Alternating Traffic Moving Through Fort Fraser
Prince George, B.C. – Highway 16 west at Fort Fraser is now partially open to vehicular traffic
Single-lane, alternating traffic is moving through the area at Telegraph Road which was the scene of a fatal accident involving one car just after 2:30 this morning.
Passenger vehicles were able to detour around the accident site but larger vehicles such as transport trucks had to either get turned around and leave the area or have been backed up in both directions for the past 12 hours. It will take a considerable amount of time to move the backlog.
RCMP Sgt Al Steinhauser says Hydro crews are now replacing the power pole which was hit and significantly damaged by the car. He says it will be at least a few more hours before Highway 16 at Fort Fraser is fully open.
The male passenger in the car was killed on impact while the driver suffered serious injuries. It’s believed speed and alcohol were involved.
Comments
A single vehicle accident off the highway is no excuse to block the highway to commercial traffic for 12 hours. Massive amount of over time for the RCMP who love to show us who’s boss. Same for Hydro, but they don’t need to block the highway. Must have looked like a Bandstra depot out there…
Dude…..someone died. Show some friggin compassion.
I wonder if it was the local well known repeat drunk driver from the Fort?
On Global a couple nights ago they had a piece on how the traffic investigators were using drones to get all the pictures from overhead. He said instead on the normal two hours to take all the measurements they needed for accident reconstruction it was only taking 15min. I can understand a delay waiting for daylight but there is no way they would close a major highway in the lower mainland for this long.
Global must not have talked to Police. A drone only helps with overhead photo’s of the scene. There is still an lengthy process of measurements that can be in the hundreds that need to be done to do an accurate reconstruction of the scene.
Time is money and sitting idle doesn’t pay the bills.
Condolences to all families impacted by this fatality.
Always tragic!
Blackhorse7 wrote: “A drone only helps with overhead photo’s of the scene.”
A drone can assemble 3d photography of a crash scene and other types of incidents by flying through the scene at various heights. If need be it can fly around a vehicle from a point of view just a few centimetres above the road surface.
From the Ontario Provincial Police – chch.com/opp-employing-drones-in-crash-investigation-hov-enforcement
“This morning we had a collision, full closure of Highway 401 eastbound in Milton.”
“We were able to use the new technology, an unmanned aerial vehicle assisted us in forensically mapping and photography of the scene. It assisted us in the investigation, and opening up the highway much more rapidly than what would typically be done with traditional investigation.”
“Usually it would take at least an hour to map the scene; using the drone it took less than 15 minutes.”
See how it works here – analistgroup.com/en/new-solutions-with-drones/solution-for-traffic-accident-reconstruction
All one has to do is take one measurement to provide the scale of the scene for the drone. No more “do you have a shot from that angle?” and get an answer “no”.
Instead it will be: “here, have a look at the reconstruction from the site videos. Will this viewpoint meet your needs, or are you looking for something more like this?”
Of course, what needs to be done is to determine which stretches of highways in the province have no access to alternate routes, have non separated highway lanes and include traffic counts and crash frequency to do a computerized analysis via GIS technology of the regions which have the highest risk of extended full highway closures with the highest person/business impact to traffic disruption.
Based on that analysis, which will not necessarily render highways in the lower mainland with the highest impact, the provincial and community police should receive priority for the start of the introduction to a drone supported incident reconstruction team.
An interesting use of drones to show that the limitations of drones are only the limitations imposed on them by the human mind.
techradar.com/us/news/world-of-tech/watch-a-swarm-of-drones-build-a-rope-bridge-1304678
An artistic use of drones to film a music video. Make sure you watch the subsequent video showing how it is done.
youtube.com/watch?t=11&v=u1ZB_rGFyeU
Artisan… that’s all great. If that’s what you have to operate with. The RCMP doesn’t.
With downtime insurance get file number from RCMP and insurance company pays your time and charges it back to ICBC.
It would be informative if the RCMP would put out some information on the stages in such investigations, how much time each takes, etc. Some investigations are obviously complex, but on the other hand it is reasonable to wonder why, for example, if a vehicle went off the road to the right, it is necessary to close the other lane, or why in many cases they can’t quickly photograph the road and open it up.
Any damage caused by the responsible party will be charged to his insurance this should include any financial loss to persons using the roadway.Truckers should be able submit a bill for lost time, really no different then property damage.
I realize the RCMP does not have drones to work with. If they did, they would use them. Give it a year or two. We’ll be the last to get the system.
The reason why it takes so much time without a drone is that they actually have to make a determination on site as to what happened. It is very difficult to piece together the photos which were taken for the record. In fact, they are mainly taken to verify the analysis as well as synthesis which was done on site as to cause. So they do both observation and decision on site.
With a drone they can do only the observation, make some quick determination as to cause, take the info back to the lab, synthesize the scene from more positions than they would ever do on site, bring in experts which were not on the site in the first place, and reach a final report as to cause and responsibility.
A vast improvement of the process.
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