A Well Documented Crash: Johnson Street Bridge, July 5, 2022

This post is a deep dive into the moments leading up to the driver of a semi-truck hitting a person on a bicycle back in July of 2022. Unusually, the crash was caught on a webcam. The events leading to the crash suggest a pressing need for red light and speed cameras in Victoria.

Setting the Stage

News coverage of crashes suffers from a particular problem: there's initial coverage of the crash that includes information available at the time, such as the extent of the injuries, the location of the crash, etc. Some of the articles include information about the vehicle, some include crash statistics, and some focus on traffic disruptions (the VicNews article has been updated, but the original lede remains in the URL "downtown-victoria-sees-road-closure-after-pedestrian-struck-by-vehicle"). The coverage would improve if news organizations and the police followed journalistic best practices (e.g., see this media style guide from Vision Zero Vancouver,) but they all suffer from a fundamental problem: by the time the facts are known the incident is no longer news. We almost never hear about the results of the police investigation, and, except in the most egregious cases, never hear about legal action (or the lack of it).

Back in 2022 there was a crash at the entrance to the Johnson Street Bridge. The driver of a truck ran a red light while turning right from Store Street onto the bridge and injured a person riding a bike. This crash received a lot of attention because the Swans Hotel harbour web cam caught the crash on video.

The Crash

I want to start out by saying that, as far as I know from what was written at the time, that the person who was hit by the truck miraculously escaped without serious injury, though they did spend time in hospital. I hope that they recovered fully.

As is usual after a crash like this, there was a lot of discussion about whose "fault" the crash was, whether the person on the bike should have looked, etc. Quite a few people felt that the victim was somehow at fault because… well…. social media.

The web cam looks downward so it wasn't obvious what all the lights were doing. I was still on Twitter at the time, and did a detailed, if amateur, analysis of the crash. I am not a professional. I took a video of the intersection that showed all of the lights changing, synchronized it with the web cam footage, and added a timer.

Here's the video. It shows the moments leading up to a serious crash, but not the crash itself, so do not play it unless you're OK with seeing that:

You can see that the bikes didn't move forward until the green "bike" light came on, and the truck and the car before it both ran the red, and the car before that ran the yellow.

The following timeline is based on what I posted at the time. The images are exported frames from the video.

0.00 Seconds: The Video Starts

As many people know, on Tuesday a truck driver in Victoria made an illegal right turn onto the Johnson Street Bridge and struck someone on a bike. Many people have been engaging in victim blaming. The rest of this thread shows a timeline.

The pictures in the sequence are from a side by side video of the crash and the light cycle at that intersection (obviously taken at a different time).

Warning: the frames below don't show the crash, but do show the moments leading up to it.

The start of the video

0.26 Seconds: The Signal Turns Yellow

The signal turns yellow

The white SUV visible at the bottom of the right panel was in the intersection when the light turned yellow, and it's driver proceeded through exactly as they should have.

3.26 Seconds: The Black Car is Visible in the Intersection

The black car becomes visible

The black car is more visible

At the point where the black car first becomes visible, the signal had been yellow for three seconds. There's a significant gap (my count puts it at 3.8 seconds) between the black car and the white car, and it appears to me that in the just over a half a second between the two frames above, that the black car has significantly closed the gap.

Traffic was flowing smoothly, and the Johnson Street light was green (see below), so it seems likely that the black car's driver may have sped up to "beat" the yellow light.

The Johnson Street light is green

4.22 Seconds: The Signal Turns Red

The signal turns red

Whether or not the driver of the black car was trying to "beat the light", it was in the intersection when the light turned red, and the driver continued through as required. 

5.09 Seconds: The White Car is Visible

The white car becomes visible

This is where the white car is first visible in the intersection. It's travelling about 4.1 seconds behind the black car that's in front of it. The white car is going to turn onto the bridge, and the driver is definitely running a red light.

5.22 Seconds: The Bike Signal Turns Green

This is just a fraction of a second after the previous frame, and the turning white car is a bit more visible.

The bike signal turns green

6.22 Seconds: The Truck First Enters the Intersection

At this point, the signal has been red for 2 seconds, and turned yellow nearly six seconds earlier. The truck's driver has absolutely no business being in the intersection.

The truck enters the intersection

The truck is more visible

Note the "No Turn on Red" Signs:

The No Turn on Red signs

By the way, even if "right turn on red" was permitted here (which it's not), a driver is required to come to a complete stop, perform a shoulder check, and yield the right of way to pedestrians, vehicles, and cyclists.

6.39 Seconds: The Person Riding a Bike Starts to Straighten their Font Wheel

The rider starts to straighten the front wheel

At this point, 1.2 seconds after the bicycle signal has turned green, the bicycle has not started to move yet. My assumption is they're straightening their front wheel in anticipation of the white car passing through.

6.99 Seconds: The First Visible Motion of the Bike's Rear Wheel

The first visible motion of the rear wheel

At 1.8 seconds after the bicycle signal turned green, the bicycle first starts to move. Note that at this point the truck is behind the bicycle and is not visibly turning.

