Rai trial day 8

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The Crown has wrapped it’s case against the man who crashed his truck into the Skyway Bridge two years ago.

Sukvhinder Singh Rai will be acquitted on one of the charges in the Skyway Bridge trial, that being impaired driving over .80 and the other impaired charge is in serious jeopardy, so The Crown is hoping that the dangerous driving and mischief endangering life charges stick.

For the final witness crown prosecutor, Todd Norman called on an expert in the technology used to lift the bin of a dump truck, and that witness says the truck did not raise on it’s own.

Testing done on the controls used to raise the bin left a hydraulic lift expert with one conclusion.

Randy Lamey stated, “to have the box raise, it needed a command.”

Lamey did his tests almost a month after the crash. In a video you can see the two switches used to raise and lower the trucks bin.

Lamey laid out the procedure in four steps.

First, push the clutch to the floor, second, shift the truck into neutral third, engage the PTO or black lever, and finally switch the yellow lever into the raise position.

During his test Lamey found that the black lever was likely left in the on position at the trucks final stop.

Court has already heard that Sukhvinder Singh Rai stopped at Triple M Metals where he dumped a load shortly before his truck crashed into the Skyway Bridge.

Court has also seen images of the truck driving with the bin down just two kilometers from the bridge.

An OPP Collision Reconstruction report concluded that the bin began to raise at the base of the Skyway Bridge as the truck went up the incline and that the bin was fully raised by the time it reached the top at 3:35pm July 31st, 2014.

Lamey said that they tested to see if the bin could have raised on its own because of residual pressure inside the hydraulic system. But in court Lamey said, “we were able to discount that theory completely.”

While the hydraulic system was working at 100%, there were serious concerns about the safety of the vehicle itself.

During cross examination, Lamey revealed that there was a serious safety breach within the truck.

First, there was a light missing from the lift controls that notify a driver if the lift is engaged. Also, the controls were installed backwards, and they were missing an interlock system that ensures that one of the levers cannot be left in the on position.

At the end of the day it was revealed that the test results had come back from the Centre of Forensic Science regarding the bottle of liquid found in Rai’s cooler that day.  They said it was a standard spirit, like vodka or gin.

The defence will start calling their own witnesses, Wednesday.