‘Grandma hasn’t arrived’: 68-year-old grandmother is the most recent victim of the highway of death

The family of a grandmother who lost her life a week ago in a face-to-face encounter on the infamous highway of death would have chosen another place to live if they had known how dangerous the A-50 before moving to Outaouais.

“We thought about looking at the schools, the neighborhood, but we didn’t know the region or this road. It didn’t take long for me to realize there was a real problem there. [avec l’A-50]. I stopped counting the number of accidents,” says Sophie Boisjoly.

Last Monday, his mother Dorice Dubois, who lives in Montreal, was on her way to spend the week at her home, in the Masson-Angers district, in Gatineau.

Bad feeling

Around noon, the 68-year-old woman was driving on the A-50 when she veered from her lane before hitting the back of a semi-trailer then colliding with a van in the oncoming lane, at the height of Grenville-sur-la-Rouge. Traffic is moving against the flow in this area.

Sophie Boisjoly had a bad feeling when her daughter asked her: “Grandma hasn’t arrived yet?” She looked on Google and came across articles reporting a fatal accident.

“I saw his car in the photos,” she says. Five minutes later, police officers knocked on his door to tell him the worst.

The reason why the grandmother of 10 lost control of her toy car is still unknown. According to Sophie Boisjoly, the police do not rule out the possibility that she had felt unwell or had a mechanical breakdown.

Chances

In any case, she believes that her mother might have been able to survive the accident if she had been on a “normal” highway with two lanes in each direction.

“What was fatal for her was the blow to the head from the head-on collision. If there had been a median or a ditch, his vehicle would have stopped there instead of going into the other lane,” saddens M^me Boisjoly, mother of five children.

“It’s a lousy highway. Whenever we can avoid it, even if it’s just a small portion, we do it. It doesn’t matter if it adds time or [poste de] toll, we take the alternative,” she adds.

Had she known, she would have chosen another place to move 10 years ago. Especially since the bus of his daughters aged 12 and 14 takes the A-50, sadly nicknamed the highway of death, every day to take them to their high school.

“They will always pass by the place where their grandmother died,” she confides, worried.

The Ministry of Transport has announced a project to widen the A-50 to four lanes, but no date has been set for work on the section where the grandmother lost her life.

Moreover, while waiting for the work, a coroner who investigated yet another fatal accident involving a woman, in the summer of 2022, recommends the installation of median barriers in concrete or cables in order to separate the lanes where traffic is against the direction.