Crossroads Report Released : Progress Made

By 250 News

It has been two years since the first Road Health   report called “Crossroads” was released. 

The report called for a concerted effort to  reduce   the number of injuries and deaths on  the highways and roads in  northern B.C. 

The update on that report,  shows the good work  has paid off with a  reduction in the number of deaths throughout the  Northern Health region:

The initial report   called for a change in  terminology, moving  away from  calling  the incidents “accidents” and instead they were called “crashes”.

Now, there is another change.  Doctor David Bowering, the Chief Medical Health Officer for Northern Health, and author of the  current “Crossroads Update 2007” ,  says it is time to make another change in the way we think about  injuries and  death  on our  roadways “the motor vehicle is so much a part of the background to modern life, we have lost sight of the degree to which it is also an agent of injury, death and chronic disease” says Bowering.  That is why he   says we need to start thinking about dealing  with this in the same way we would  tackle a virus,  so, he now calls it “Vehicle Impact Disease.”

Although the number of fatalities has declined over the past two years, even though commercial traffic has increased with more  logging trucks and  increased activity in the north east, the stats show , that  from the Thomson-Cariboo through the Northern interior and regions east and west,  the risk of being killed by “VID” is one and a half times to 2 and a half times the provincial average.

The report also indicates the top ten contributing factors to  VID were:

1. Driver inattentive
2. Road Condition
3. Speed
4. Wild Animal
5. Driver error/ confusion
6. Alcohol
7. Failing to Yield right of Way
8. Backing Unsafely
9. Weather
10. Following too closely

The authors of the report conducted a “snapshot” of  the type of travellers on the roads in the Prince George region.

South refers to  Highway 97 and Terminal Boulevard

East  is Highway 16 and the Old Cariboo Highway

North was Highway 97 at Chief Lake Road

West was  Highway 16  at Bunce Road

Although there has been  progress made in  reducing  deaths on the roadways,  the authors say  it  has only come about   through  contributions from  many individuals and groups  and “there is increasing interest in this work outside of the North and reason to be optimistic that VID will  begin to be taken seriously for the public health issue that it is.”

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