Fast times on Atlantic Canada’s highways
Assessing the toll that comes with ‘getting there quicker’
Panic, fear, and thoughts of worst-case scenarios overwhelmed Michael Tops as he ran to help his 12-year-old son and close friend after the motorcycle they were on collided with a pickup truck.
e 2005 accident at the intersection of Brooklyn Street and Lanzy Road in Centreville, Kings County could have been worse. Both survived, but Tops’s friend, Eric Payne, lost a leg, as well as his military career.
All because of the dangerous driver Tops believes caused the accident.
“ e roadway they were on is a road where speeding is a normality – a back road outside of town rarely patrolled by police, in an area where tra c volume is generally low,” says Tops.
“Whether there was a huge intentional component there to be driving dangerously, I can’t say. But, my gut tells me.”
Speeding factors into insurance rates
Eighty per cent of motorvehicle accidents can be avoided with just a second more of response time. But that relies on motorists driving at the posted speed limits, says Gary Howard, vice- president of communications at the Canadian Automobile Association’s Atlantic department.
Among the Atlantic provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador had the highest ve-year aver- age of speeding tickets issued from 2013 to 2017 – 29 per 1,000 people – with P.E.I., New Brunswick and Nova Scotia coming in at 21, 20 and 17 per 1,000 people, respectively.
N.L. also has the highest average annual insurance rates in Atlantic Canada, at $1,132. Prince Edward Island has the lowest at $796, with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in second and third, with averages of $842 and $819.
Rates take into account additional factors, like a driver’s age and driving record but also factor in claims per capita for all kinds of accidents, says Howard.
“ e simple thing is the higher claims mean higher risk, mean higher premiums. e insurance industry is extremely complex… But in general, the three maritime provinces are comparable.”
Tops, who works as a project manager and defensive driving expert with Safety Services Nova Scotia, says while he can only speak to Nova Scotia, he’s not at all surprised by what the data shows.
“Do I nd these numbers surprising? Not at all – I think they may even be on the low side. Speeding has been normalized in Atlantic Canada,” he says.
Dangerous driving in Atlantic Canada: Numbers
Speed and aggressive, or dangerous drivers are together listed as one of nine key factors contributing to collisions in Canada, according to a Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators’ study called Canada’s Road Safety Strategy 2025.
The study defines these drivers as “driving at speeds beyond posted legal limits or driving too fast for road conditions and driver behaviours which are deemed illegal or outside socially acceptable norms which put other road users at risk.”
Tops, a driving instructor by trade who has taught motorcycle safety since the 1990s, recognizes the role age and lack of experience can play in such accidents.
He doesn’t feel it was a factor when his son and friend collided with the truck, rather that speed and “inattentive driving” were more likely to blame.
“Whether (the driver) drifted over, or it was Eric – the long and short of it is both vehicles were at the centre line at the exact same time,” says Tops.
Dangerous driving was also identified as a concern by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police in its 2018 Operation Impact, an initiative some provinces took part in to address aggressive, impaired and distracted driving, as well as seatbelt use.
Nova Scotia participated, but RCMP public information officer Cpl. Jennifer Clarke says it’s difficult to assess what direct impact the initiative has had since it began in October.
Stunting – a charge Nova Scotia drivers face if clocked driving 50 km/h or more above the limit – is also cause for concern, according to Clarke, who says data shows charges have risen steadily in the province since the law came into effect in 2013.
“Before that law came into effect, someone who was going more than 50 km/h would have received a ticket for speeding, so it’s not as if drivers weren’t being ticketed for that offence,” she says.
Tops says he’s thankful both Payne and his son survived the accident and says both men feel lucky the incident has only left them physically scarred. Payne now presents as a motivational speaker to other amputees, and Tops’s son owns and drives his own motorcycle.
As for Tops, he now uses the experience as a first-hand example of the consequences of dangerous driving and the seconds it removes from a driver’s response time.
“That accident could so easily have taken both their lives,” says Tops.
Increasing numbers
One province seeing a regular increase in drivers caught speeding 50 km/h over posted speed limits is Nova Scotia, which has seen increases each year since 2013. In what Halifax Regional Police media officer Const. John Macleod calls an incident “of significant speed and danger to the public,” a Nova Scotia man was caught driving 162 km/h over the posted limit in a Bedford school zone in March 2018.
This was one of 18 stunting tickets issued in Halifax from November 2017 to November 2018.
“Whenever someone chooses to exceed these limits, it places both the occupants of that vehicle in potential danger as well as the rest of the motoring public and pedestrians in the area,” says Macleod.
Such incidents show Atlantic Canadians still have far to go, says Tops. He sits on the province’s Road Safety Advisory Committee, which he describes as a “think tank” for the transportation department.
Tops says the incident serves as an inspiration to him and others deciding how to best address speeding and dangerous driving that result in these accidents. They often occur due to several factors, he says, including speed, weather, age, and experience.
“There were certainly a multitude of factors when our accident happened – it was a recipe for disaster,” he says.
“A moment of inattention can make a lifetime of difference.”
Clarke said the one thing police can continue doing is change tactics, such as using car rentals to spot traffic violations or even dressing police as hitchhikers watching for cell-phone use.
“We will continue to be out there… trying to do our part to improve road safety for Nova Scotia drivers,” says Clarke.
