Crashes in 2016 kill nearly twice as many compared to this time last year

Arolloverwest of Lake Manitoba Monday morning became the sixtieth fatalcrash in the province of the year a mounting total that already almost doubles last year's numbers.

By this time last year, 34 people had died in 32 crashes in Manitoba according to RCMP, compared to 65 deaths in 60 crashes so far this year.In total, 2015 saw80 deaths in 71 crashes in Manitoba.

The death tollin 2016 is 20 per cent higher than the five-year average in Manitoba; 55 people have died annually in48 fatal crashes on average over the past five years, according to RCMP.

These totals also include off-road vehicle crashes. Fifty-one of crashes in 2016 occurred on roads.Nine happened off road, of which twowere farm accidents and seven involved ATVs or snowmobiles.

Why the rise?

"It's disappointing this happens sometimes,"Sgt. Mark Hume, who has been a collision reconstructionist for about 12 years, told CBC News."There's anomalies; in some years it goes up, there's no particular reason."

Hume said traffic investigationsthis year show a fewoverarching trends: fewer people involved in fatal crasheshave wornseatbelts (or helmets in the case of cyclists, motorcyclists or ATV riders) and there's been a rise in fatalimpaired driving collisions.

"The impaired driving, it's a trend,it's a social thing. We were making a lot of headway. It seems to this year, a bit of a relapse," Hume said.

Hume said alcohol played a factor in alittle over 40 per cent of all fatal crashes in 2016 (26 in total as of Aug. 24), and about half the people who died in crasheswere not wearing seatbelts.

"The vast majority of rollovers are survivable if you simply have a seatbelt on, so there's a lot of deaths there that could have been minor injuries if somebody had been buckled up," Hume said.

"It's the small percentage that aren't [wearing seatbelts] who are being killed, so to me that sends even a bigger message. It shows the risk of not wearing a seatbelt is very high."

Speed kills

Another big factor is speed.

Hume said about 50 per cent of all fatal crashes this yearinvolved speeding, but over the past 14 months a new trendhas alsostarted to emerge.

The term "super speeder" has been coined torepresentmotorists who are not onlydriving beyond the limit, but doing so at excessively fast speeds, and that's something Hume said has been documented more this year.

"My unit patrols the TransCanada Highway from Saskatchewan to Portage la Prairie, and the number of what we call "super speeders" is climbing. I've been in this unit for 10 years. What used to be a once- or twice-a-month super speeder is now once or twice a shift, or once or twice every two or three days," Hume said.

"Recently one of my members caught somebody from out-of-province driving from the East Coast out west going over 170 kilometres an hour with a baby in the car because the baby was crying," he said."They wanted to get to their destination quicker. That was their excuse."

Other causes

"About 50 percent are speed-related ... 41 percent have alcohol involved. Another 16 per cent are at intersections, so somebody has failed to yield to another vehicle," Hume said."That adds up to more than 100 per cent, but in some crashes there are two causes."

Nationally, distracted driving accounts for about10 per cent of fatal rural crashes.

"It's a much bigger number in the urban areas," Hume said, adding it's much harder for investigators to determine if a vehicle crash resulted from distracted driving than when speed or alcohol are involved.

Hume believes too many people take driving for granted and don't pay attention to the rules of the road. He saidthereisalso an element of detachment that allows a lot of people to feel as if "it's not going to happen to them."

"They think drinking and driving is bad but then they just go out and do it. The general attitude is invincibility," Hume said.

"I think the penalties are pretty stiff. What makes a difference is if they see it happen to someone they know. They need to see people who are affected by this."

• 2 girls dead, 3 other teens in hospital after rollover on Bloodvein First Nation