Freak accident

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To me it looks like he is going alot faster than the slope of that hill would make him go, he looks to be doing 60-70.  Maybe its just the camera angle but that hill does not look like such a steep grade that it would make anything go as fast as he was going.  Was he trying to dump it in the water, but they would drown that way.  I wonder why he didnt just turn the wheel and flip the thing on its side comming down the hill.    I hope i am wrong but maybe it was intentional, maybe someone was nagging him about missing the boat so he decided to take matters into his own hands, with fatal results. 

I wonder how his wife is doing, i pray for her recovery.
 
djw2112 said:
To me it looks like he is going alot faster than the slope of that hill would make him go, he looks to be doing 60-70.  Maybe its just the camera angle but that hill does not look like such a steep grade that it would make anything go as fast as he was going.  Was he trying to dump it in the water, but they would drown that way.  I wonder why he didnt just turn the wheel and flip the thing on its side comming down the hill.    I hope i am wrong but maybe it was intentional, maybe someone was nagging him about missing the boat so he decided to take matters into his own hands, with fatal results. 

I wonder how his wife is doing, i pray for her recovery.
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Having been there and having seen the cite of the incident, I'm torn between your view and what other observers have said.  It is a long steep hill and, less than 15 minutes before the accident, the line of vehicles waiting to get on the ferry stretched to the very top.  My speculation is that the driver of the RV didn't expect to encounter such a long line of cars so he had to slam on his brakes which didn't work.  Rather than ramming into the line of vehicles he then chose to go down the empty left lane of the road which had no traffic because the ferry unload had taken place several minutes earlier.

The questions of how could he achieve such a high speed and why he didn't try a variety of things, including using the parking brake, remain unanswered.  As for him being frustrated about not making the ferry, that is unlikely since the line of cars that didn't get on was quite long; he surely wasn't at the front of the line when the ramps went up. 

Lastly, the news reports said that the man and the woman were residents of different cities.  There was no statement that they were husband and wife.  Who knows, maybe he asked her to marry him and she turned him down?  I guess we'll never know.
 
Some years ago I inherited a car from my grandfather. A few years later I had someone pull out in front of me. I hit the brakes real hard, brakes worked for a fraction of a second then gave out. Fortunately the one pulling out was accelerating quite well as I hit my parking brake and downshifted, avoiding an accident. I nursed it home and found a rear metal brake line burst open from rust (the car came from up north and was about 24 years old) so I replaced all the brake lines.
I'm guessing - in Quebec - they also salt the roads.
 
darsben said:
WOW the speculation contrary to the facts is amazing. UNbelievable
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With all due respect, I don't think there is anything in my post which is contrary to established fact.  We were there that day and saw the long line of vehicles waiting to get on the ferry only minutes before the accident happened.  It's quite possible that the driver of the RV encountered the line, tried to stop and discovered he couldn't.
 
Has the link changed? Or is there another post with a different video I'm thinking of? The video I watched the other day was steadier, from a slightly different angle (less head-on, more towards the driver's side), and actually showed the coach hitting the deck and collapsing. I also recall seeing at least one person running away.
 
Joezeppy said:
Has the link changed? Or is there another post with a different video I'm thinking of? The video I watched the other day was steadier, from a slightly different angle (less head-on, more towards the driver's side), and actually showed the coach hitting the deck and collapsing. I also recall seeing at least one person running away.
Click to expand...
No thats the video that clearly shows no line
 
I just looked art the Google map and doesn't appear to me that the hill was that steep. Also it looks like they should have had plenty of time to pull off either side of the road in order to stop.  Don't know if we'll ever know what happened unless his passenger recalls.
 
    Stu, I finally had time to dig up the article, here it is:

Ed

https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2019/06/26/accident-de-tadoussac-son-vehicule-recreatif-etait-son-bebe
 
darsben said:
the line reference is in response to Docj's post
Click to expand...

You're free to believe what you wish.  We were actually there and can vouch for the fact that ~15 minutes before the accident the line was far, far longer than could have been accommodated on a single ferry.  Therefore, it was quite reasonable to expect that there were still vehicles in line as the ferry pulled away from the pier.  With all due respect, the video doesn't demonstrate that there was no line, only that you can't see it in that view.  The ferry was already quite a few feet from the pier when the RV went over the barrier.  Traffic in the line isn't permitted to come up to the barrier; if they did there would be no way for vehicles exiting the next ferry to get off.

To help provide a better perspective, I've attached a screen shot from a frame of the video that has been linked to.  Clearly, there was a long line of traffic waiting to get on the ferry.
 

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If I may interject, let he who is an accident scene specialist step forward. Absent that, let's all agree that notwithstanding various camera angles, local knowledge, etc no one really knows what caused the accident. Early on the local officials deemed it exactly that, an accident, and probable mechanical failure, and I have seen nothing that alters that early conclusion.


People were hurt and died in this accident, and it serves no purpose to bicker amongst yourselves guessing what happened. Unless the NTSB takes enough interest to reconstruct the accident so as to find the cause conclusively, there's nothing more to see here. Let's move along.
 
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