Highway speed study has ‘gaps,’ former transport minister says
Todd Stone, the Kamloops MLA who, as provincial transportation minister, brought in higher speed limits on 1,300 kilometres of rural highways, says new research that implicates the increases in more motor vehicle crashes, fatalities and injuries, is “full of gaps.”
The federal government-funded study by a University of B.C. team was published in the journal Sustainability. The team of researchers was led by emergency physician Dr. Jeff Brubacher, one of Canada’s most prolific researchers in the area of road safety.
After an article was published by Postmedia newspapers, Stone sent an email to The Vancouver Sun complaining about the study. He said he spent two days collecting more facts and context.
“To say that it is full of gaps and data analysis challenges is an understatement,” Stone said about the study. He also told Kamloops This Week that the findings were “irresponsible” since they don’t take weather, distracted driving and other factors into consideration.
Stone could not be reached for further comment Monday.
But the authors stand by their work, the most substantive published research done on the effects of the changes that meant B.C. has the highest speed limits — 120 km/h on some highways — in Canada.
Current Transportation Minister Claire Trevena said last week that the provincial government is reviewing the study, along with its own analysis, and will make an announcement soon about whether to roll back speeds to former limits. Higher speed limits went into effect on some of the most precarious highways in B.C., notably the Coquihalla, where there have been several fatal, multi-vehicle crashes in recent years.
Premier John Horgan also weighed in on the matter, telling some journalists in Victoria that he found the study findings shocking and that cabinet would soon be re-evaluating the speed-limit hikes.
At the time in 2014, when the Liberal government implemented higher speed limits on many road segments across the province, a chorus of health experts and road-safety professionals pleaded against the changes. All health authority leaders, along with the provincial medical health officer, warned that increasing speed limits would lead to not only more crashes but also more serious injuries. The then-chief medical health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, said speed is the main cause in one-third of motor vehicle fatalities and that research is conclusive that increased speeds cause more crashes, injuries and deaths.
Brubacher said his team analyzed more than 16 years of data on fatal crashes, auto-insurance claims and ambulance dispatches for road trauma.
“We studied crashes that occurred on (or within half a kilometre) of roads affected by the speed-limit changes. We also looked at crashes that occurred on roads nearby those where the speed limits where changed and across the entire province,” he said.
Crash rates across the whole province didn’t change, but on roads where the speed limits were increased, there was a 43 per cent increase in auto-insurance claims, a 30 per cent increase in claims that resulted in an injury and an estimated 118 per cent increase in fatal crashes (the equivalent of 15 more fatal crashes per year), Brubacher said.