Another death on the Malahat has renewed calls for more safety measures on that stretch of road. While there鈥檚 obviously more that can be done to improve the road, barriers and road designs can go only so far. The rest is up to us.
Had a median barrier been installed at the place where Wednesday鈥檚 fatal collision occurred, says Malahat Fire Chief Rob Patterson, the people involved would have likely survived the accident.
Median barriers are in place along about half of the route, but Patterson says they should be placed along the whole route.
Transportation Minister Todd Stone says that while the province has spent $33 million since 2001 on Malahat median barriers, the latest crash shows the need for more improvements.
鈥淢y hope would be that we would be able to move forward with the installation of more barriers, certainly within the next year,鈥� he said.
The Malahat has been in a constant state of upgrading for the past two decades. We see fewer accidents, and less serious ones, as a result. It makes sense to continue installing barriers.
But the Malahat will always be a risky road. Traffic amounting to 22,000 vehicles a day is funnelled into a narrow, twisting corridor. The route is susceptible to changing weather conditions. Wet conditions at lower altitudes can become icy conditions at the summit. No amount of improvements can prevent all accidents.
And there are severe limits to what can be done. As the Island鈥檚 major north-south route and part of the Trans-Canada Highway, it should be a four-lane, divided highway. With steep mountains on one side and the inlet on the other, though, there鈥檚 no room to do that without cutting into provincial park land and First Nations territory.
Even if those challenges could be met, the work would be prohibitively expensive.
It has been suggested a bridge be built across Finlayson Arm, but that would also be nightmarishly costly. Victoria鈥檚 new Johnson Street Bridge would be a hobbyist鈥檚 afternoon project by comparison.
The Mill Bay-Brentwood Bay ferry is of little help 鈥� it can carry only 22 vehicles at a time.
Perhaps the province could consider expanding that ferry service to relieve the strain, but it would take more and bigger ferries, and the service would have to be free or nearly so to make it an effective part of the highway system.
Justice Minister Suzanne Anton, noting that 290 British Columbians lost their lives in crashes in the province last year, says the government is investing in road improvements and adding tougher penalties in an effort to change driver behaviour and bring the death toll down to zero.
Good point. After all the safety improvements and road redesigns, it comes down to drivers鈥� behaviour. And one effective way to change behaviour on the Malahat would be to bring back photo-radar speed cameras.
More enforcement of highway rules is needed, but that is costly and can put officers in danger. Photo-radar is a low-cost, low-risk way to make drivers slow down.
It won鈥檛 be popular, but neither was the province鈥檚 get-tough approach to drunk driving. It鈥檚 an approach that has changed drivers鈥� behaviour and saved lives.
Recent legislation raised speed limits on some highways and aimed to crack down on left-lane hogs. While those measures might facilitate the flow of traffic in some areas, that鈥檚 not what鈥檚 needed in this case. We need to get back to the basics on the Malahat, encouraging people to drive more carefully, courteously and thus safely.
The province has spent millions trying to improve safety on the Malahat over the past 20 years. Making it even safer is up to the people who drive the highway.
