Transport ministry to fix A-440 exit
The transport ministry is promising to fix road markings around the A‑440 exit where four people died in a fiery crash on Monday. TVA talks about whether the driver of the rig that triggered the incident was tired or distracted, and suggests psychological help for witnesses and survivors.
Update: CTV says truckers have been calling attention to the danger for years, and that Monday’s was not the first fatal accident near that spot.
Bert 12:44 on 2019-08-07 Permalink
I live within 5km of where the accident happened, I am familiar with that interchange.
The issue there is that the traffic often backs up from people trying to exit the 4440 to take the 15 N/S. For those going to 15S (the longest route getting off the 440W) there is often heavy traffic due to a bottleneck created by the cloverleaf interchange (440W-15S / 15S-4440). In the northerly direction, the service road entrance to the 15N is often blocked to well below the actual 440 and the access from the 440W service road to the 15N service road is backed up. It all backs up on to the 440W service road and the 440W itself. It is not uncommon to see the line back up to Industrielle or further.
Trucks are banned from the left lane, so one car that abruptly slows / stops and a truck has little chance to react, particularly if there are cars in left lane. (train switch dilemma). Of course, with a car sandwiched between 2 trucks it’s possible if not plausible that the second truck was just not paying attention.
What then happens i that by error or by malice people miss the tail-end of the line and try to cut in. So now we have a 2 lane off-ramp, on a lane highway. People in the left lane don’t slow or are not vigilant and may even try to cut in from the left lane. It’s a recipe for disaster, and that is what we got.
The access from 15N to the service road, above Saint-Martin and below the 440 has a similar problem, but at that point the highway is 4 lanes wide (plus the off-ramp branch).
dwgs 20:28 on 2019-08-07 Permalink
Bert, I drove the 640 and took the ramp for the 15N less than half an hour before the accident on the 440 and it was very similar to what you described. It was my first time taking that route and I was shaking my head at the bad design. I had to cut in to the line but only because by the time my GPS told me to move over for the off ramp I was already more than halfway along the backup.