New Brunswick struggles with highest road death rate in the country
July 29, 2024
By
The Canadian Press
New Brunswick had the worst record for road fatalities in the nation last year, part of an unsettling rise in vehicular deaths across Canada, according to a new study.
The report, commissioned by the personal injury law firm Preszler, compiled its findings from Statistics Canada data, RCMP and local police force statistics, and local media reports to come up with the most reliable figures for 2023.
It showed that New Brunswick had the highest proportion of vehicular deaths, 8.2 per 100,000 people. Next highest on the list was Manitoba (7.1), while Quebec (4.2) and Ontario (4.1) had the lowest rates.
Essentially, someone was twice as likely to be killed on a New Brunswick roadway than an Ontario one last year.
“Why is New Brunswick so bad? Why is there a recent increase? We haven’t figured that out because it’s not something we’ve studied in depth,” said Joseph Fearon, a lawyer with Preszler in Toronto, in an interview.
“But based on the work we do as a national law firm, we have a pretty good idea of why the accidents are happening. And typically, we see the worst accidents when there are higher speeds, which happens more often in rural areas. And we also see bigger cities trying to reduce serious traffic accidents, putting the work into it.”
He said Canada’s biggest metropolis has red-light cameras at intersections and speed cameras all over the city.
“People get tickets automatically. You drive 40 kilometres an hour in a 30-zone, you’re getting a speeding ticket in the mail. That really slows people down.”
Originally from Cole Harbour, N.S., Fearon is familiar with Maritime roads. He says one of the greatest hazards is rural, two-lane highways, where there’s always a risk of head-on collisions. All it takes is a moment of inattention or carelessness and a vehicle can cross the centreline and crash into an oncoming automobile at great speed.
“I’m a personal injury lawyer and I drive slow. I drive my Toronto-born wife insane. But when you see it every day, you know the consequences.”
The good news is the rate of road deaths has gone down dramatically over 30 years across Canada. The bad news, the study found, is that after a steep drop during the first year of the pandemic, when fewer people were on the roads, there’s been a sharp climb in roadway carnage.
In 2022, the most recent year for which the official data is available, the number of people who lost their lives on Canadian roads was 1,931 – the highest seen since 2013.
And the law firm’s findings based on 2023 data for the 10 provinces suggest that the total number of motor vehicle fatalities exceeded 2,000 last year and is likely to remain just as high in 2024.
Brunswick News asked for Richard Ames, the province’s minister of transportation and infrastructure, to seek his opinion on ways New Brunswick could reduce its high roadway fatality rate, but spokesman Jason Hoyt declined the request.
Instead, he pushed the question to law enforcement agencies.
“Without any information on causes or other factors, the department wouldn’t be able to provide comment at this time,” Hoyt wrote in an email.
Kay Teschke, a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia who has studied traffic safety much of her career, said there were several measures the provincial government could take to reduce collisions.
For starters, undivided two-lane roads should never have a speed limit above 80 km/per hour.
“Two-lane roads with traffic going in both directions are among the most dangerous types of highways for serious injuries and fatal crashes,” said the academic, who was born in Moncton.
“A very interesting study was done in France several years ago, which showed the fatality rates on various roads, and it showed a very clear, straight line up as the speed limit went up. But not on highways with the highest speeds. Now why is that? Because on those big freeways, the lanes are separated and there are no head-on collisions, the most predominately fatal kind of crash.”
She recounted that in B.C., a big push was made about a decade ago to increase speed limits on highways where people were constantly breaking the law, irritated by the slow 80 km per hour maximum. Many of those highway signs were changed to 90 or 100 km per hour.
“Needless to say, health officials said this isn’t going to work, and it didn’t. All those roads that increased their speed limits, had increases in fatal crashes. The Highways Department then went back and reduced the speed limit on a bunch of those.”
Another measure is to install high-tension median cable barriers between lanes with traffic going in both directions, basically metal posts with wires that can send a vehicle back into its lane if it veers toward the centreline.
A 2008 study in Sweden showed that roads fitted with median and side barriers reduced deaths by between 85 and 90 per cent.
Although such barriers can be expensive to install, a study in New Zealand showed that on the Centennial Highway in Wellington, the cost of crashes before a barrier was installed was $4.8 million Canadian a year. Afterwards, it was $54,000 a year.
The cost of installing the devices on an 11-km section of Calgary’s busy Deerfoot Trail in 2007 was about $92 a metre, or three times cheaper than installing a full concrete barrier, according to Canadian Consulting Engineer.
Before the installation, one person on average a year was killed in a crossover collision. Since then, head-on collisions have been eliminated.
“If you have a lot of roadway, you don’t necessarily have to install them everywhere,” Teschke advised. “They can be installed on steep curves, blind hills, high-traffic areas and so on.”
Another safety improvement would be the use of traffic enforcement cameras.
“There’s strong evidence that speed cameras and red-light cameras are an effective way to reduce violations,” the retired professor said.
“They enforce much more broadly, and fairly, because you can install many of the devices in places where you don’t have as many officers. And they are not subject to the whims of an officer. Yes, there’s pushback against it because people think it’s a cash grab. But the way to get around that is to make sure it’s very obvious the cameras are there. If people are warned about the cameras, they’ll comply.”
But New Brunswick has a budget problem when it comes to roads. It is saddled with the most lane kilometres of highway per person of any province in Canada, according to the Government of New Brunswick’s own figures. In other words, it has a lot of asphalt without a lot of people to pay for it.
Gary Forward, Woodstock’s police chief, was mindful of tight budgets when Brunswick News asked him about the study. As the president of the New Brunswick Association of Chiefs of Police, he said many of the measures offered by the professor would indeed help.
But he also said there were steps people could take themselves to make their journeys safer.
“The motoring public have to be invested in this,” he said. “If you’re using tires that haven’t been properly inspected, tires that are worn down, and you elect to go out and drive in inclement weather at speeds that aren’t supported by your faulty equipment, that would certainly contribute to those high accident rates.”
Unsafe passing and speeding, the chief said, were also huge factors.
“The police have a responsibility and need to enforce the statutes, but again, the people who are driving need to make sure they have enough time to get to their destination, so they don’t have to speed or pass recklessly, at the detriment to their own safety and others. On a rainy summer day, for instance, the risk of hydroplaning is real. People need to slow down.”
Print this page