The warm afterglow of a Christmas family gathering was shattered for a St. Catharines motorist Monday, when a sheet of ice from off a transport truck struck his vehicle on highway 401, smashing his windshield.

Tristan Brown was driving along highway 401 in Trenton, when a commercial truck merged onto the highway. Brown moved over to give the truck some space when he noticed chunks of ice flying off the vehicle. He sped up, attempting to avoid it but was unsuccessful, as a large piece of ice hit his windshield.

“It was like it was in slow motion,” Brown, a 29-year-old healthcare worker from St. Catharines, said. “You could just see it and I knew right away that it was going to hit my truck if I slowed down or sped up. I just saw it coming. It was surreal almost.”

The windshield of his Ford F-150 pickup truck was severely cracked but no glass entered the car. His rearview mirror almost broke off, hanging and swinging back and forth.

“The wild thing is what if I swerved and there was someone next to me and I hit a family or something? Brutal,” Brown said.

He immediately began honking and sped up, to get the truck driver’s attention. And once he did, the pair pulled over to the side of the road and called the police. When a police officer arrived, no charges were laid against the driver of the commercial truck.

“The truck driver did not receive a ticket or even a warning,” Brown said in an email describing the incident.

Const. Juliane Porritt of the Ontario Provincial Police said cases like this are classed as a motor vehicle collision. In such instances, “when the damage done to the secondary vehicle is under $2,000 the drivers exchange information and it’s up to them to settle the claim through their insurance company.”

The damages to Brown’s car cost a total of $1,144, which his insurance covered.

According to Porritt, under the Highway Traffic Act, “no one can drive a vehicle on the highway if it’s dangerous or unsafe or endangers other people.” But, Porritt added, “every situation is different, every collision is different.”

If the truck driver appears to have been negligent, they could get a ticket, but if it appears they have done everything they can to be safe, it’s possible no charges may be laid she explained.

According to David Dietrich, vice president of human resources at the ERB Group of Companies, the company that operates the truck that Brown had the accident with, the truck driver spent 18 minutes cleaning ice and snow off of his trailer before driving.

The ERB Group of Companies have ice and snow removal stations at all of their terminals in Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba. They also require their drivers to clear snow and ice off of their vehicles prior to travelling on any public roads or highways, according to Dietrich.

But clearing snow and ice off the top of trucks can be difficult, according to Marco Beghetto, a spokesperson for the Ontario Trucking Association.

While individual truck companies have policies in place to remove snow and ice, and apparatuses to do so at their own terminals, not all businesses have that infrastructure in place. And truck drivers cannot get on top of their trailers to clean off the ice themselves, as “it’s a workplace hazard violation.”

“Ideally you’d like every trucking company and every shipper and every customer and every retail location to have something to remove snow and ice especially during heavy snowstorms but the practicality of it is just a lot more complicated than that,” Beghetto said.

Even with these apparatuses in place, they’re not always enough. Ice and snow can build up on a truck while it’s on the road, at a shipper’s or receiver’s premises, or at a truck stop.

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And trucks aren’t the only vehicles that need to be aware of ice and snow on their surfaces.

“Coincidentally, on the exact same day, Dec. 19, one of our trucks in Metcalfe, ON was hit by a piece of ice flying off a passenger car and had its windshield broken,” Dietrich said. “Snow and ice flying off vehicles is not just a commercial truck phenomenon.”