A new idea to prevent highway tragedy

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/06/2023 (509 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was just an early morning drive to Brandon on the second of May.

The weather was clear, and road conditions on the Trans-Canada Highway were good.

At Carruthers Road, on the eastern edge of Austin, there was a pickup truck getting ready to cross the highway.

The Brandon-bound driver’s thought seconds before the accident?

“They have to see me. They’re not going to pull out.”

They pulled out.

The resulting crash left the highway driver with a serious injury.

Anyone driving the Trans0-Canada, or even the Perimeter Highway, has had the same fear, watching another vehicle either waiting to cross the highway, or else holding up on the crossroad between the lanes of the divided highway.

Eight days later, on May 10, a vehicle crossing the Trans-Canada at the exact same Austin intersection collided with a car heading east on the Trans-Canada. That accident killed a 43-year-old woman from North Norfolk.

The distance between the Carberry exit and the two accidents near Austin is about 34 kilometres.

This may seem like a strange way to talk about the horrible accident at the Carberry intersection of Highway 5 and the Trans-Canada on Thursday, an accident that killed 15 people and injured 10 more, people travelling from Dauphin to the Sand Hills Casino.

It is very early days — the pain is very fresh. The scale of the accident is much larger, the results far more horrific. But the causes — though yet to be fully determined — are likely very similar.

The Carberry exit is known to be a dangerous intersection: two kilometres before the intersection, the speed limit drops from 110 km/h to 100 km/h.

There have been other accidents at the Carberry exit. In 2017, a pickup truck crossing the Trans-Canada, heading north on Highway 5, was T-boned by a car on the highway, leaving two drivers injured. In August, 2016, a car heading north on Highway 5 struck a semi heading east on the Trans-Canada. In that accident, the driver of the car was killed.

But it’s not just Highway 5. Any road crossing a high-speed divided highway has well-known and serious risks.

Divided highways are safer for drivers who are actually on them — chances of a high-speed head-on collision are drastically reduced.

But crossing a divided highway is a different story, one that requires a series of complicated judgment calls. There is just so much going on: drivers have to consider high-speed traffic from both directions, and often feel the pressure of holding up other traffic while they try to decide if there is enough space in traffic for them to move.

Here’s the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s take: “A conventional intersection on a four-lane divided highway has forty-two (42) conflict points … These conflicts have an increased potential for right-angle crashes which often result in severe injuries. These crashes typically occur on the far side of the four-lane divided highway when a driver attempts to cross the highway or turn left onto the divided highway.”

The Wisconsin DOT is moving to a type of intersection known as a restricted crossing U-turn — instead of driving across four lanes of traffic, drivers on secondary roads turn right onto divided highways, and then make a planned u-turn from a designated lane further down the highway, coming back to their route.

The benefits are pretty clear, according to the Wisconsin DOT: the changed intersection “reduces crash potential — particularly far side right angle crashes. Such an intersection simplifies the driving task — a driver is only required to look at one direction of traffic at a time. It provides additional space for longer vehicles to store in median. It is easily retrofitted — often without purchasing additional right-of-way. Finally, it is low cost compared to an interchange or overpass while continuing to provide access.”

It can’t be done everywhere. But one is already being built at a crucial Saskatchewan intersection.

The decrease in crashes? A U.S. study in 2010 found that to be 75 per cent. That was 13 years ago. It’s time to start fixing the dangers we know about.

» The Winnipeg Free Press