Which city’s drivers are the best?

Regina gets bragging rights over Saskatoon in last year’s stats

There’s no comparing Saskatoon and Regina drivers.

No really, you actually can’t do it. But, as has been done by drivers in both cities for years, it’s fun to try right?

“Population-wise, I think Regina drivers are much more cautions than Saskatoon drivers,” said Regina resident Joseph Reynolds, who frequently visits Saskatoon.

“Regina’s probably better,” said Saskatoon resident Devan Salazar, who’s also driven in Regina, “I feel like Saskatoon gets more aggressive as in heavier parking lots or heavier traffic. I don’t know, I guess it just causes more rage and causes more people to lose it.”

According to SGI, drivers in Saskatoon were more likely to be involved in collisions last year than those in Regina.

Regina logged 373 crashes per 10,000 licensed drivers, while the Bridge City had 449 crashes per 10,000.

In total, 27,571 collisions were reported in the province last year. Almost half of those — 49 per cent — occurred in Saskatchewan’s two biggest cities.

Regina saw 5,570 collisions that caused 1,281 injuries and five deaths in 2014. There were 7,829 collisions reported in Saskatoon resulting in 1,473 injuries and seven fatalities.

Despite the higher rate in Saskatoon, it’s a lot more complicated than simply saying Regina has the better drivers to explain why one city experienced more crashes than the other.

“Every year the demographics of drivers change,” said Sgt. Colin Glas, who heads up the Regina Police Service’s traffic safety unit.

“Everybody gets a year older and we’ve got new drivers that come on the road,” he said.

The other problem Glas pointed out is SGI’s numbers don’t include crashes where the damage was below $5,000 and didn’t result in any charges or injuries. So all those minor fender benders are unaccounted for.

Sgt. Wendell Barsi, who works with the Saskatoon Police Service’s traffic unit, added that each city has its good and bad drivers.

“We have good drivers everywhere, just like we have drivers that can always do better,” said Barsi.

“There’s way too many variables that come into play. There’s population of the city, there’s road conditions, there’s just (different) amounts of traffic on the road at any given time,” he said.

Peter Park, a civil engineer who specializes in traffic safety, said it makes sense that collisions are more common in a larger, fastergrowing city. Formerly of Saskatoon, he’s now teaching at York University and holds an adjunct professorship at University of Saskatchewan.

Saskatoon has more vehicles and pedestrians on the roads than Regina, which makes collisions more likely, Park explained. Saskatoon is growing faster than the provincial capital (at a rate of 3.2 per cent compared to 2.8 per cent, according to the most recent Statistics Canada data), which means congestion is increasing more rapidly, resulting in greater chances of road rage and impatient driving.

“This isn’t an issue of highway designs or conditions per se,” Park said.

Those who have to deal with all the damaged vehicles in each city also think there’s more at play than just driving ability.

Monty Heiser, owner of Superior Auto Body in Saskatoon, said he believes traffic congestion in the city has got worse due to growth.

“The roads are not designed to handle the amount of traffic that are on the roads here. Trying to go across the bridge in the north end or something is very bad, especially at rush hour,” said Heiser.

And while weather is an “easy scapegoat” says Environment Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips, it might not work when compared with the reality in the two cities.

Between 1981 and 2010 Regina got an average of 100 centimetres of snow every year between the months of September and August. Saskatoon got 91.3.

The average number of days Regina received a measurable snowfall (more than 0.2 centimetres) during that same 30-year period was 56. In Saskatoon it was 55.

And as for icy conditions, the number of days in Regina where the temperature was above freezing during daytime and below freezing at night was an average of 48 days a year. In Saskatoon it was 44.

“We always blame weather on everything. I mean our driving habits, relationships, being late,” said Phillips.

Two Saskatoon driving instructors, who have spent time on the roads in both the Bridge and Queen cities, say they don’t know why the proportion of collisions in Regina is lower than in Saskatoon.

“I don’t know if they’re that much better drivers there,” said Dan Szmutko with Functional Driving Training Solutions.

Similarly, Tony Mark, who used to teach high school driving and now teaches driver improvement training classes in Saskatoon, said he believes the level of driving is “the same everywhere” in the province.