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Overview
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Canada's Challenge
Motor vehicles help Canadians overcome fundamental features
of their country: vast geography and harsh climate. With 900,000
kilometres of roadways, more than 18 million registered vehicles and
almost 21 million licensed drivers, Canadians are among the most mobile
people on earth. However, there is a heavy price being paid for that
mobility. Last year, traffic collisions in Canada claimed the lives of
nearly 3,000 road users and injured another 222,000, many of them
seriously. Individually, the toll is devastating; collectively, the cost
to Canada's health care system is at least $10 billion per year (about 1%
of GDP).
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The Canadian Approach to Road Safety: Shared Responsibilities
In Canada, responsibility for road safety is shared among the federal,
provincial/territorial and municipal levels of government. The federal
government is responsible for new motor vehicle safety standards (the Motor
Vehicle Safety Act), as well as interprovincial commercial vehicle safety
fitness (the Motor Vehicle Transport Act).
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Provinces, territories and municipalities are responsible for highway
development and maintenance, commercial vehicle operations, driver and vehicle
licensing and the development and implementation of local safety initiatives.
Key non-governmental agencies also play an important role in the development and
delivery of safety programs.
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This multi-tiered approach to road safety has been extremely effective.
Collectively, Canadian road safety stakeholders have made great strides toward
reducing the carnage. Since the early 1970s, the number of vehicles on Canada's
roads has almost doubled, yet the number of traffic fatalities has been cut in
half. This remarkable accomplishment is due to a combination of factors,
including interventions that focused on getting motorists to buckle up and to
refrain from driving after drinking, tougher vehicle safety standards, and
improvements in road infrastructure and emergency medical services.
Safer Road Travel Since the Vision's Inception
Travel on Canadian roads is safer today than in 1996, when Road Safety Vision
2001 was officially launched. The number of road users killed and seriously
injured decreased by 4% and 13%, despite steady increases in the number of
drivers and vehicles.
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Canada's level of road safety, as measured by "deaths per registered
motor vehicle", improved by 10%. Seat belt use by Canadians, which already
ranked among the highest in the world, increased slightly from almost 89% to
90%, and the percentage of fatally injured drivers who had been drinking
decreased by 13% over the 1990-1995 baseline period. |
Initiatives Supporting Road Safety Vision 2001
Recent improvements in traffic safety have been achieved with the help of a
number of initiatives undertaken in support of the four strategic priorities of
Vision 2001:
Raising Awareness
- Operation Impact - an annual event led by the Canadian Association of
Chiefs of Police, involving front-line officers from 2,000 police service
locations across the country who conduct a one-day blitz to inform motorists
of the benefits of proper seat belt and child restraint use and of the
dangers of drinking and driving;
- the adoption of graduated driver licensing systems in many provinces and
territories, thereby enabling novice drivers to acquire driving skills
gradually in low-risk driving situations;
- campaigns promoting the proper use of child restraints, school bus safety,
designated community safety zones and winter driving skills.
Communication, Collaboration, Cooperation
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the creation or enhancement of nationally
representative task forces, committees and project groups to address
emerging or ongoing road safety issues and to develop and implement
initiatives aimed at making road travel safer;
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the partnering of several police and government
agencies to develop a pilot project whose mandate is to provide a model for
police agencies to better match the use of police resources to target
high-risk road user behaviours;
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increased cooperation among all truck and bus stakeholders to strengthen
the safety standards that comprise the National Safety Code and improve the
safety performance of commercial vehicle transportation.
Enhanced Enforcement
- enhanced government initiatives, police enforcement and fines, and harsher
penalties for repeat offenders to deter driving after drinking.
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Data Improvements
- the availability of more comprehensive and better quality national traffic
collision data, and for the first time, exposure (vehicle kilometrage) data
to enable road safety researchers to more readily identify problem areas and
develop more timely solutions;
- the emerging development of a national computer- and communications-based
system called the System for Technological Applications in Road Safety
(STARS), which automates traffic collision and related administrative
functions.
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