Tops’s family and Payne met up in 2015 in Coldbrook to mark the 10-year anniversary of that life-changing accident. They have dubbed the anniversary “Alive Day” to celebrate that they and their love of motorcycling survived.
“After the accident, we all still rode. Has it changed the outlook? Sure, and some things are a little more pronounced now – a little more caution used on blind turns,” says Tops.
It doesn’t take much, especially if speeding, to have a fatality.
– Gary Howard, CAA Atlantic
It’s risk versus reward, and scenarios like this one play out on our highways time after time. Jan. 2, 2018. First day back to work after the New Year’s holiday and the motorist, running late, was in a hurry…
The rural road was slightly slick with snow but the driver gave little thought to the fact he was driving faster than conditions reasonably allow. Rounding a bend, he came upon a slower driver and, unable to immediately pass for several “long” kilometres, his impatience and frustration began to grow.
“Finally,” he thought, when a clear stretch of road enabled him to go by the other driver. And, with that, his leaden foot pushed down even harder on the gas pedal.
A short distance down the road, however, the driver’s joy was shortlived as he came around another corner and saw an oncoming car suddenly pull off to the side of the road. And then, on came the flashing red and blues.
“Oh great,” he thought, “just what I need. A speeding ticket.”
'PLACES TO GO'
“Why do people speed? That’s a pretty easy answer, man,” said Scott Geller, a psychology professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the United States. ‘I mean, there is the odd one that will probably deny anything they ever did wrong’ – Truro Police Const. James Browne
“People speed because they’ve got places to go. It’s about consequences and they usually get there safely,” he said. “So, in fact, speeding is rewarded. In behavioural science terms, we would say it is enforced. I get re-enforced for speeding because I get to my destination faster and nothing happened. So, I’ll do it again.”
Geller, 76, is in his 50th year of teaching at the university. He specializes in applied behavioural science and one of his areas of specialty deals with alcohol-impaired driving, driver safety training and other driving behaviours.
Although the reward for speeding in many instances may mean a difference of only a few minutes, “to us, it feels like, ‘wow, it worked,’” he said. “We have a busy society these days, don’t we? We have a busy life. Everybody’s got places to go.”
The sense of comfort from getting away with speeding that one time can also build complacency, which can lead to further incidences of speeding. Route familiarity can also play a role.
And further compounding the issue is the fact many of today’s automobiles have increased horsepower and handling efficiencies, which makes it easier to safely speed along the highway or manoeuvre through curves at speeds higher than the posted limit.
“So they learn from experience that they don’t have to go that slow,” Geller said.
SUBCONSCIOUS CHOICE?
Derek Koehler, a psychology professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, agrees the will to speed is derived, at least in part, from the risk-versus-reward concept.
“At a basic level, we can say that someone who is speeding has decided that the benefits outweigh the costs or the risks,” he said.
But he suggested such decisions are more or less made at a subconscious level.
“We’re in a hurry to get somewhere, we go a little bit over the speed limit and what’s the harm in doing that? It doesn’t even feel risky,” he said. “You’re not really making a conscious decision to speed, you just feel hurried, just in terms of an emotional basis.”
But from a psychological perspective, Koehler questions whether a driver’s perception of such risks and benefits are really accurate. In other words, drivers who speed are actually underestimating the risk and overestimating the benefit, which, in essence, is a mistake.
If you speed on your way to work, for example, you may arrive a few minutes earlier than you otherwise might have. But that doesn’t mean you are always going to get away with it.
As with the driver at the beginning of the story, the risk far outweighed any benefits he could have derived, especially considering the downtime at the side of the road while the officer writes up his speeding ticket and the subsequent hundreds of dollars in fines paid to the court.
And, of course, the greater the speed, the greater the penalty, including the potential loss of licence and the privilege to drive entirely.
But above all else, Geller said, is the danger speeders pose to themselves and other motorists.
“I think we really need to take a step back and become systems thinkers,” Geller said. “We just need to actively care for people.”
AWARE OF THEIR GUILT
After doing street patrol on and off for more than a decade with the Truro Police Service, Const. James Browne has encountered more than his fair share of speeding drivers.
And, in most cases, the drivers knew they were driving too fast and don’t bother arguing about it.
“The majority are pretty accepting of the consequences and know what they did, basically,” Browne said.
But out of the approximately 40 drivers he stops in a given week, there will be two or three who try to deny it or argue they should be given a warning.
“I mean, there is the odd one that will probably deny anything they ever did wrong,” he said. “Usually the ones that are in denial or think they should get a warning, they can escalate pretty quick.”
In such cases, Brown tries not to engage in the argument and reminds the drivers they can take their case to court.
“There’s a process and sometimes they’re satisfied with that,” he said.
In situations where a speeding motorist says they are dealing with a medical or family emergency, Brown said he acknowledges that while they have to get to where they are going as fast as possible, they also must do so safely.
And then there are the cases of motorists who are using their cell phones while also driving too fast.
“You are exceeding the posted speed limit and you are not even paying attention, basically,” he said.
Occasionally, Browne will encounter drivers who take their speeding to the extreme, including a recent motorist he clocked at more than 140 km/h in a 50-km/h zone.
“But obviously I wasn’t able to stop them,” he said. “I made an attempt, but that was about it. Too dangerous, not worth it really.”