Dozens of vehicles crash into buildings in Hamilton every year. Is it bad driving, or bad street design?

Dave Ellis actually felt relief as he stared at the silver hatchback sticking out of the mangled mess that used to be the glass entry to his Main Street East laundromat.

The owner of Splash Laundry Co. was sitting in his back office at the corner of Balmoral Avenue and Main on June 28 when he heard a bang followed by a louder crash. A fearful Ellis raced outside to find a car halfway inside his building - just metres from counter-lined bay windows where customers sip coffee and plug in laptops.

At 4 p.m. on a weekday, it could have been a deadly disaster. By dumb luck, no one was hurt.

Normally on a Tuesday afternoon we'd have easily half-a-dozen people sitting around," said Ellis, a former Hamilton police officer. By the grace of God, no one was in there aside from a single employee folding laundry in the back."

The crash damage spurred an inspection and repair order from the city building department. That was a novel experience for Ellis - but it is pretty common in Hamilton.

Since 2018, at least 176 vehicle impacts" with homes, businesses or other buildings have prompted inspections by the city building department, or an annual average of 41 over the last four full years.

That's higher than the average number of similar inspections cited by larger cities like Toronto (5), Ottawa (10) and Mississauga (12). But worth noting: it is not clear if the trigger for such building safety checks differs between cities.

Hamilton's building department noted most such inspections are prompted by less serious crashes than a vehicle shooting through the wall of a laundromat. For example, a homeowner accidentally reversing a car into their own garage door could trigger a safety check, too.

Of the 27 vehicle impact crashes that spurred building inspections in 2021, only seven are reflected in police-reported collision data.

Still, social media is full of images highlighting what happens when an out-of-control sedan weighing 3,300 pounds hurtles into a building.

Property damage aside, the larger concern is the risk of death - a growing source of outrage in a city where nine people have already died while simply walking on streets or sidewalks in the first half of this year.

You've probably seen photos of some of the more infamous near-misses.

Like two different cars over four years that smashed through the front window of the Big Top Family Restaurant at Main and Sherman Avenue. In both cases, the restaurant was closed - but images show the invading vehicles scattering tables and chairs where diners had sat hours earlier.

Or how about the illegal drive-through of the Cannon coffee shop on Ottawa Street in 2020 - luckily before it opened in the morning - by an allegedly impaired driver. And just last week, an RV apparently drove into the patio of a new beach strip restaurant that has yet to open to the public.

Fortunately, many of the scariest building crashes documented by The Spec in recent years have happened late at night, minimizing the chance of injury. But not all building-bashing collisions end without casualties.

A teen driver suffered serious injuries in 2018 after a reported street race ended with a sedan slamming into the wall of a King Street West apartment so hard the brick wall partially collapsed.

And while not technically a building, a two-car collision just last week sent one vehicle crashing into a bus shelter in Stoney Creek, seriously injuring a 12-year-old boy.

On the upside, the number of inspection-worthy building crashes appears to be trending down. Vehicle impacts spurred 27 inspections last year in Hamilton, 45 in each of 2019 and 2020 and 48 in 2018. Ellis' unwanted vehicular visitor was the latest of 11 so far in 2022.

But is Hamilton more prone to violent drive-thrus? Opinions vary.

Hamilton police traffic Sgt. Dwayne Barnes said he isn't convinced Hamilton actually sees more car-smashed buildings than other large cities, although that is not something the service specifically tracks.

But if you want to know why cars end up sticking out of buildings, Barnes suggested speeding and impaired driving are among the likely culprits.Speeding is a major factor in so many serious collisions," he said. If you want to save a life, drive the speed limit."

City collision data over the past five years shows 18 per cent of all police-reported collisions involved drivers losing control" of a vehicle, while speeding was blamed in more than 17 per cent of crashes.

Coun. Nrinder Nann has expressed frustration online about the number of vehicles plowing into businesses in her ward. She said the inspection numbers appear to back up what many people feel is true about Hamilton roads."

I believe road design must absolutely be a factor along with driver behaviour (and) speeding," she said.

Tom Flood sees the bashed building phenomena as a symptom of Hamilton's systemic" problem of major streets designed to allow speeding traffic.

The fact that we have a five-lane highway (Main Street) running across the lower city, I imagine that has to play a role," said the cycling dad and vocal road safety advocate.

Certainly some of the highest-profile car versus building crashes have happened on Hamilton's wider one-ways like Main, King and Cannon streets.

Lawyer Mark Koch watched in growing disbelief as three different cars crashed into his office at Main and Sanford Avenue over several years - including two that literally ended up in my waiting room." He eventually added protective bollards outside the building, which he has since sold.

Safety bollards were also installed in front of Hamilton's Catholic Children's Aid Society building to ward off wayward vehicles. Those bollards protected the building as recently as June 25 - but not the nearby SoBi bikeshare stand wiped out by an airborne sedan that blew through the intersection of King and Sanford Avenue.

Koch said in the past he wrote the city in vain" with safety suggestions, noting in particular motorists often turn dangerously off wide one-way Main Street from the wrong lane. Nann, for her part, said she believes bollards should be added near the Big Top restaurant, too.

Transportation operations director Mike Field said the city is always evaluating collision hot spots and has added specific concrete protections for particular buildings in the past, including an oft-battered home near the Sherman Cut.

But Hamilton is also looking at converting speedy Main Street to two-way traffic - and the same change will happen on King Street if the city's off-again, on-again light rail transit project goes ahead.

The city has also recently adopted a new complete streets" design guide meant to ensure new or rebuilt streets are safe for all users. That could mean fewer auto lanes, dedicated transit or bike lanes and wider sidewalks, for example.

Ellis said he would love to see chronic" speeding addressed on his easterly stretch of Main, noting his intersection sees routine collisions. In the meantime, though, he is also going to ask the city for safety bollards to go in on the corner to prevent future vehicular invaders.

I'm worried it could happen again, for sure," he said.

Matthew Van Dongen is a transportation and environment reporter at The Spectator. mvandongen@thespec.com