Which province kills the most pedestrians?
Question: Which province has the most pedestrian deaths?
Answer: Now, that is a hard statistic to come by, because most of the time we hear about pedestrian deaths through reports from municipal police forces. I haven’t even been able to get the total number of deaths in B.C. for 2010 because ICBC, which collects that number, hasn’t released it yet.
That’s just in one province. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have an agency in Canada like various ones in the United States that are on top of this. For example, the Governors Highway Safety Association, with this 2010 report, or even better, Transportation for America, whose 2011 report not only has state statistics but lists of the most dangerous cities, along with breakdowns by age, sex, ethnicity and others of pedestrians killed.
The closest I have been able to find is this report from Transport Canada, which analyzed pedestrian deaths from 1992 to 2001. It’s not too helpful at first glance, because the number totals are about what you’d expect. The most in Ontario, second-most in Quebec, etc. Not surprising, since they are the most populous provinces.
However, if you go further down in the report, it tells you the number of pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 people, which gives you a better sense of how truly dangerous different provinces are.
When you look there, you’ll see that the highest RATE of fatalities, in proportion to the population, is 1. Prince Edward Island (2.2), 2. Saskatchewan (1.5) and B.C. (1.4)
As well, B.C. had the highest rate of pedestrian injuries of all the provinces.
If anyone has any more up to date information, I’d appreciate hearing it.
There is also a yearly report from Transport Canada on road collisions, with total number of pedestrians killed, but it doesn’t have a provincial breakdown.