Heading towards disaster?

Every day, when he leaves the campus of the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (UQAC), Martin Lavallière sees motorists running the red light in front of the establishment.

“People make their turn, and there are four or five of them passing on the red. Not the yellow one. The Red one. »

Delinquent behavior, which is increasingly common and trivialized, says the professor in the health sciences department at UQAC. “Montreal, Quebec, Saguenay… We are constantly told about it. We have allowed the way we drive to deteriorate. And the most recent road report confirms this. »

In Quebec, 28,715 people suffered minor, serious or fatal injuries in collisions involving a motor vehicle last year. In Ontario, 25,165 people suffered the same fate – even though Ontario has a little less than double the population of Quebec (15 million compared to 8.7 million).

This means that there are 3,300 collisions causing injuries per million people in Quebec, compared to 1,680 per million in Ontario, the two most populous provinces in the country. And the proportions are similar for the years 2021 and 2020.

In British Columbia, nearly 17,000 injuries have been reported in road collisions on average over the past five years, or 3,400 per million population. In Alberta, with an average of 16,000 collisions involving injuries over the past five years, this rate was 3,700 per million the same year.

The question arises: do Quebecers voluntarily adopt behaviors that make public roads a more dangerous place than in Ontario for the people who are there? Or are they more prone to distraction?

“Everyone was taking walks”

With the pandemic lockdowns, a more positive road record seemed within reach.

As the number of trips by motor vehicle is directly linked to the dangerousness of a road, the drop in the number of trips predicted a reduction in deaths and serious injuries in collisions.

However, that is not what happened.

Marco Harrison, director of the CAA-Quebec Foundation and road safety expert, was surprised to see that the death toll had increased during the pandemic.

“It was the time when people were at home, when everyone was going on walks,” he says. But the number of deaths in collisions has not decreased, and the number of seriously injured has not decreased much. We were surprised,” he said.

A study by the American Automobile Association (AAA) Highway Safety Foundation showed that the pandemic essentially took safe drivers (predominantly women) off the road, who were replaced by drivers who engaged in aggressive behaviors. more at risk (young men).

For example, young men are twice as likely to text while driving, are 44% more likely to speed on highways and residential streets, and are 80% more likely to run red lights. . They are also nearly three times more likely to drive drunk or under the influence of alcohol.

An observation that is not unique to the United States and has had repercussions even after the pandemic, says Mr. Harrison.

“It confirms that there is more deviant behavior. In 90% of cases, the collision is caused by a human factor: it is the result of an action taken by someone behind the wheel. In terms of deaths and serious injuries, we went back 10 years,” he said, adding to wait to see the results for the year 2023 before talking about a black streak.

“If 2023 has a bad record, we are in disaster mode. There, it’s going to be an electric shock,” he said.