Heading for disaster?

“People make their turn and four or five of them go red. Not yellow. Red one. »

Misbehaviour, which is increasingly common and trivial, says a professor in the Department of Health Sciences at UQAC. “Montreal, Quebec, Saguenay… we keep saying this. We’ve allowed the roadway to deteriorate. And the latest road report confirms this. »

In Quebec, 28,715 people sustained minor, serious or fatal injuries in motor vehicle crashes last year. In Ontario, 25,165 people suffered the same fate – even though Ontario had less than twice the population of Quebec (15 million compared to 8.7 million).

Quebec has 3,300 collision injuries per million people, compared to 1,680 per million in Ontario, the country’s two most populous provinces. The proportions for 2021 and 2020 will be the same.

In British Columbia, an average of nearly 17,000 injuries were reported in road collisions over the past five years, or 3,400 per million population. In Alberta, there have been an average of 16,000 injuries in collisions over the past five years, up from 3,700 per million in the same year.

The question arises: Are Quebecers willingly adopting behaviors that make public roads more dangerous for people in Ontario? Or more prone to distraction?

“Everybody was walking”

With pandemic lockdowns, a more positive road record seemed achievable.

Because the number of motor vehicle trips is directly linked to road hazard, a decrease in the number of trips predicts a reduction in fatalities and serious injuries in collisions.

However, that didn’t happen.

Marco Harrison, director of the CAA-Quebec Foundation and a road safety expert, was surprised to see the death toll rise during the pandemic.

“It was a time when people were at home, when everyone was going for a walk,” he said. But the number of people killed in conflicts has not decreased, nor has the number of seriously injured. We were surprised,” he said.

A study by the American Automobile Association’s (AAA) Highway Safety Foundation found that the epidemic has mainly taken safe drivers (mostly women) off the road, replacing them with at-risk drivers (young people) who engage in aggressive behaviors.

For example, young adults are twice as likely to text while driving, 44% more likely to speed on highways and residential streets, and 80% more likely to run red lights. They are almost three times more likely to drink or drive under the influence.

An observation not unique to the United States has had consequences even after the pandemic, says Mr. Harrison.

“This confirms that there is a very different behavior. In 90% of cases, the collision is caused by the human factor: it is the result of an action taken by someone behind the wheel. In terms of deaths and serious injuries, we went back 10 years,” he said, waiting to see the results for 2023, Before talking about a black line.

“If 2023 is a bad record, we are in for a disaster. There, electricity will strike,” he said.