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A driver has been charged after a section of Hwy. 401 eastbound near Newtonville Rd. in Clarington was closed earlier Monday following a serious two-vehicle collision that sent two people to hospital with serious injuries.
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The Ontario Provincial Police said an eastbound vehicle lost a wheel assembly, which crossed into the westbound lanes and struck a passing westbound vehicle.
Police said the vehicle’s two occupants — a man and woman in their 70s — sustained serious and minor injuries, respectively.
OPP said the woman was airlifted to a trauma centre. Her injuries are listed as serious, but not life-threatening.
“The tire and wheel assembly bounced across the lanes, colliding into the occupant compartment, crushing the roof down into the occupant space, resulting in those serious injuries,” OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt said in a video posted online.
Schmidt said the driver of the eastbound vehicle has been charged with having detached parts coming from their vehicle.
Fatality last fall
Last September, one man died after a detached truck wheel flew into oncoming traffic on the QEW in St. Catharines, Ont.
The crash happened in the Toronto-bound lanes of the QEW just east of Niagara St. when the front wheel of a truck headed for Niagara Falls detached and struck a vehicle that was carrying two U.S. citizens. The 52-year-old driver was pronounced dead at the scene.
The passenger, a 52-year-old man, was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.
Police said the driver of the pickup truck who lost the wheel was a 33-year-old from Niagara Falls, N.Y., and was the vehicle’s lone occupant and wasn’t injured.
OPP later said the man was charged with detached part an operating an unsafe vehicle.
Wheels coming off and striking other vehicles major problem in the past
Loose wheels striking vehicles on highways have done major damage in the past including, in some cases, leading to fatalities.
Last July, OPP said a wheel became detached from a vehicle on Hwy. 400 in Innisfil and struck four vehicles at Hwy. 88, causing damage but there were no injuries.
In June 2023, two people were hospitalized with minor injuries after a wheel came off a vehicle on Hwy. 401 in the westbound lanes near Dixon Rd.
A flying wheel turned fatal in October 2022 on the QEW at Winston Churchill Blvd.
In August 2020, a 24-year-old man died after a tire hit his vehicle on the 401 in Scarborough.
That same summer on the 401 in Scarborough, four people were sent to hospital after a set of wheels were separated from a tractor trailer and the driver of that truck was charged.
A series of ’90s incidents involving truck wheels flying off on major highways — leading to several fatalities — led to tougher legislation.
An absolute liability law came into effect in 1997, making owners who lose wheels responsible with no defence.
