the 2008 Bathurst, New Brunswick fifteen-passenger van crash, the 2013 OC Transpo-Via Rail crash and most recently the 2018 Humboldt Broncos bus crash, and too many others in between."
"In each of these events, there is evidence of lax regulation, inaction and failure to protect road users. this tragic status quo needs to change."
Transportation Safety Board statement