decision posted by the CRT<\/a> on Wednesday (Aug. 12), tribunal member Christopher C. Rivers said ICBC must amend its records to find Ameen Akinola Abass-Opere 0 percent responsible for the June 20, 2024 crash and pay him $125 within 14 days to reimburse his tribunal fees. <\/p>\nThe crash occurred on June 20, 2024, as Akinola attempted to merge onto King George Boulevard from the Scott Road\/120 Street on-ramp, and he was struck by a semi-truck and trailer. The decision names the driver as HB. <\/p>\n
Traffic was heavy at the time of the crash, with vehicles in the merge lane and King George Boulevard travelling slowly before merging in a \u201czipper fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Akinola was driving a Tesla equipped with cameras that captured the crash. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn the instant immediately before impact, the driver\u2019s-side rear-facing camera showed the semi-truck bumper was behind Tesla\u2019s rear tire. The semi slowed, with the Tesla almost entirely ahead of it. The Tesla slowed, nearly to a stop, but the semi continued forward and rubbed the Tesla\u2019s back left corner with its front right bumper, at or just behind Tesla\u2019s rear tire. The semi then stopped abruptly, the Tesla moved forward, and the drivers pulled over to exchange information,\u201d reads the decision. <\/p>\n
ICBC originally found Akinola 100 per cent at fault and cited \u201cMotor Vehicle Act (MVA) section 151, which prohibits a driver from changing lanes unless they can do so in safety and in no way affecting the travel of another vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n
ICBC also described Akinola as the \u201cservient driver\u201d as he was merging into the \u201cdominant driver\u2019s\u201d\/HB\u2019s lane. So the onus was on Akinola to prove why the semi-truck was negligent. <\/p>\n
Akinola claimed that ICBC had not properly investigated the crash and had made its decision before viewing the dashcam footage and collecting all the evidence. <\/p>\n
The tribunal did not consider ICBC\u2019s initial decision but reviewed ICBC\u2019s CL722 form, which includes \u201ca detailed responsibility assessment\u201d issued by the Responsibility Review Team. <\/p>\n
Rivers found that the review team had done a proper investigation but found ICBC\u2019s decision \u201cunreasonable.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe rules of the road, including the MVA\u2019s provisions and the dominant\/servient principle, are informative in determining responsibility. However, I must also consider the reasonableness of each driver\u2019s actions,\u201d Rivers said.<\/p>\n
He found that ICBC did not address Akinola\u2019s arguments regarding the semi-truck driver\u2019s negligence.<\/p>\n
\u201cAkinola argues that HB rear-ended his Tesla, so I should presume HB was 100% liable. However, I agree with ICBC that while HB was largely behind Mr. Akinola, they were not fully behind him, such that the accident was a rear-end collision,\u201d Rivers said. \u201cI agree, generally, with Mr. Akinola that a commercial driver has an obligation to be aware of vehicles in any blind spots it may have. I find that is especially the case when a vehicle has travelled beside, and in front of, a truck for an extended period of time, as Mr. Akinola had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Akinola had expected that HB would let him merge into his lane, just as other drivers in front of him had done. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile this does not give Mr. Akinola an undisputed right to the left lane, I find that pattern should have alerted HB to the possibility a vehicle would merge in the space ahead,\u201d Rivers said. \u201cAs ICBC wrote in its CL722, after the crash, Mr. Akinola asked HB, \u2018Didn\u2019t you see me?\u2019 HB said he told Mr. Akinola, \u2018Your lane merges into my lane.\u2019 I find HB\u2019s response suggests HB was focused on their strict entitlement to the lane instead of on preventing an accident. Notably, HB never told ICBC they did not see Mr. Akinola.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result, Rivers found Akinola 0 per cent responsible for the crash. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tribunal rules driver not at fault in 2024 Surrey crash, orders ICBC to amend records Published 4:00 pm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":857827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-857826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}