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Poor driving and bad weather blamed for Sea to Sky carnage

ICBC study does not address volume If a gambler were to assess the odds and place bets on the driver least likely to get killed or maimed while driving Highway 99, he might put his money on a female, over the age of 65, behind the wheel on a foggy Tu

ICBC study does not address volume

If a gambler were to assess the odds and place bets on the driver least likely to get killed or maimed while driving Highway 99, he might put his money on a female, over the age of 65, behind the wheel on a foggy Tuesday in June between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.

Conversely, of the 2,526 accidents reported on the "Killer Highway" in the last five years, more occurred in December than any other month. Saturday was the most likely day for an accident and between 3.01 p.m. and 6 p.m. was the time of day with the greatest number of accidents. The majority of those injured were female and between the ages of 15 and 24. Most crashes happened in clear weather. Only 0.3 per cent occurred in fog.

In total, the cost to the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia was $50 million.

Statistics don’t give the whole story but an ICBC study that compiles accident data from the Sea to Sky highway between Horseshoe Bay and Pemberton over the last five years does begin to paint a picture – one that shows weather and human error conspiring to produce motor vehicle accidents resulting in severe injury and death.

According to the report, the top four human factors contributing to crashes are: unsafe speed, driving without due care, following too closely and driver inexperience.

Weather was cited by police as being the top environmental factor contributing to crashes, followed a distant second by wild animals and impaired visibility.

"Some of these things we already knew. It’s just backed by facts now," noted ICBC’s Kathleen Hicks.

The ICBC report was released in March and it was prompted by public concern. "In recent months there has been considerable public attention focused on the Sea to Sky Highway," reads the ICBC report. "It’s a stunningly beautiful route up to Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton. It’s also a narrow, winding, weather-blown route which has gained a reputation for an alarmingly high occurrence rate of deadly motor vehicle crashes. A number of requests for road safety information on the Sea to Sky Highway have come to our department."

But ICBC didn’t have the figures at its fingertips. "We needed to get a good look at what was happening on the Sea to Sky, to get a look at our crash data as well as the police crash data and take it all together and therefore have a template to work from," said Hicks.

The report combines both ICBC claims data and police report data, something that hasn’t been done before.

And, it is not complete.

For example, it records only 24 fatalities over the last five years, four of which are reported to have occurred in the year 2000. As local residents know, there were at least five fatalities in December alone last year.

"There were quite a few fatalities for the year 2000," noted Hicks. "In this report it doesn’t look like there were that many," she said. "To announce a fatality we need to have our ICBC crash information as well as information from the police plus information from the coroner. There are some reports we are still waiting on," she said. "It’s not a 100 per cent accurate picture."

What was recorded, however, was deemed sensational enough for a Maclean’s Magazine cover story earlier this month.

The "Hell Highway" cover stared out from news racks across the country and the story rated the Sea to Sky Highway as being the country’s bloodthirstiest, more so than two other notorious stretched of Canadian tarmac – the 60 km section of Highway 401 between Windsor and Chatham, Ontario and Highway 101 between Halifax and Digby in Nova Scotia.

The Maclean’s article comes on the back of widespread regional coverage earlier this year on the "Sea to Die" highway. It was enough for Tourism Whistler board member, Jim Allard, to suggest that Tourism Whistler direct its efforts to improving the infamous stretch of road.

"The board should do whatever it takes to improve the Sea to Sky," Allard said, waving the black and red Maclean’s cover at the Tourism Whistler AGM held Wednesday, May 16.

"We should lobby for major improvements."

The report however, doesn’t address road improvements, nor does it address the sheer and increasing volume of traffic experienced on this strip of winding mountain road.

In all, 1,322 people were injured on the Highway 99 in the last five years.

The report shows 1999, as being the worst year with 536 accidents. Of those, 11 were identified as serious or fatal injury accidents and 142 as injury accidents. Last year saw 485 accidents and 115 injuries.

And those injuries, said Hicks, are generally serious. "I can say, pretty much, that the crashes that happen along the Sea to Sky highway are serious. They are not fender benders because of the speeds and some pretty brutal crashes have occurred in the summer time."

Of the total 2,526 accidents in the last five years, 59 per cent were single vehicle incidents and 40.9 per cent were multi-vehicle. Cyclists were involved in 13 cases and 16 involved pedestrians. Sports Utility Vehicles were involved in 628 crashes and heavy vehicles – with a weight over 5,000 kilograms – were involved in 162 cases. Motorcycles were involved in 52 accidents.

The worst months for Sea to Sky carnage were identified as December, January, February and August – the peak tourist periods. An average of 381 accidents occur in December compared to 124 in June.

Predictably, weekends are the worst. An average 446 crashes – or 11 per cent – occur on a Saturday, followed by 426 on a Sunday and 378 on a Friday. Provincially, 11 per cent of accidents occur on a Sunday compared to the Sea to Sky’s 17 per cent.

A quarter of the Highway 99 accident victims are between 15 and 24 years of age.

The report also looks at data in police reports which, it states, is not captured as reliably as in the claims process. Police assign up to three contributing factors to each party involved in a crash. In cases where environment was blamed as the single contributing factor, 72.9 per cent were attributed to weather.

Wild animals contributed to 8.3 per cent of those cases and impaired visibility to 5.8 per cent.

After removing the environmental factors, analysts looked at particular cases where contributing factors were assigned by police. Of these, 26.4 per cent were due to speed, 24.3 per cent to driving without due care, 11.9 per cent to following too closely, 8.3 per cent to driver inexperience and 7.3 per cent of the crashes involved alcohol. A total of 4.2 per cent involved falling asleep at the wheel.

"We are finding that the main contributing factor to accidents on the highway is human error," noted Hicks.

"Drive to the conditions and I bet you, I guarantee, crashes will decrease."

But volume on the tricky road does play a role.

"The other thing we have to look at is the increase in traffic that, of course, increases the probability of having a crash," Hicks said earlier this year.

According to a draft version of a study being conducted by the Ministry of Highways, on a winter weekend, at peak, 2,300 people can be counted plying Highway 99 each hour. That number drops to about 1,800 per hour on a summer weekend but it is expected that the summer traffic will eventually outweigh the winter volumes.

And, demand for passenger travel will have increased significantly by 2025.

In an attempt to assess just what the transportation needs will be for the Sea to Sky corridor and beyond over the next 25 years, the Ministry of Highways commissioned the study which examines three basic options.

This study adopts a "multi-modal" approach and looks also at rail, bus, marine and air alternatives. This is the first time the Ministry of Highways has moved beyond focussing solely on the road system.

One solution, which does not have much support in Whistler, would be to four-lane the Highway between Horseshoe Bay and the resort, increasing capacity at an estimated cost of $1.34 billion.

The cheapest option would be to emphasize increased bus service. This scenario is referred to as the "constrained mobility" scenario.

The third option, the "multi-modal" scenario, is designed to increase rail capacity to help with peak demand times. It also includes a moderate increase in bus service along with base highway improvements.

The ministry could adopt one or a combination of the three approaches. The results are due out June 25.