Which province kills the most pedestrians?
Question: Which province has the most pedestrian deaths?
Answer: Now, that is a hard statistic to come by, because most of the time we hear about pedestrian deaths through reports from municipal police forces. I haven’t even been able to get the total number of deaths in B.C. for 2010 because ICBC, which collects that number, hasn’t released it yet.
That’s just in one province. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have an agency in Canada like various ones in the United States that are on top of this. For example, the Governors Highway Safety Association, with this 2010 report, or even better, Transportation for America, whose 2011 report not only has state statistics but lists of the most dangerous cities, along with breakdowns by age, sex, ethnicity and others of pedestrians killed.
The closest I have been able to find is this report from Transport Canada, which analyzed pedestrian deaths from 1992 to 2001. It’s not too helpful at first glance, because the number totals are about what you’d expect. The most in Ontario, second-most in Quebec, etc. Not surprising, since they are the most populous provinces.
However, if you go further down in the report, it tells you the number of pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 people, which gives you a better sense of how truly dangerous different provinces are.
When you look there, you’ll see that the highest RATE of fatalities, in proportion to the population, is 1. Prince Edward Island (2.2), 2. Saskatchewan (1.5) and B.C. (1.4)
As well, B.C. had the highest rate of pedestrian injuries of all the provinces.
If anyone has any more up to date information, I’d appreciate hearing it.
There is also a yearly report from Transport Canada on road collisions, with total number of pedestrians killed, but it doesn’t have a provincial breakdown.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Bill Lee // Feb 14, 2012 at 1:16 pm
What about the CCMTA VULNERABLE ROAD USERS TASK FORCE?
http://www.ccmta.ca/english/committees/rsrp/vulnerable/vulnerable-reports.cfm
The British Columbia rep is Steve Martin, but Sherry Wolf might be more open.
2 Bill Lee // Feb 14, 2012 at 1:22 pm
You did note “The decline in police reporting in British Columbia in years 1996 through 2004 has affected the British Columbia totals and, to a lesser extent, national totals reported in this publication.”
And why was this?
[ from the http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/roadsafety/tp-tp3322-2009-1173.htm#t1 Canadian Motor Vehicle Traffic Collision Statistics: 2009 ]
3 Bobbie Bees // Feb 17, 2012 at 6:48 pm
Looking at the stats from Transport Canada is quite interesting though.
It’s quite appalling how many pedestrians are killed at controlled intersections where the pedestrians had the right of way.
Uncontrolled intersections where pedestrian always have the right of way of motorized vehicles seem to have a very high body count as well.
And pedestrians deaths where the pedestrians was walking down the side of the highway ( Think something like Westminster Highway with paved shoulders and no sidewalks) is also very alarming.
Yet the media can only get their nickers in a knot over that paltry amount of deaths attributed to ‘jaywalking’.
Funny thing that ‘jaywalking’ is. Funny how when a car driver parks their car and then walks across traffic to get to the other side of the street, they aren’t ‘jaywalking’ they were just parking their car. Put let a pedestrian try the same thing an watch out, now you talking a scofflaw that is a harbinger for the downfall of modern society.
To solve the ‘jaywalking’ problem is easy. Just lower the speed limit in the city to 25 km/h. And instate ‘strict liability’ insurance such as in Europe.
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