Safety investigations into serious road collisions need to be conducted at a national level and by an independent body in the same manner air and rail occurrences are investigated.
The recent collision between a bus and a semi-truck near Carberry, Man., which killed 16 seniors, is the latest fatal incident to raise concerns about bus and road safety in Canada. The crash shares similarities to other fatal bus crashes like the 2018 Humboldt Broncos bus crash and the 2019 bus rollover on Vancouver Island.
At the time, most roads were not paved and road vehicles were horse-drawn. Roads carried less national strategic significance than railroads and waterways which both became federally-regulated. In 2016, the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators published its Road Safety Strategy. The strategy aims to raise public awareness of road safety as well as improve legislation and infrastructure. However, progress has been slow and often hampered by a lack of systemic efforts to collect, analyze and share publicly relevant data and research.
The TSB was absent from the Humboldt Broncos crash, the Columbia Icefield crash, the University of Victoria bus crash, and is absent from the Carberry crash, all because its mandate does not cover roads. Best practices dictate that serious road crashes across the country be investigated by an independent body. That would allow us to see the bigger and clearer picture, and to detect trends more accurately. We need this knowledge to justify necessary safety actions such as traffic countermeasures, infrastructure upgrades, stronger bus structures, seatbelts, event data loggers and mandatory bus driver training.
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