It is an intersection deliberately designed to create collisions.
Almost every day, I travel northbound on Hay Street and turn left on Brandon Avenue at a three-way stop. And almost every day, someone driving eastbound on Brandon nearly T-bones my car after blowing through the stop sign.
The stop sign on Brandon is set so far back from the intersection, you cannot see cars approaching from the right on Hay. To make matters worse, Hay meets Brandon with a small curl, pointing cars away from approaching traffic from the left and making it more difficult to see others entering the intersection.
This intersection needs to be completely reconfigured. However, given abundant evidence suggesting the City of Winnipeg cannot gets its road-safety ducks in a row, I’m not holding my breath.
The city revealed last week it wants to acquire new technology to “support the acquisition, validation, analysis and dissemination of all its (traffic) data sources.”
Coun. Janice Lukes, chairwoman of the city’s public works committee, said the new solution will help the city use data collected by Manitoba Public Insurance and its own monitoring to identify traffic congestion and the most dangerous roads and intersections to implement infrastructure changes more quickly.
It all makes for a very good idea, even if it’s hilariously late in its implementation.
In 2022, the city unveiled a road safety plan that seeks a 20-per-cent reduction in fatal and serious injury collisions by 2026. Given that we’re already at the halfway point in that initiative, it seems that we’ve fallen behind schedule.
Currently, collision and traffic-count data is collected on several different city systems and stored on Excel spreadsheets. There is also no system in place to organize and analyze data collected by MPI.
In a world increasingly dominated by AI and predictive analytics, the city’s current data-management practices are so far out of date that civic officials might as well be using crayon and paper to track the carnage on Winnipeg streets.
Better data management and analysis is key, but it’s only the tip of the road-safety iceberg. To create measurably safer streets, major improvements in infrastructure are required. And to do that, the city is going to need help from MPI, which has a social and financial interest in road safety.
Safer roads mean fewer collisions, which means fewer injuries and deaths which, in turn, means lower claims costs which, ultimately, means lower Autopac rates.
Despite the obvious benefits to the Crown insurer, MPI does very little to improve road safety.
MPI spends roughly $3.6 million annually on a road-safety and loss-prevention program, but most of its efforts are primarily focused on driver training and public awareness, two elements that global road-safety studies indicate produce negligible results.
Driver training would seem to be an important safety practice, but it’s not a mandatory requirement to obtain a licence. As for public awareness, global research shows advertisements urging drivers to lower speeds, refrain from texting and to avoid driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs have little or no impact.
“The simplistic assumption (of roadway safety campaigns) is that if individuals are made aware of behaviours that will enhance their personal health or safety and urged to adopt these behaviours, they will do so,” a seminal 2008 meta analysis by the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine stated.
“Seemingly logical, this sequence of events is unlikely to happen.”
So, what does improve safety?
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s federal highway administration, there are 28 “proven safety countermeasures” to reduce injuries and death due to collisions.
After data management, police enforcement and improvements to vehicles, the remaining best practices focus on improving infrastructure: lighting and traffic controls, dedicated bike lanes, roundabouts, better medians, crosswalk-visibility enhancements, more dedicated left-turn lanes and advance turn signals.
Somehow, MPI’s hallmark gruesome billboards or television ads showing dead teenage drivers guilty of texting behind the wheel did not make the list.
It’s easy to say that road safety is a priority, but apparently it’s very difficult for the city and MPI to put their money where their mouths are.
It’s important to note that other Crown-owned insurance companies in Canada actively invest in road-safety infrastructure. Leading the way, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia has spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars over the last 30 years in more than 8,300 road-safety improvements.
ICBC’s investments have resulted in a 24 per cent reduction in crashes that led to injuries and fatalities, and a 15 per cent decline in property damage. Overall, ICBC estimates that every $1 spent on road-safety measures results in an average savings of $4.70 in claims costs.
Why doesn’t MPI do the same thing? An attempt was made by the former NDP government of premier Greg Selinger, but its proposal to channel a small portion of retained MPI earnings into infrastructure improvements was beaten back by a surge in Autopac customer complaints.
It’s easy to say that road safety is a priority, but apparently it’s very difficult for the city and MPI to put their money where their mouths are.
It’s time to fix the problem intersections and roads and end the carnage. We could start at Hay Street and Brandon Avenue.
dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com
Dan Lett
Columnist
Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986. Read more about Dan.
Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.