Snowplow blow
Ontario Provincial Police were reportedly dumbfounded by a video that surfaced online last week showing a “shocking” collision on the 401.
The video, which was posted to Twitter on Jan. 13, shows a large yellow tractor-trailer t-boning and dragging a silver Honda Civic sedan across four lanes of traffic, eventually slamming it into the shoulder.
According to OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt, the driver of the tractor-trailer has said he had absolutely no idea his truck ran a 1,250-kilogram sedan right off the road. The incident occurred on Highway 401 between Bayview Avenue and Yonge Street.
“He claims he was changing lanes and did not see that car,” said Schmidt. “I don’t know if that was possible or not but he certainly made quite the contact with that car.”
Even further, the Civic’s driver never reported the collision to authorities, said Schmidt.
“Typically, in these kinds of situations we will have the author of the video or we will have the victim coming forward saying, ‘a car hit me, cut me off or smashed into me and took off,’ so we will have at least one side of the story,” Schmidt told CP24 at the time of the incident. “But we don’t have either side of the story here. There are a lot of questions and we have zero answers right now.”
Authorities identified both drivers last Wednesday. A 40-year-old man from Scarborough, Ont. was behind the wheel of the Civic and, thankfully, sustained no serious injuries.
“[The tractor trailer] never slowed down,” said the man, who chose to only be identified as Chris. “He kept on moving at the same speed and I was screaming and honking, but that didn’t help at all. At one point I saw behind me that he was going on an angle towards a barrier wall and…well, that was really scary.”
No charges have been laid yet and the investigation will continue.
Hot new feature
Autonomous vehicles are—allegedly—the future of the automotive industry. With all the self-driving concept cars hitting the road in recent years, it appears some normal vehicles are a little heated over the abilities of their independently-operating counterparts.
On Dec. 30, a video was uploaded to YouTube showing a red Mini Cooper completely engulfed in flames in a roadside parking space. As the flames begin to escalate, so do the car’s non-existent self-driving features; the Mini begins moving by itself, inching forward to collide with the car unsuspectingly parked in front of it.
The vehicle even veers to the right at one point in a feeble attempt to get around the vehicle in front of it.
“I was just walking by the river and saw a fire, so I started filming,” said the bystander, who filmed the encounter.
The incident occurred in Ljubljana, Slovenia. There were no injuries.
An instrumental escape
Yamaha is warning people not to try and squeeze inside musical instrument cases after reports that former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn fled Japan concealed inside one.
After Ghosn’s escape from Japan in late 2019, the Wall Street Journal released a report claiming that the former Nissan executive fled the country inside a large musical instrument case made by Yamaha.
According to the Wall Street Journal’s report, the case—said to be for a large speaker system—was so large that inspectors at Osaka’s Kansai International Airport were unable to scan it. As a result, Ghosn snuck himself out of the country and into Lebanon through Turkey just before the new year.
Ghosn has repeatedly declined to reveal how he slipped past airport security and has yet to confirm media reports that accomplices smuggled him in the instrument case.
He did, however, condemn reports that alleged his escape involved a double-bass case—though the speaker argument still stands undisputed, according to
Reports of the alleged escape method have created a buzz online, resulting in Twitter users attempting to fit themselves inside their own musical instrument cases alongside the hashtag #CarlosGhosnChallenge.
“We won’t mention the reason, but there have been many tweets about climbing inside large musical instrument cases,” Yamaha said in a tweet. “A warning after any unfortunate accident would be too late, so we ask everyone not to try it.”
The former CEO—who has held positions with Michelin North America, Renault, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Russian automaker AvtoVAZ—is accused of hiding earnings, transferring investment losses to Nissan and misappropriating company funds.
