Two recent collisions on Highway 19 through Nanoose Bay have renewed local concerns about road safety. A petition is calling for parking prohibitions and residents in the area want more enforcement and infrastructure improvements. In response the provincial government has announced an Operations and Safety Review of Highway 19 through the Nanoose Flats area.
That review is welcome. But before deciding what needs to be changed, it is worth asking a more fundamental question:
What do we actually know about safety on this section of Highway 19?
A study has already been done
In 2021, the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure commissioned the Nanaimo Parkway and Nanoose Bay Corridor Study. The study examined traffic operations, geometric deficiencies, road safety, vehicle speeds, active transportation, transit, future traffic demand and possible improvements.
It was not simply an examination of collision numbers. The study looked at how the highway was built and operated, how people were driving on it and where collisions were occurring.
That makes it a useful starting point for the new review.
Where are the collisions happening?
Collision counts tell us where problems are occurring, but they don't necessarily tell us why they are occurring.
The 2021 corridor study recorded 121 collisions at Northwest Bay Road and 31 at Hillview Road. It also recorded collisions at several other intersections and access points between them.
There is an important distinction here. Those numbers are location-specific counts from the study's broader Nanoose Bay corridor; they are not a separate collision total for the section between Hillview Road and Northwest Bay Road. The study examined a much longer corridor, extending south beyond Hillview Road.
The study recorded 402 collisions in the Nanoose Bay corridor as a whole. It would therefore be misleading to use that figure as though all 402 collisions occurred in the Hillview Road to Northwest Bay Road section.
For this article, I am interested specifically in the section between Hillview Road and Northwest Bay Road because that is the area at the centre of the current local discussion.
It is also important to remember that a collision count tells us where collisions occurred. By itself, it does not tell us why they occurred.
What contributes to the collisions?
The study also examined reported contributing factors.
Following too closely was the most common contributing factor, accounting for about 31% of the collisions. Driving without due care was next, at about 24%.
Rear-end collisions were by far the most common collision type, accounting for about 47% of the collisions examined. Off-road collisions accounted for another 19%.
The report noted that following too closely and driving without due care were primarily associated with rear-end collisions.
This doesn't mean that every collision was caused by a careless driver. Collision statistics cannot tell us that. They do, however, tell us that driver behaviour was an important part of the collision picture.
Speed is part of the picture too
This is particularly interesting at the north end of the corridor.
Highway 19 is posted at 60 km/h near Northwest Bay Road. The study found that the 85th percentile speed was 75 km/h northbound and 74 km/h southbound. In other words, the speed at or below which 85% of the measured vehicles were travelling was about 14 to 15 km/h above the posted limit.
The report also said that almost all vehicles were travelling above the posted speed.
This is more than a matter of whether drivers are obeying the speed limit. The study specifically identified poor sightlines at a number of minor accesses and noted that vehicle speeds above the posted limit increase the collision risk for vehicles using those roads.
That observation is consistent with something I saw repeatedly while policing Highway 19 between 1997 and 2005: entering a high-speed highway from a minor road is a very different proposition when traffic is travelling faster than the posted limit.
The road isn't perfect either
It would be a mistake to conclude from the collision data that the highway itself isn't a factor.
The 2021 study identified a number of physical and access-management deficiencies in the Nanoose corridor. These included limited sightlines at some minor intersections, intersection spacing that does not meet current guidance in some locations, deficiencies in acceleration and deceleration lanes, some geometric limitations and numerous direct accesses.
The north end of the corridor received particular attention because of the combination of minor roads, private driveways, limited sightlines and vehicle speeds above the posted limit.
The study proposed access-management improvements as an interim measure, including closing most of the local road accesses between Northwest Bay Road and Summerset Road and providing access through frontage or backage roads.
An ultimate improvement considered in the study involved a substantially different highway arrangement, including a grade-separated structure and improved access. The report suggested that significant development could eventually trigger such an improvement.
What about turning left?
There is another aspect of the problem that is harder to capture in collision statistics.
Turning left across several lanes of highway traffic can be an uncomfortable decision, particularly when vehicles are approaching at higher speeds and sightlines are limited.
There are safer alternatives in some circumstances. A driver can turn right, proceed to another intersection, turn left and then return in the desired direction. But that adds distance and inconvenience.
That creates an important road-safety question: when the safer manoeuvre is substantially less convenient, how many drivers will actually choose it?
Good road design does not eliminate human error. It should, however, make the safer choice as easy as reasonably possible.
What should the new review look at?
The announcement of an Operations and Safety Review provides an opportunity to revisit the questions raised by the 2021 study.
At a minimum, it would make sense to ask:
- Which of the deficiencies identified in 2021 still exist?
- Which recommendations from the 2021 study have been implemented?
- Have traffic volumes, traffic patterns or collision patterns changed since the study was completed?
- Are the 60 km/h speed zone and its transitions working as intended?
- Do sightlines and available gaps provide adequate opportunities for vehicles entering Highway 19?
- Are intersection and access arrangements encouraging drivers to make safe rather than merely convenient manoeuvres?
- Which improvements would provide the greatest safety benefit for the money spent?
The word reliability in the announcement is important too. A highway can have a safety problem and a reliability problem without those being the same thing.
For example, the lack of an alternate route when Highway 19 is closed can be a serious problem for residents, emergency services and other road users. Providing another route could improve the reliability and resilience of the transportation network, but that does not by itself demonstrate that Highway 19 is unsafe when it is operating normally.
So, is Highway 19 a safe road?
There isn't a simple yes-or-no answer.
The 2021 study does not describe the Nanoose corridor as simply a badly designed road. Nor does it suggest that driver behaviour can be ignored.
It identifies specific roadway and access problems, particularly around the north end of the corridor. At the same time, it documents speeding, following too closely and driving without due care as significant contributing factors in the collisions that occurred.
My own observation, based on my experience policing this highway, is that driver error is a significant part of the problem, compounded in some circumstances by excessive speed and inadequate following distance. That is an observation, rather than a conclusion drawn from individual collision investigations.
The new Operations and Safety Review is therefore a good thing. The most useful outcome would not be a conclusion that either the road or the drivers are solely responsible. It would be a clear identification of which problems can be addressed through engineering, which require enforcement or education, and which require both.
Ultimately, the question isn't whether we can build a road that makes mistakes impossible. We can't.
The question is whether we can design and operate Highway 19 so that ordinary human mistakes are less likely to result in a serious collision.
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