Courses

A car accident scene with an overturned vehicle, emergency responders attending to the situation, and smoke in the background.

Municipal Liability: Traffic Collisions

This course teaches municipalities how to understand and mitigate their legal liability for providing safe road facilities through proper design, inspection, maintenance, and documentation practices.
A car accident scene with an overturned vehicle, emergency responders attending to the situation, and smoke in the background.

Registration Info

Cancelled

Fee:
Member Rate - $1,890.00
Duration:
3 Days

What You’ll Learn

  • Liability in designing roadways and Intersections 
  • Liability in implementing traffic control devices 
  • Liability in planning and designing road facilities dedicated to vulnerable road users 
  • Liability in designing roadway/intersection lighting 
  • Liability in routine road patrol and maintenance 
  • Liability in winter patrol and maintenance 
  • The importance of conducting routine traffic safety studies 
  • Municipal liability in Ontario’s civil court system 
  • The benefits of using emerging technologies 
  • Identifying and documenting design/maintenance flaws 
  • Practical methods to address design/maintenance flaws 
  • Understanding experts’ perspectives when analyzing cases related to municipal liability 
  • Several case studies 

Course Description

The course provides an in-depth understanding of municipalities’ exposure to liability due to their legal obligation to provide safe road facilities to the public, and how to avoid that costly exposure. The course explains the legal principle of “joint and several liability” in Canadian courts, and practical steps that municipalities can take to fulfill their legal obligations through proper design, inspection, maintenance, and documentation of road facilities. 

Several real-life examples will be discussed to explain how municipalities were found legally liable. 

Course Details

The primary target audience of this course is transportation professionals and risk managers involved with road design, inspection, and maintenance.  

  • Transportation manager 
  • Transportation planning manager 
  • Transportation operations supervisor 
  • Transportation engineer 
  • Transportation planner 
  • Transportation technician 
  • Transportation technologist 
  • Traffic technician 
  • Road superintendent 
  • Any position involved with traffic/road safety 
  • Any managerial position involved with public works, transportation services, risk management, or design and construction 
  • Course participants are encouraged to make themselves familiar with the level-of-service standards adopted by their respective municipalities regarding the design, inspection, and maintenance of road facilities. 
  • Course participants are also required to bring an Internet-connected device (tablet, laptop, or smartphone) to participate in course polls using Slido. The polls can be accessed through the Slido app or a browser – no registration required. 

Your grade will be calculated as follows: 

In-class Course Project: 50% 

Final online test (20 multiple-choice questions): 50% 

A final grade of 60% is required to pass the course. 

Learn more about Traffic Collision liability as the instructors of this course joined the Good Roads Podcast to discuss liability in traffic collisions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttSZ6OCQipY 

Participants who attend all virtual lessons will receive a certificate of completion.  

Professional development credits may be available through OACETT, PEO PEAK, etc. Please contact them for details. 

Essam Dabbour, Ph.D., RSP1, F.ITE, P. Eng.

Dr. Dabbour brings more than 30 years of experience in road design and traffic safety. He is President of EDA Forensics, where he specializes in the engineering analysis of municipal and occupiers' liability litigation, and serves as Adjunct Professor of Civil Engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University. His research has been presented at more than 25 international conferences and published in over 60 peer-reviewed technical papers. Dr. Dabbour holds professional designations as a Road Safety Professional Level 1 (RSP1), Road Safety Auditor, and Consulting Engineer with Professional Engineers Ontario, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.