It comes as no great surprise to me that Ontario and B.C. top the list of the safest provinces for drivers.
Preszler Injury Lawyers, from Ontario, analyzed data from Transport Canada on reports of road-traffic injuries in 2022 and the estimated number of licensed drivers in each province.
The number of injuries was compared to the number of licensed drivers to calculate a rate per 100,000 people and determine the ranking.
Ontario was at the top of the list for lowest rate of road traffic injuries in 2022, with 319.4 injuries per 100,000 licensed drivers.
B.C came in second with 334.5 injuries per 100,000 licensed drivers that year.
At the other end of the spectrum is Manitoba, the least safe province for drivers according to the study, with 786 injuries per 100,000 licensed drivers, followed by Saskatchewan with 681.
My home province of Newfoundland and Labrador came in fourth in the study, with 539 injuries per 100,000 licensed drivers.
A statement from Preszler Injury Lawyers said the data shows that drivers in provinces like Manitoba and Saskatchewan must remain extra vigilant.
"The local Canadian governments and drivers have a role to play in reducing the risk of road-traffic injuries,” the statement said. “The governments must focus on improving road surface conditions, ensuring clear signage, and implementing better traffic management systems. To stay safe on these roads, drivers should remember to closely follow road-traffic laws and take preventative steps to ensure the safety of themselves and others."
It’s true that motorists have to look after their own safety, and the safety of others, when driving, no matter what province they are travelling in.
But, as the injury-lawyer firm points out, local governments are responsible for improving road conditions within their jurisdictions, and there’s a big difference between how well roads are maintained between the “have” provinces like Ontario and B.C., and “have-not” provinces like Manitoba and Newfoundland.
I’ve always been quite impressed with how well maintained most of the roads are in B.C., particularly the highways, since I first arrived here in 1996 compared to Newfoundland.
Work crews seem to be constantly repaving sections of roadway and fixing bridges and other highway infrastructure, even if a lot of the work seems unnecessary to me, which shows that B.C. and its local governments have the resources to keep their roadways top notch, as they should.
That goes a long way to keep motorists, their passengers and pedestrians safe.
Such is not the case in many other provinces where scarce resources mean that governments have to pick and choose road projects that are of the highest priority, with the rest having to wait another day until there’s funding available.
That leads to many dangerous roads and that’s likely one of the main reasons the study by the injury lawyers indicates that it’s the poorer provinces that have higher accident rates.
I wrote a series of stories in 2016 about Fuzzy Harrison, a senior from Crofton, who, along with her three large Australian Cattle Dogs, crammed into a small Smart car and drove across the country to Newfoundland just because she wanted to see the province.
When she returned, she told me she loved the whole experience and enjoyed everyone she met there, but she had to replace all of the shocks on her car because of the damage caused to the vehicle mainly by just trying to manoeuvre around Newfoundland’s many unmaintained roadways.
The province’s roads take a beating every year from the region’s severe weather conditions.
I remember roads that were heaved up like rolling waves as the ground beneath them froze and melted during the winter months and the snow plows would dig into the bulging asphalt and take out huge chunks of it as they tried to clear the roads of snow and ice, leaving potholes that you could lose a person in.
Nothing ever seemed to get fixed in regards to roads outside of the province’s major centres, and even they were neglected a lot of the time with resources so scarce.
I also don’t recall there being much in the way of road infrastructure in Newfoundland, like concrete barriers that are common along the sides and middles of B.C.’s major routes to keep vehicles in their own lanes and out of the way of oncoming traffic.
I should point out that Newfoundland has an additional issue that contributes to road accidents, and that’s large moose crossing the roads.
The province has an average of 539 moose-vehicle collisions per year, which account for about six per cent of all vehicle collisions in Newfoundland and Labrador, and that makes for a lot of death and injuries on the roads (including the moose).
So, many times, it’s not always the quality of the drivers that results in much higher accident rates in poorer provinces, road conditions play a large part as well.