7.59 Seconds: The Truck is Visibly Turning

The truck's starts to turn

This is where the truck's turn first becomes apparent. The truck is roughly even with the bicycle. 

8.82 Seconds: The Person on the Bike Initiates Evasive Action

The bike's rider starts evasive action

At this point the front wheel is clearly turning right, so it appears that the person on the bike has initiated evasive action.

10.03 Seconds: A Living, Breathing, Person is Hit By a 20,000 kg Truck

No picture here, and the impact is not in the included video either. The picture isn't important.

What's important is what the Victoria Police department eloquently wrote on January 19, 2026 after responding to a person walking, riding a bike, or riding a scooter was hit by a motor vehicle every single day that year:

These are not statistics. These are people - your sister, mother, brother, aunts, kids, colleagues, uncles - all walking to work, cycling to school, crossing the street, or simply moving through our community. Each collision carries the potential for life-altering injury or loss.

Conclusions and Aftermath

When interpreting this, remember that human reaction times are in the 200-300 ms range. In this case, a few things are clear:

• First, far from "dashing into" the intersection (as one social media commenter said), the person on the bike clearly waited until after the bike signal had turned green, and until it was clear that white car would have cleared. They were aware of their surroundings.
• At the time the person on the bike started moving, the truck had not clearly started its turn, and the bicycle light had been green for nearly two seconds.
• Just over a second after the truck had visibly started to turn, the person on the bicycle had already started evasive action.

As in most complex situations, lots of changes at lots of different times could have prevented this. But the idea that the person on the bike, as some people on social media said, "rode into the side of the truck", as if the truck was a stationary target, is simply absurd.

Unusually, this crash prompted some action—people noted that the crash would have been far less severe if the truck had been equipped with side-guards. The City of Victoria voted to follow Vancouver's policy and mandate side guards on all municipally-owned and contracted trucks. While welcome, and probably the most that the City could do under their mandate, this action will not reduce the number of crashes.

One thing that is very clear here is that at least two, and maybe three, drivers chose to "beat the light", and that if even one of them had followed the law that this crash wouldn't have happened. 

An Entirely Unsurprising Coincidence

The picture of the no right turn on red signs I showed above is from the timing video that I took. In an entirely unsurprising coincidence, it caught a car turning right that clearly entered the intersection illegally. Here's how you can tell:

0.00 seconds: the signal turns yellow

0.84 seconds: red car crosses

2.99 seconds: white car first enters frame

3.98 seconds signal turns red

4.98 seconds: bike signal turns green

The black car that you see on the left in the final frame is the third car to go through the intersection since the light turned yellow. In fact, it's barely more than half way through a full five seconds after the light turned. As DriveSmartBC says, a yellow light tells you that you must stop before you enter the intersection unless the stop cannot be made in safety. The black car, and possibly the white car, were being driven by people in a hurry.

What's the Point Already?

Go to any intersection with a traffic light in most Canadian or US cities, and watch what happens when the signal turns yellow: drivers sail through well past the point the signal turns red. Some even speed up.

Go to any road and watch people driving make the choice to travel 10, 20, 30 kph over the speed limit.

Go to any intersection with a stop sign and watch drivers roll through without fully stopping. At least most of them slow down a lot.

A common trope is that people walking or riding bikes ignore the rules, but you need to be wilfully blind to not see how many drivers flout them as well. And the impacts are not the same. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, studies don't back up the trope anyway.

A compact sedan weighs around 1,300 kg, and a full-size SUV can weigh 2,600 kg. A loaded semi-trailer can weigh over 30,000 kg. The kinetic energy of a full-size SUV travelling 40 kph is about 66 times greater that the kinetic energy of a person riding an ebike at 25 kph, and the kinetic energy of a semi-truck is 768 times greater.

We can have safer roads. We know it's possible because many other countries do! The principles behind safer streets are, collectively, called Vision Zero, and, when we take them seriously, they work.

Many of the changes to bring safer streets involve improved infrastructure. Sidewalks, separated bike lanes, "daylighting" intersections, leading pedestrian intervals, road design to lower speeds, and more all contribute to less blood shed on our city streets.

Infrastructure changes are important, but slow to implement, and that's where automatic enforcement, such as red light and speed cameras, comes in.

The City of Victoria has been doing a lot. The city has lowered speed limits, has been slowly removing slip lanes, has been adding crosswalks, has been improving sidewalks, has been implementing a safe bike and roll network, and has been improving intersection designs. But physical changes to roads, like removing a slip lane, or redesigning an intersection, are expensive both in terms of construction cost and planning time.

Red light and speed camera installations don't require a lot of planning, and the costs are at least partially covered by fines (not to mention lower medical costs, lower car insurance premiums, fewer lost wages, and less bloodshed, pain, and suffering). Furthermore, red light and speed cameras avoid many of the problems with police traffic stops.

Back in 2023, the City of Victoria asked the province to either roll out red light and speed cameras at high risk intersections across Victoria, or to allow the City to do it themselves. As far as I can see, there's been no visible progress.

But there needs to be.

