The sudden loss of two young women in a head-on crash on Highway 99 near Lions Bay on the weekend is a terrible tragedy -for the victims' families, for their friends and relations and for their communities. Every time this sort of thing happens on "our" highway, though, it's followed by calls for safety upgrades to the roadway. All are well-intentioned. Only some are worthy of serious consideration.
Many years ago in another community, after a crash that had similar results to the one that took the lives of Olivia Sonja Robertson and Valentine Lebourgne, both 19, on Saturday (Nov. 23), this writer penned an editorial calling on the Alberta government to carry out safety upgrades to the road on which the crash occurred.
The day the editorial hit the streets, yours truly fielded a phone call from an irate reader. "Don't you know," the caller chimed in, "that it's not the road that causes accidents, but the people driving that road?"
A recitation of the usual driver complaints about the road followed: the highway is twisty and the shoulders narrow; sightlines going around some corners aren't the best; there are dips and potholes in some sections. But in hindsight, the caller was absolutely right: no matter what road we're driving on, it's important that we drive according to the conditions. Sometimes the conditions include twisty sections and narrow shoulders; sometimes there are barriers down the middle and sometimes not; sometimes there are icy sections.
Police still haven't determined the cause of Saturday's horrific crash, which also left two people injured. It's possible it was icy; it's possible that speed was a factor; it's possible that driver inexperience also played a role. Could fatalities have been avoided if concrete dividers had been placed on that section of road? Probably, and that might be a fairly low-cost solution to safety concerns on that segment.
Traffic engineers tell us there are certain sections of Highway 99 -even after the $600 million upgrade that preceded the 2010 Winter Olympics - that are simply too narrow for a full, four-lane divided highway. It's also advisable to have breaks in the median barriers to allow emergency-vehicle access and lane reversals for emergency situations.
Let's face it: We're talking about one- and two-tonne hunks of steel hurtling along close to each other at breakneck speeds. We can take reasonable steps to limit the severity of most crashes, but we can't prevent them entirely.
- David Burke
