Ten people were hurt, five of them critically, when three vehicles collided at John Wise Line and Fairview Road on Thursday evening. OPP has closed this rural Central Elgin intersection for a collision investigation at least three times in the past four years, and Thursday’s crash comes eight months after a resident asked county council to review safety there.
OPP say the crash happened around 6:15 p.m. Thursday, August 20, when a pickup truck and an SUV collided, then struck a second SUV that was stopped at the intersection. The five people in the first SUV were taken to hospital with serious, life-threatening injuries. Three people in the pickup truck went to hospital with injuries that are not life-threatening. Two people in the second SUV had minor injuries and were not taken to hospital. Both roads were closed for hours: John Wise Line between Sunset Road and Centennial Road, and Fairview Road between Southdale Line and Fruit Ridge Line. OPP reported the intersection fully reopened at 2:50 a.m. Friday.
OPP has not yet put out a full news release on the crash. LocVox has asked OPP in writing about the condition of the five people with life-threatening injuries, whether charges are expected, and whether speed or another factor is being looked at. We have not heard back yet, and we will share what OPP tells us once they do. Anyone who saw the crash or has dashcam footage is asked to call OPP’s non-emergency line at 1-888-310-1122.
This is not the first time OPP has shut this intersection down. In July 2022, Global News reported, OPP said a two-vehicle collision at the same intersection sent five people to hospital, one of them with serious injuries. Then, on the evening of June 17, 2025, OPP closed the intersection again for a collision investigation, with the same closure areas as Thursday’s crash. Three collision-linked closures at one rural crossroads in four years is worth watching. It is not, on its own, proof of what is causing them, and OPP has not given a cause for any of the three.
Those three are only the closures that made the public record. A couple who has lived at the corner of the intersection since 1987 told CTV News London after Thursday’s crash that they have seen three serious crashes there in the past month alone, that they are often the first to reach the wrecked vehicles, and that they keep an emergency kit at home for exactly that reason. A resident of the intersection also wrote to LocVox this week saying the roads have been closed multiple times this year. LocVox has asked OPP in writing for the intersection’s full five-year collision history and has not yet received an answer.
Both roads belong to Elgin County, not the City of St. Thomas or the province: John Wise Line is County Road 45 and Fairview Road is County Road 22. That matters, because it is county council, not city council, that would decide on any changes.
Six months after that 2025 closure, in December 2025, resident Bernie Schuit brought a petition to Elgin County council asking for a formal review of this exact intersection, citing limited sightlines, driver confusion and near misses. County council directed staff to look into it and report back to a future Committee of the Whole meeting.
The same petition also raised speed and safety on Sunset Road in Port Stanley. Council did lower the speed limit there to 70 km/h in January 2026, one of six speed-zone changes approved that night, though the county’s own account of that meeting does not tie the change to the petition. LocVox read every related set of county council highlights published since, through this July, and none reports back on the John Wise Line and Fairview Road review. In March 2026, council adopted a broader Transportation Master Plan that includes planning for safety improvements at intersections, the kind of process this request would move through.
The county’s most recent published traffic counts at this crossroads, from 2019, show about 3,200 vehicles a day on John Wise Line just west of Fairview Road, and about 4,000 a day on Fairview Road just south of John Wise Line. Both are rural through roads rather than quiet side streets. At the intersection itself, Fairview Road is the through road and John Wise Line traffic stops.
Fairview Road becomes Fairview Avenue as it runs north into the city, and that in-town stretch has its own recent safety record. As LocVox reported last month, Fairview Avenue at Elm Street showed up among St. Thomas Police’s top three crash locations in three of the last five quarterly reports, though St. Thomas Police does not publish per-location collision counts, and the one report that does break out numbers showed the busiest locations tied at just two collisions each. That is a city intersection policed by St. Thomas Police, roughly four kilometres north of Thursday’s crash, and a different dataset entirely. It does not point to a shared cause, but it is the same road corridor, and worth keeping an eye on.
LocVox has put questions in writing to both OPP and Elgin County, including when the county’s safety review of this intersection will finally report back to Committee of the Whole, and will follow up when they answer.
Sources: OPP West Region, Facebook post on the collision and road closures, Elgin County, “From the Council Chambers,” December 11, 2025, CTV News London, “10 people injured following three-vehicle collision in Central Elgin”, CTV News London, “Intersection of danger: five critical, residents demand action after horrific crash”
By Anthony Zruna · About the LocVox Newsroom
Update - Aug. 27: After this story was published, residents living at the intersection told CTV News London, and wrote to LocVox, that serious crashes there are far more frequent than the publicly announced closures suggest, with three in the past month alone. This story now notes that the three documented closures are a minimum, not a count of all collisions. LocVox has asked OPP for the intersection’s five-year collision data and Elgin County for the status of its safety review.
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