What You Can Do

In British Columbia, red light and speed cameras are under the control of the Honorable Nina Krieger, Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General.

In Victoria, a number of City Councillors are committed to making our streets safer. Councillor Dave Thompson has two comprehensive posts on these issues in his blog, and those posts make a good starting point for exploring the issue from a City of Victoria perspective.

• Car crashes in Victoria
• Time for more red light and speed cameras

I've written my letter. If you want to write as well, Minister Krieger's email address is PSSG.Minister@gov.bc.ca.

Beyond that, I encourage you to support local, provincial, and federal candidates that understand the actual underlying causes of dangerous roads and are committed to fixing them through fact based policy.

And, finally, if you're driving, don't try to "beat the light." Even if you've looked and have a clear path, like the white car in the video, the person driving the truck behind you may not be as careful.

References

Jim Mayer, "A Letter on Red Light and Speed Cameras," Boomin in Victoria (blog), last updated February 1, 2026, https://www.boomin-in-victoria.ca/2026/02/a-letter-on-red-light-and-speed-cameras.html

Darron Kloster, "Pedestrian hit by pickup in downtown Victoria intersection," Times Colonist, last updated January 16, 2026, https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/pedestrian-hit-by-pickup-in-downtown-victoria-intersection-11753326

Laura Brougham, "Pedestrian hit at major downtown Victoria intersection: police," CHEK News, last updated January 16, 2026, https://cheknews.ca/pedestrian-hit-at-major-downtown-victoria-intersection-police-1300111/

Bailey Seymour, "UPDATE: Pedestrian seriously injured in downtown Victoria collision," Victoria News, published January 16, 2026, https://vicnews.com/2026/01/16/downtown-victoria-sees-road-closure-after-pedestrian-struck-by-vehicle/

"Media Style Guide," Vision Zero Vancouver, published January, 2024, https://visionzerovancouver.ca/media-style-guide/

Jeff Bell, "Cyclist struck by truck's rear wheel near Johnson Street Bridge", Times Colonist, published July 6, 2022, https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/cyclist-struck-by-trucks-rear-wheel-near-johnson-street-bridge-5551723

 "Right Turn on Red," DriveSmartBC, published April 10, 2022, https://www.drivesmartbc.ca/turns/right-turn-red

Victoria Police Department (Facebook), January 19, 2026, https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17tbWLtF2Y/

Catherine Garret & Kamil Karamali, "Victoria bike crash sparks renewed calls for safety bars on trucks," Global News, last updated July 7, 2022, https://globalnews.ca/news/8971773/victoria-bike-crash-sparks-renewed-calls-for-safety-bars-on-trucks/

Jake Romphf, "Victoria to install side guards on its trucks; cities want feds to mandate them", Victoria News, published August 18, 2022, https://vicnews.com/2022/08/18/victoria-to-install-side-guards-on-its-trucks-cities-want-feds-to-mandate-them/ 

"A Yellow Light Means Stop," DriveSmartBC, published September 18, 2023, https://www.drivesmartbc.ca/intersections/yellow-light-means-stop

"Motor Vehicle Act", The Province of British Columbia, current to January 27, 2026, https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/96318_05#section128

 Jim Mayer, "Cheap Shots and Lawless Cyclists", Boomin in Victoria (blog), April 14, 2024, https://www.boomin-in-victoria.ca/2024/04/cheap-shots-and-lawless-cyclists.html

Carlton Reid, "Cyclists Break Far Fewer Road Rules Than Motorists, Finds New Video Study," Forbes, last updated May 20, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclists-break-far-fewer-road-rules-than-motorists-finds-new-video-study/

Angie Schmitt, "Study: Cyclists Don’t Break Traffic Laws Any More Than Drivers Do," StreetsBlog USA, published January 3, 2018, https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/03/study-cyclists-dont-break-traffic-laws-any-more-than-drivers-do 

"What is Vision Zero," Vision Zero Network, https://visionzeronetwork.org/about/what-is-vision-zero/

Leah Shahum, "OPINION: Where Cities are Investing, Vision Zero is Working," StreetsBlog USA, last updated November 28, 2025, https://usa.streetsblog.org/2025/11/28/opinion-where-cities-are-investing-vision-zero-is-working

Jessie Singer, "There Are No Accidents," Simon & Schuster,  February 28, 2023, https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/There-Are-No-Accidents/Jessie-Singer/9781982129682

Charles Marohn, "It's time to end the routine traffic stop", Strong Towns, October 31, 2017, https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/10/31/the-routine-traffic-stop 

David Thompson and Matt Dell, "Advocacy – red light cameras and speed cameras," City of Victoria City Council, August 29, 2023, https://pub-victoria.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=92515

Dave Thompson, "Car crashes in Victoria," Dave Thompson Victoria (blog), July 19, 2025, https://davethompsonvictoria.ca/car-crashes-in-victoria/

Dave Thompson, "Time for more red light and speed cameras," Dave Thompson Victoria (blog), July 20, 2025, https://davethompsonvictoria.ca/time-for-more-red-light-and-speed-cameras/