I was sad to read of another fatal accident occuring outside of Ottawa on Hwy 17 yesterday that claimed the life of a young woman. 

I then came across this article and couldn’t help but share it with you.

It’s snowing out this morning, please drive safely and take the extra few minutes to get there safely.

Last night’s fatal crash in Arnprior is the third incident on this stretch of Highway 17 this year and the second fatality.

See Highway 17 closed after serious crash
See Head-on collision kills 20-year-old Nicholas Carter-Leedham on Hwy. 17 near Pembroke
See Woman killed in Highway 17 crash near Hawkesbury identified

Highway 17, which starts where Ottawa’s Highway 417 ends – a four lane highway that merges into two lanes traveling in opposite directions, stretches from Arnprior to Kenora and right into Manitoba. It is Ontario’s longest provincial highway spanning 1,960 kilometres, and one of Ontario’s most deadly.

In bad weather, Canadians who live along its route near the Arnprior (Ottawa) area are quick to point out that Highway 17 can be a terrible road to travel and with no concrete barrier separating traffic along some stretches, head-on collisions are all too common on this highway as drivers, for whatever reason, drift out of their lanes and cross into the path of oncoming vehicles.

Highway 17 is part of the Trans Canada Highway – Canada’s largest and massive transport network connecting highways from Newfoundland to British Columbia. It winds through large cities and small towns and is an artery of activity that seems to come with a price as thousands of Canadians have died on this network since its inception in 1933. It has its own website inviting Canadians to use the network to plan vacations and trips.

As beautiful as the network is, it falls short in its safety. The Canadian government and municipalities where stretches of the highway snake through have been petitioned by numerous families to spend the money to upgrade the highway’s infrastructure and make it safer, starting by twinning. This is done by digging a deep center median between a two lane highway, widening it to four and separating it with trees and grass. In some areas where this can’t be done, families of loved ones killed on two lane portions where traffic is separated by a white or yellow dividing line, have asked for concrete barriers or steel guardrails to be installed to separate traffic.

These are not unfair requests. We pay enough in taxes that more money needs to be earmarked for road safety.

The government made good on its promises in the late 1980s and early 2000s and twinned stretches of the highway around Sault St. Marie, Echo Bay and Desbarats. In July 2008, the federal and provincial governments announced a $6.2 billion infrastructure program to twin the the highway near Kenora and Thunder Bay a priority. But what about those living in Renfrew and Sudbury County?

In a perfect world, every driver would stay in his or her lane, but this is not a perfect world. We are more distracted as drivers consumed by our materialistic conveniences of iPods, cellphones, cup holders, in-dash DVD players, GPS units and eating on the go. We drive faster. We’re more stressed. Many of these driver conveniences provide deadly distractions as we take our eyes off the road briefly to open a food wrapper, change a song, dial a number or put a straw in a cup. So much can go wrong in a split second that if a driver drifts to the center of the road and collides with a barrier instead of a motor vehicle, granted there’s still potential for a crash, but will it be as deadly as a head-on collision?

Even if it’s a steel guardrail on posts, a center dividing barrier is still an important safety measure, specifically if a strong gust of wind pulls a car out of a person’s control. It’s 100 km/hr along most of these stretches with people driving faster than the speed limit. That’s a lot of force and velocity in a head on crash. The result is almost always fatal.

If there’s one way to drive the point home, as I know that there’s a group of grieving families in BC fighting for a twinning solution on a Cassidy highway, put it into perspective for your local politicians and transport officials this way: The national average in Canada is 8 people die each day in car crashes and hundreds more are injured. Of those fatalities, three are often head on type crashes.

If we had an aviation system in Canada where we had eight planes crashing a day and three of those were due to mid-air collisions with oncoming planes, don’t you think the public outcry would be massive? Don’t you think the levels of government in this country would shut it all down and make immediate changes?

I do.

written by Cindy Smith