Impaired driving, no seatbelts claim most lives in 2018 crashes: SGI

According to the latest numbers from SGI, impaired driving and not wearing seatbelts were the leading causes of death in auto collisions on the province’s roads in 2018.

Each type of infraction killed 42 people last year.

The Crown corporation released the numbers Friday morning, noting they represent only partial data from the year.

Kwei Quaye, SGI’s vice-president of traffic safety, driver and support services, said the data set is from all of 2018; he only expects marginal changes once the final numbers come in.

Quaye said the number of deaths and injuries likely won’t change.

The leading infraction for injuring people in 2018 was distracted driving — 768 people were injured by distracted drivers and 22 people were killed by them.

In total, 4,349 people were either killed (129) or injured (4,220) in crashes last year.

That number is the biggest drop from 2012, the peak of the last decade, when 7,516 people were injured or killed in crashes.

The minister responsible for SGI, Joe Hargrave, said the Humboldt Broncos team bus crash in April had a big impact on 2018’s numbers.

“Unfortunately it’s a fairly large number, with 16 deaths and 13 injuries,” Hargrave said. “It’s just such a huge, big tragedy … When you lose 16 lives, that’s a pretty serious number.”

He said that after talking with sports teams’ coaches, the crash was a wakeup call for team buses to use their seatbelts.

“This tragedy has hit so many teams. If there are seatbelts on (buses), I think the coaches, the managers, the drivers, the chaperones are out there, and they’re going, ‘Put the seatbelt on,’ ” he said.

Hargrave reminded the public there are seatbelt laws in place that require bus riders to use a seatbelt if a bus has them.

He also floated the idea of bumping up fines for seatbelt infractions.

“We’re going to continue to lay those tickets, and that’s another area we’re going to have to look at,” Hargrave said.

“You find that hard to believe that we might have to increase the penalties for not wearing your seatbelt, but obviously that’s something that we’re going to have to look at.”

Quaye said SGI’s goal is to have the safest highways in the country; that means further reducing injuries and deaths per 100,000 people in crashes.

“We are ninth out of 10 (provinces) when it comes to fatalities … When you go back to 2008, our fatality count was 15 per 100,000 population. In 2017, we were down to 8.6,” he said.

“The national average in 2017 was five; the national average in 2008 was about seven. So we’ve come down. We’re not where we want to be, but we’re converging very fast on the national average.”

The full report is available for viewing here.