Minimize delays after car crashes
It’s simply not acceptable that a fender-bender can bring capital-region traffic to a halt for several hours. The police need policies and resources aimed at getting cars moving as soon as possible after a crash. Early Tuesday morning, a pickup truck lost a tire on the Trans-Canada Highway near Portage Inlet, resulting in a chain-reaction collision involving four vehicles. No one was injured, but gridlock ensued, described by West Shore RCMP Const. Alex Bérubé as among the worst he has ever seen.
The timing, as Bérubé noted, was unfortunate, with the crash occurring just as the morning rush-hour traffic was building up. There was still gridlock on some roads at 10 a.m. Had the crash happened later, he said, when the flow of traffic had diminished, the congestion might not have been so bad.
A crash at any time on the Island’s busiest highway has the potential to cause serious disruption, and the ripple effect can block or slow traffic from the Malahat to the downtown, from Sooke to Saanich. Sometimes traffic can be detoured around a collision scene, but the choices for alternative routes are few.
It’s especially bad on the Malahat on those stretches of road with one lane going each way, or where there is little space to manoeuvre on shoulders or medians. Tuesday’s crash happened on a relatively straight stretch of the highway, with shoulders and an open median.
Still, during the morning rush hour, it’s a major challenge for police and other first responders at a crash scene to do their jobs while dodging passing cars. We don’t suggest for a moment that motorists be allowed to whiz through the area at top speed, but reasonable efforts should be made to keep traffic flowing. The Transportation Ministry should form strategies and standards with that aim in mind.
The government should also examine the investigative and procedural burdens placed on police and try to achieve a balance between a proper investigation and the broader interests of the public.
It is not mere inconvenience when the Malahat is closed, or when traffic is brought to a halt elsewhere on the Trans-Canada. Access from the south Island to the north Island is effectively severed. The lives of thousands of people are disrupted. It can mean missed medical appointments, missed flights, delayed deliveries and students late for school.
It would be naïve to think issuing government policies will ensure motorists can always proceed quickly and smoothly along major roads. Traffic is an unpredictable beast, made more so by such things as bad weather and human error.
And speaking of human error, no amount of legislation or government edicts can prevent people from following too close or driving too fast. In the newspaper business, we try to avoid the word “accident,” because most vehicle crashes are not the result of random, unforeseeable and unavoidable circumstances, but of human actions or inaction.
Geography restricts the Island’s highways, and little can be done about that. Traffic will continue to flow and grow. Crashes will occur and delays are inevitable.
But efforts should be made to reduce those delays.