So what's the deal with this signal at Rees? Is it a malfunction? Are people running the red? Are they looking at the wrong signal?
Nothing is wrong with it. The only way for a streetcar and a car to collide is for one of them to run the red--whether they do it deliberately or out of ignorance is unknowable and irrelevant.
As for today's incident, I was tempted to call it a cut and dry example of a driver running the left turn red and getting hit by a streetcar, but I'm not so sure. At the scene I overheard one person from onboard the streetcar involved in the collision, and separately one bystander who was there and saw it happen, state that the car was running the left turn red and was blocking the ROW while the streetcar was still all the way at Robertson; they said that the streetcar driver was going significantly faster than the speed limit and that he laid on his horn before even getting to Robertson having seen the car on the ROW that early, and that he barely even applied the brakes and appeared to deliberately hit the car (as some sort of revenge for being in the ROW?). If that is true, although the car had run a red light and was illegally blocking the ROW, the streetcar driver could have easily avoided the accident and deliberately hit the car.
However there is no way to know exactly what happened--I heard two bystanders say that, but it is impossible to be sure. The previous two at Queen's Quay and Simcoe were, according to witnesses, cut and dry cases of drivers running the left turn red without a single look and getting t-boned by a streetcar proceeding perfectly legally with no chance to stop, but this one seems to be more complicated, whatever the truth is.
Certainly interesting, though, and it certainly screwed service up badly during rush hour. And for anyone keeping track, in the month of June, according to twitter.com/ttcnotices on Queen's Quay the following occurred: June 6th collision at Rees, June 9th collision at Lower Simcoe, June 11th collision at Lower Simcoe, June 14th collision at Lower Simcoe, June 15th unauthorized personnel in the tunnel, June 16th collision at Rees. The collisions on the 11th, 14th, and 16th involved streetcars (I saw each of the scenes shortly after the accidents), not sure about the others, but these all caused holds or turnbacks.