Westboro bus crash driver has not responded to summons, inquest hears
Update on witness list given on day 3 of fact-finding deep dive
Aissatou Diallo, the driver of the Ottawa double-decker bus in the collision that left three passengers dead in 2019, has not responded to a summons to testify at an ongoing inquest into the tragedy.
Lawyers leading the inquest, which is examining the circumstances of the OC Transpo crash to try to prevent similar calamities, gave an update on the witness list on Friday.
Peter Napier said the inquest served Diallo with a summons requiring her to attend. She has not replied to that and "we have reason to believe that she is currently outside the jurisdiction."
Diallo remains on the witness list and "we will update you if these circumstances change," Napier added.
The inquest went on to hear Friday from its first witness: Iain Knight, an expert in road vehicle safety.
Jurors spent Thursday going through a raft of material submitted into the inquest record on Wednesday.
WATCH | Looking back on the crash and its lingering impacts:
Did not testify at trial
After the January 2019 collision, Diallo was charged with 38 counts of dangerous driving causing death or bodily harm. She was acquitted in a judge-only trial in 2021.
The judge wrote that to convict her "would be to cast the net far too wide." The trial had heard about a number of factors, including road markings Diallo's defence team said were confusing.
As a defendant at her trial, Diallo was not obligated to testify and she did not.
Even before the trial, Diallo faced racist, misogynistic and "horrible jokes about women drivers," said Laura Shantz of the advocacy group Ottawa Transit Riders.
On the inquest's first day on Wednesday, a number of exhibits were entered into the record, including a detailed breakdown of the bus's speed as it approached and then entered a 50 kilomtere per hour zone near the station, and a rundown of OC Transpo training and Diallo's work experience at the transit agency.
That document touched on a previous, albeit less serious, collision Diallo was involved in one month before the Westboro crash. The cause of that previous incident was found to be "operator error and failure to adjust speed to road conditions."
OC Tranpso said Diallo had lost control of the bus on black ice and had an issue with the steering, according to a Ministry of Transportation official who testified at the inquest on Friday.
Diallo never operated another OC Transpo bus after the Westboro crash, according to that document.
Double-decker collision stats
The inquest is homing in on a number of areas, including driver training at OC Transpo and "oversight and planning" for double-decker safety in the city.
Double-deckers were first added to Ottawa's fleet in 2012. An OC Transpo study before then found that "capacity increases" to respond to ridership growth could only be made with higher-capacity buses, according to one of the inquest documents tabled earlier this week.
Double-deckers remain in use in Ottawa but the city plans to pare back their use significantly over the coming decade due to "current and future ridership, capacity, and service level estimates."
Knight, an expert based in the U.K., was asked Friday about collision statistics for double-deckers and single-deck buses in both London and Canada.
Double-deckers and single-deckers make up 72 per cent and 28 per cent of Transport For London's fleet, respectively, with double-deckers typically being used on the busiest routes, Knight said. London's collision database indicates double-deckers account for 73 per cent of collisions, single-deckers 27 per cent — "broadly aligned with what you would expect," according to Knight.
Knight, citing an OC Transpo report into the Westboro crash, said that in an analysis of the rate of collisions between double-deckers, 40-foot single-deckers and 60-foot single-deckers, double-deckers had "quite a lot fewer collisions per kilometre."
That analysis did not take into account some factors, though, including Ottawa's longer (60 foot) single-deck buses versus London's (40 foot), Knight said.
At the time of the Westboro crash, double-deckers made up 16 per cent of OC Transpo's fleet (not counting Para-Transpo minibuses).
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