REGINA — Saskatchewan RCMP are sounding the alarm after a staggering surge in fatal highway crashes across the province this summer.
According to Supt. Grant St. Germaine, the officer in charge of Saskatchewan RCMP's Traffic Services, there have been 51 fatal collisions resulting in 62 deaths so far this year. While overall numbers are only slightly lower than the total at this point last year, the sheer volume of fatal incidents over the summer months has police deeply concerned.
"So that number is high, but how we reported it, it's gone extremely high since June," St. Germaine said. "The numbers from June 1st to now I think are up something like 178 per cent from what they were the same period last year."
To put the statistics into perspective, police have responded to 5,200 reportable crashes this year, averaging nearly 25 per day. Just under one per cent of those collisions have been fatal. However, St. Germaine emphasized the human toll, noting that 50 or 60 families have been devastated by these losses.
Impairment and drugs
A major driving force behind the summer spike is a sharp increase in impaired driving.
Roughly 45 per cent of fatal collisions this year involve drugs or alcohol as a causal factor, up from roughly 33 per cent last year. St. Germaine noted that while impaired driving had been on a downward trend for about 15 years, those numbers are unfortunately climbing again.
He pointed directly to cannabis legalization as a contributing factor.
"People are using drugs and then making the choice to drive, and they're saying, well, it's okay, it's legal to have it, possess it and to use it, but it's not legal to be driving a vehicle when you've been using it," St. Germaine said. "It's like they're not adding the two together to come up with an equation that says I shouldn't be driving."
Speeding and seatbelts
St. Germaine cited speeding and a lack of seatbelt use as the other major contributors to highway deaths. He noted that many ejections happen on gravel roads when a driver hits a freshly graded patch of loose gravel, loses control, and rolls into a ditch.
He added that many drivers treat the posted speed limit as a "rough general idea" and consistently travel 12 to 18 km/h over the limit.
St. Germaine shared a recent anecdote of encountering a pickup truck travelling 148 km/h in a 100 km/h zone south of Prince Albert.
"If his front tire one or the other side happens to blow out … he's gonna immediately lose control of that vehicle. At 148, it's not recoverable," St. Germaine warned. "He's going in the ditch, it's gonna roll, and if he's not wearing a seatbelt, guaranteed he's gonna be ejected and in all likelihood gonna be killed."
"100 per cent preventable"
The overarching message from the RCMP is that these tragedies do not have to happen. St. Germaine pointed to a recent multi-vehicle collision in Martensville that required STARS Air Ambulance to transport two people to Saskatoon with life-threatening injuries. He said the crash, which is still under investigation, was likely caused by a driver failing to yield at an intersection.
"I think probably the most frustrating thing from a police perspective is that in all of these incidents, they're preventable," St. Germaine said. "People make choices and do things and end up breaking the law."
Saskatchewan RCMP are conducting increased check stops and targeted enforcement starting this August long weekend, a campaign that will carry straight through to the September long weekend in an effort to stem the tide of fatal crashes.
