Speed limit hikes led to more deaths: Study
Report says number of fatal crashes more than doubled on roads with higher speeds
An increase in fatalities, injuries, crashes and insurance claims on some B.C. roads is linked to a 2014 decision by the former provincial government to raise speed limits on the rural highways, according to a new study.
“Our evaluation found increases in fatalities, injury, and total crashes on the road segments where speed limits were increased,” according to the report, published in a journal called Sustainability. The study was led by Vancouver General Hospital emergency room physician Dr. Jeff Brubacher and co-authors included road safety engineers at the UBC Okanagan campus.
“There was a marked deterioration in road safety on the affected roads. The number of fatal crashes more than doubled (118 per cent increase) on roads with higher speed limits.”
Speed limits on 1,300 kilometres of provincial highways in rural areas across the province were raised in July 2014. A maximum speed of 120 kilometres per hour on the B.C. roads made them the fastest in Canada.
Earlier this year, a massive multi-vehicle crash near Hope, on the Coquihalla Highway, resulted in more than two dozen people being taken to hospitals. It was another in a series of crashes on the highway that had safety experts saying the speed limit should be reduced to even lower than what it was in 2014.
Dr. Brubacher told Postmedia News that “things got a lot worse” on the highways where speed limits increased, especially on the Coquihalla and Malahat highways.
“You will recall there was a lot of controversy at the time. Public health experts said ‘don’t do this’ and so did I,” said Brubacher, a road safety researcher who is also an associate professor at the University of British Columbia. He chairs the British Columbia Road Safety Strategy Research and Data Committee and also sits on the City of Vancouver Traffic Safety Advisory group.
“All of the pro-speed arguments, like the one that people were already driving over the speed limit, have been disproven in this research. The pro-speed advocates who’ve lobbied for speed limit increases have based their view on crappy data at the time. The mistake should be admitted and speed rolled back because, from a safety point of view, it was the wrong decision,” he said.
Brubacher and his University of B.C. co-authors conclude their study by saying that communities across Canada, “should learn from this experience and resist pressure from pro speed advocates to raise speed limits without due consideration to road safety.