Good Roads General Registration Form | 2025 Good Roads Conference Registration Form
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Municipal Liability: Traffic Collisions
Courtyard by Marriott, 5050 Creekbank Road, Mississauga Ontario L4W 5R28:30 am - 5:00 pm
Municipal Liability: Traffic Collisions
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 Content
- 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
Who Should Attend?
The primary target audience of this course is transportation professionals and risk managers
involved with road design, inspection, and maintenance. Participants do not need to have formal engineering education. Examples of municipal positions that would be interested in taking the course include:
- 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.
Prerequisites
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 the Slido app. The polls can be accessed through the Slido app or a browser – no registration required.
Evaluation Process
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.
Participants will receive a certificate of completion upon passing the course.
Essam Dabbour, Ph.D., RSP1, F.ITE, P. Eng.
The lead trainer of the course is Dr. Essam Dabbour, who is registered as a professional engineer (P. Eng.) and designated as a consulting engineer by Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO).
Dr. Dabbour is also a Fellow of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) and certified as a Road Safety Professional - Level 1 (RSP1) and Road Safety Auditor. Dr. Dabbour has a Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering with more than 35 years of practical and academic experience in the planning, design, construction, inspection, and maintenance of all road facilities. Dr. Dabbour is currently the President of EDA Forensics. Before this, Dr. Dabbour held various leading positions in the consulting engineering sector, and he was also a university professor who taught different courses related to the field of road design and traffic safety. In addition to his current position at EDA Forensics, Dr. Dabbour is also an Adjunct Professor of Civil Engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University, where he has been providing academic and technical advice for several student groups to successfully complete their graduation projects.
Dr. Dabbour is also an active researcher in the field of road design and traffic safety, and he presented his research findings in more than 30 international conferences around the world. Furthermore, Dr. Dabbour has also published his research findings in more than 60 technical papers published in highly reputable peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and refereed conference proceedings. Dr. Dabbour is also a reviewer for several leading scientific journals to review technical papers in the field of road design and traffic safety.
Jason Young, M.A.Sc., P. Eng.
The co-trainer of the course is Mr. Jason Young who has been a licensed professional engineer in Ontario since 2002. Mr. Young has been qualified by several courts in Ontario, Quebec, P.E.I., and California as an expert on more than 20 occasions, including the fields of human factors, biomechanical assessment, and reconstruction of traffic accidents. As a forensic expert engineer in the field for over 20 years, Mr. Young has investigated over 2500 forensic engineering cases, including cases related to human factors, biomechanical assessment, and the reconstruction of traffic collisions.
Mr. Young has been retained as an expert engineer by more than 30 municipalities across Ontario (e.g., Ottawa, York Region, Simcoe, Waterloo, Chatham, Thunder Bay, etc.) as well as the Ministry of Transportation Ontario (MTO). Mr. Young has also been a featured guest expert in the media regarding human factors in traffic collisions, including CBC, CTV, Global News, the National Post, and Macleans Canada.
Location
Courtyard by Marriott, 5050 Creekbank Road, Mississauga Ontario L4W 5R2
Time
April 14, 2025 - Apr 168:30 am - 5:00 pm
