Family sues to make road safer a year after death

17-year-old killed when car rolled over on the ‘biggest fear’ in Sooke — Highway 14

“There are enough memorial signs along that road.”

The winding highway between Sooke and Victoria has long left Nicole Navarrete with a nervous feeling. When each of her four children began driving, she didn’t rest until they were home at night.

The call came almost one year ago: Carter, at 17 her youngest, had died in a car crash on Sooke Road, which is also designated Highway 14. On Sept. 2, 2016, at 10:47 p.m., a car driven by Carter’s friend left the highway near Parkland Road, rolled over and came to rest upside down in a forested area on the other side of the road. Carter died at the scene.

Yellow sunflowers, hockey sticks, photos and cards decorate a roadside memorial to the dogloving hockey player, reminding thousands of drivers every day of the potential for disaster on the increasingly busy highway.

“It’s still hard to believe it’s true,” Nicole said.

In March, Nicole and former husband Mauricio Navarrete launched a civil suit against the young driver, the District of Sooke, the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and the company contracted to do highway maintenance.

“Being on that road is not safe,” Mauricio said. “We want improvements to the road where Carter died. For me, it’s trying to get that road safer for the people of today and for tomorrow.”

Nicole added: “If you ask any parent out in Sooke what their biggest fear is, it would be their kids driving that road.”

At night, you can’t even distinguish the lines on the road, said Mauricio, who lives on Sooke Road. “You’re almost gauging where you’re driving, instead of seeing the road.”

Carter’s sister Brooklyn said she feels sick to her stomach when she drives through some of the corners.

“The pressure of other drivers makes it feel unsafe,” she said. “I think the speed limit is 50 kilometres an hour or 60 … and some of those corners are so sharp you can’t even see. So then you go slower around those spots. When you’re in a smaller vehicle, the big truck lights blind you.”

Carter, who was in Grade 12 at Belmont Secondary and an assistant captain with the Sooke Thunderbirds hockey team, had gone with his friend to McDonald’s for french fries just before the crash.

Sooke RCMP Cpl. Joe Holmes said the collision is still under investigation.

ICBC statistics released Friday reveal there were 1,275 crashes on Highway 14 between Veterans Memorial Parkway in Colwood and Sooke River Road in Sooke in the 10 years from 2006 to the end of 2015. Of those, 575 resulted in injury or fatality.

The section that runs through Sooke, from West Coast Road to the border with Metchosin, had 792 crashes in the same period, including 313 that resulted in injury or fatality. (These sections of road overlap for about 7.5 kilometres between Sooke River Road and the Sooke-Metchosin border near Connie Road.)

About 14,000 vehicles use the 22-kilometre stretch of highway every day.

The Navarretes’ civil suit blames Carter’s death on the defendants’ negligence to ensure the road was safe. It claims the driver was speeding and that the district, the province and the road maintenance company failed to address risk factors related to safety on Sooke Road “when they knew about the increasing amount of injuries and fatalities on the stretch of highway where the crash occurred.”

It was well-known in Sooke that the roadway was poorly designed and in need of re-engineering and reconstruction, the claim says.

The defendants failed to install reflectors and reflective tiles on the road and posts to illuminate bends in the roadway, and failed to properly maintain the shoulder and lane-line markings near the crash site, allowing them to deteriorate and become a danger to motorists, the claim says.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

On Sept. 5, B.C. Supreme Court will hear an application by the District of Sooke to dismiss the action against them. The district is arguing it isn’t responsible for the care, maintenance, road design, lighting or signage on the highway.

Sooke Mayor Maja Tait wasn’t able to comment on the civil suit, but repeated her concerns about the safety of the road.

“Our role is to work with the province and advocate concerns about residents to the province and to push for safer improvements, which will lead to a safer road,” Tait said.

A study by the Transportation Ministry is looking into short-term and long-term safety improvements for Highway 14 between Langford and Sooke. It’s expected to be completed by the fall.

Meanwhile, Tait wants to meet with Transportation Minister Claire Trevena to talk about improvements to the road.

Between 2012 and 2016, the province invested $7.28 million to improve the highway. Interim safety upgrades — new intersection lights, better signs and road markings — are underway at the Parkland, Gillespie and Connie Road intersections on Highway 14. The ministry has also applied new higher-quality reflective glass bead to the paint lines to improve visibility at night.

This year, Brooklyn found out she was pregnant with a boy due to be born within days of Carter’s Sept. 27 birthday.

His name: Kai Carter.

“It was a big shock,” Nicole said. “Last year, we had the worst Christmas we’ll ever have in our lives. We didn’t even want to celebrate. To go to this year, to have a new baby — it’s going to be wonderful.”