- A new study based on Transport Canada suggests road fatalities in this country are on the rise
- Ontario had the lowest per-capita fatal crash rate; and rural crashes are more likely to claim a life
- In raw numbers, the analysis showed some 1,931 people were killed on our roads in 2022
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If it feels like driving has gotten a bit more hair-raising lately, a study coordinated by the firm of Preszler Injury Lawyers will confirm your suspicions. Using data from Transport Canada and other sources, the study shows motor vehicle fatalities are on the rise in this country.
In fact, the law firm’s study suggests recent years have broken about three decades’ worth of downward trend. During 2022, the most recent calendar year for which the firm says data is available, the number of people killed on Canadian roads totalled 1,931 souls — apparently the highest in about ten years. More worryingly, the firm uses modelling and partial data to speculate road fatalities in the 2023 and 2024 calendar years will continue to rise, likely exceeding 2,000 deaths once complete numbers are available.
A chart provided by Preszler Injury Lawyers using Transport Canada source data shows the trend. Motor vehicle fatalities regularly exceeded 3,000 per year until the late 1990s and dropped under the 2,000 mark about a decade later at which point it seems to flatten out around 1,800 deaths per annum.
The legal group then drilled down further into the data, taking numbers for each of our ten provinces and comparing it to population count. This revealed that, as a per capita measure, Ontario statistically has the lowest road fatality rate, at 4.1 deaths per 100,000 people. Quebec measured 4.2 on the same scale. At the opposite end of the spectrum, New Brunswick saw 8.2 fatalities per capita; and Manitoba settled at 7.1 deaths per 100,000 residents.
Further insight can be gained by looking at the data along lines which have divided Canadians since the dawn of time: rural versus urban. Big cities like Toronto and Ottawa had fewer lives lost on the road compared to the year prior, resulting in per capita fatalities of 0.8 and 1.6 respectively, using the same measure as applied to the provinces overall. Vancouver was even lower, at 0.7 fatalities per 100,000 residents during that year.
While the total number of crashes in urban areas outstripped those in rural spots, it was the latter in which wrecks were three times more likely to claim a life. Higher speeds are pointed to as a major factor in this stat, since it is easier to achieve extra-legal velocities when not hemmed in by gridlock; in other words, when a crash does happen outside city limits, it’s likely to be more serious in terms of injury.
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