Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
Such as not knowing the most dangerous places to drive, walk or cycle in Burnaby.
I took a walk through the latest ICBC data and now I don’t know where is safe to go in the city I call home. One area in particular is all along Burnaby’s border on Boundary Road.
According to the data I saw, Boundary is insane when it comes to crashes, with multiple locations that are magnets for danger. That, of course, was reinforced in December 2019 with yet another fatality on Boundary, this time between Imperial and Marine Way.
I looked at the ICBC crash map and it listed five different places along Boundary that are terrible, with one actually clocking in as the second-worst intersection in all of Metro Vancouver in one chart.
Boundary at Grandview leads this notorious list, with more than 1,100 crashes between 2014 and 2018 – the latest the data goes is May 31, 2018, so the number for 2018 is actually far higher. On a second chart listing the top-10 crash intersections in 2017, this was second on the list with a whopping 243 crashes.
Second on the data list for 2014-18 was Boundary at Kingsway with more than 900 crashes in that same period.
Those were followed by Boundary at Hastings, Canada Way and Marine Way.
So, yeah, anywhere along Boundary is a dangerous place to be, whether it’s in a vehicle, on a bicycle or just walking.
Another terrible intersection with 194 crashes in 2017 was Willingdon Avenue and the Trans Canada Highway. That’s not really a surprise if you’ve ever been there during rush hour.
It should be noted that this data doesn’t include crashes that occurred in parking lots or parked vehicles.
ICBC was also kind enough to send me data listing all crashes in the period of 2017-18 in Burnaby, including fatalities, casualties, pedestrians, cyclists and PDO (property damage-only crash).
In 2017, Burnaby had 4,500 casualty crashes, 210 in which pedestrians were hit by drivers and 59 in which cyclists were hit by drivers.
In 2018, those numbers all rose, with Burnaby logging 4,700 casualty crashes, 230 in which pedestrians were hit by drivers and 80 in which cyclists were hit by drivers.
Fatalities also went up from 6 in 2018 to 9 in 2018. By my count, there were 8 in 2019.
Things are supposed to be getting better – not worse – as Burnaby and the Province of B.C. have made more effort over the years to raise awareness about safety.
Instead, the numbers say things are getting worse.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
