Stunning dash cam captures highway crash in Northern Ontario

CTV Toronto: Crazy crash caught on dash-cam Tamara Cherry has more on a wild highway crash in northern Ontario that was caught on a driver's dash-board camera.

A Manitoba driver has been charged with failing to yield to traffic after a dash-mounted camera captured a cringe-worthy collision on a Northern Ontario highway.

The March 1 video shows Ralph Ireland and his wife Ifka Falipovich driving east along Highway 17 near Kenora, Ont. while listening to the radio.

As Ireland's vehicle approaches a side road, a pickup truck can be seen, hauling a trailer. The driver slows down but doesn’t come to a full stop before pulling off the side road and into the path of Ireland’s vehicle.

Ireland and his wife can be heard swearing as they try to swerve around the truck, to no avail.

"It looked like he was forgetting to stop, so I swung to the left and he just continued out in front of me," Ireland said. But there was not enough room between the truck and the snow bank for Ireland to safely get around.

"We had a choice of hitting his door, or hitting the trailer or hitting the back of the truck. I hit the brakes to slow down as much as I could, and we hit the box of his truck."

A loud crunching noise can be heard as the vehicles collide. Pieces of debris can be seen flying into the air.

Ireland told CTV Toronto the driver got out and apologized, saying the collision was his fault. Ireland said the driver told them he forgot he'd been pulling a trailer, and was trying to accelerate around their vehicle.

All three of them waited for the police and an ambulance together.

The driver who pulled in front of Ireland, a 36-year-old Manitoba man, was charged with failing to yield to traffic.

After a trip to the hospital, Ireland and his wife returned to their truck to retrieve their belongings. The truck was smashed, and so was the camera, but they found the memory card intact.

Ireland had bought the camera mounted on his dash to catch anyone who might try to break into his truck. However, when he posted the crash video on Facebook, a friend pointed something out: the other driver appears to have his hand up to his ear.

"I was pretty upset after seeing that," Ireland said. He and his wife had invested a lot of money in the truck, but his insurance will only be covering the basics, not the add-ons he'd purchased.

Ireland showed the video to the Ontario Provincial Police, who told CTV Toronto it appears the man was on his cellphone at the time of the collision.

"The dash camera video evidence is pretty powerful, and it speaks a lot to exactly what occurred," OPP Sgt. Pierre Chamberland said.