They day a fully-loaded minivan can stop that much faster than a near-empty X5 is the day it's time to roll up all the roads.

rip,

damn, 8 and 9 years old only.

X5 having a single occupant in the vehicle is a factor police are using to see if the driver was speeding, weaving in and out of traffic and driving in an unsafe manner. How many single occupant drivers you see travelling in the HOV lane on hwy 1 is driving safe? Almost none, because the reason why they are in the HOV lane is because they want to go wherever they want FASTER.

The bottom line is the van got rear ended, meaning the person at fault is the X5 driver. Like it or not, he's 100% at fault. whether or not he's going to get charge for negligence is up to witnesses and findings at the crash site.

Disagree for various reasons, the largest one being who the fuck expects a car to be at a DEAD FUCKING HALT in the middle of a highway, especially if the visibility isn't peachy.

'Nuff said. If you're paying attention to the road and where you're driving, you don't have to "expect" anything.

Any takers on odds the X5 driver was on the phone too? Guarantee you it's one of the first things the investigators will be looking at.

I believe that it is the bmw drivers fault 100% but only because they rear-ended the van.

having said that i do believe that the women driving the van also takes a large responsibility in this.. in my opinion at least.

when your driving you recognize problem situations, for example when i'm coming next to a car i try to get out of their blind spot as quickly as i can, because countless times they have started changing lanes and just about hit me and i swerve to get out of their way. i do know that if they hit me its their fault but i still do my part to give me that much more safety.

Same with slamming on my breaks, i know its their fault but use your head and don't do that. i have witnessed on a couple occasions people getting off the #1 and go from 100 to 10 in a second and it almost causes a pile up on the off ramp. It won't be their fault but they still can get hurt.

so if this van did have a mechanical problem and was unable to move over the extra 6 feet to the left then thats a shame. but i doubt it was enough not to glide over.


doing things out of the ordinary hurts your odds, regardless of whos fault it is you can still get hurt.

http://www.theprovince.com/boys+pile...715/story.html

According to this article.

We know the driver of the X5 is guilty of driving in the HOV lane while being the sole occupant of the vehicle, same as the lady in the Echo. To figure out who is at fault, first we need to know what happened in the van and why the driver didn't pull the vehicle over onto the shoulder of the road.

Secondly, how long was the van stopped for before the X5 slammed into the broken down vehicle. According to the article, the X5 spun 90 degrees and was then T-boned by the echo. How come the echo didn't stop in time?

With so many if's, there is no way to say who is at fault other than the two vehicles shouldn't have been in the HOV lane. Besides that, any other vehicle travelling at 90 km/h doesn't have a lot of room to react/manuever around a broken down vehicle so even if the echo and X5 was driving in the regular lane, someone else could have hit the van.

As a driver you're suppose to BE ALERT AT ALL TIMES.

the woman in that van might of slammed the brakes once she saw smokes in the van. She probably did so in a panic and didnt think about pulling to the side, it must have been all of a sudden to have an accident like that.

On the other hand, the X5 driver is a pretty idiotic driver to not be able to stop on time. The single occupancy has nothing to do with it. I mean, who haven't done that? Who can really say that they never drove alone in the hov lane?

My theory is that the X5 was tailgating the van and the car behind the x5 was tailing it. The woman suddenly slammed the brakes, hence the sudden impact. If there's any mentioning of long skid marks on the road before the collision, then we can have another theory, but base on what's presented in the news, there's major tailgating there.

And yet there are still tons of rear-end accidents.
And in this case, there was the X5, and then the Echo.

Thiessen added if you're having car troubles on major roads to stay seatbelted in the vehicle, turn on fourway flashers and call for help immediately.

Just because people are supposed to be alert, doesn't mean that all of them are. A lot of drivers only pay attention to the car that's directly in front of them.

Given the X5 has ABS standard, there shouldn't be any skid marks.
It's possible the X5 was tailgateing the van, but no one knows for sure. It's also possible that if it wasn't an X5 but a little sports car, the damage done on the van would/could have been less severe because of the lower impact point and lower energy in the accident due to lower mass. It could have been a big rig that rear ended the van in which case more people could have been injured.
We know the Echo ended up hitting the driverside door of the X5, so I doubt the Echo was tail gateing the SUV.

Also, the surviving 8 year old has spinal injuries so it is possible that they had been stopped for a while and had unbubkled their seatbelts. I thing I recall hearing on the news that some of the passengers in the van was not wearing their safety belts at the time of being rear-ended.

In which case I hate to say it but I would put a lot of fault on the family driving the van, though obviously the BMW has some responsibility since it couldn't stop in time.

^+1, I seriously hope the X5's black box say the driver was weaving in & out of the HOV lane.

Looking at the amount of damage the van had, it's unlikely the X5 rearended the van while tailgating it cause the van suddenly stopped. The amount of force to cause that amount of damage could only have come from the X5 slamming full speed into a the van that had been fully stopped.

Ding ding ding!!!! We have a winner. We have a winner...

best comment yet. way to be objective about it.

just imagine yourself going 100km down the hwy and suddenly see a car right infront of you (what a surprise, it's not moving, BOOM!!!).

i mean, that could have happened to anyone, who could have thought there would be a deadstill car right in the middle of an HOV lane. it's pretty much the van's fault for not pulling over.

Bingo.

Virtually all rear end accidents are the fault of the driver who hit the other car. There are very few exceptions, like if the front vehicle was backing up or did something like intentionally brake to try and cause an accident (like those insurance scammers sometimes do).

Any idiot with half a brain would be able to see something is going on and stop in time.

I still say the X5 driver was in the middle lane, and changes lanes to pass the traffic slowing down to "look" at the stopped van. I bet the Echo was also in the middle lane and decided "if he's going to pass then I'll pass as well".

When the X5 hit the van, it would have decelerated so quickly that the Echo would have no way to avoid also getting involved.

did the drive of the van not put up her warning lights or something?? if not, why didnt she? - thats like the first thing everyone does when they get an engine break.

i blame the death of the kids on the drive of the van + the bmw driver, and not just one person. although personally I think the BMW is more at fault.

the echo only contributes to the death if by hitting the BMW, it catipules the bmw into the van some more. but if the echo hits the bmw, but doesnt causes the bmw to further go into the van, then it didnt contribute.

Reading comprehension much? :confused::confused:

i agree - 99% of the time its the rear enders fault.

but ya, what IF the BMW had two drivers in it. and was driving in the middle lane, and then went into HOV lane cause the middle lane was too slow, and then hit the van.
all this talk about the the person being illegally in the HOV lane was the main cause would be non-sense.

i agree that the scenario you describe is probably what happened. but we cant say with certainty until we get more info.

my bad, ive only read the first article. and ive only slept 6 hours in the last 2 days.

http://www.vancouversun.com/other+ve...547/story.html

looks like the van was stopped for awhile, and other drivers had time to go around it.

Edit: RIP to the kids, and I hope everyone recovers well