THUNDER BAY -- Not surprisingly, Thunder Bay’s busiest intersections are its most dangerous.
Once again the corridor where Golf Links Road and the Harbour Expressway meet was the site of the most collision in 2014 say Thunder Bay Police, who on Wednesday released its annual collision statistics to the media.
A total of 23 incidents were recorded at the intersection, four more than at Central and Memorial avenues, runner-up with 19.
The most dangerous street, plagued by construction last year, was Arthur Street, which showed up six different times for a total of 68 collisions.
Intersections along Memorial Avenue appeared three times, while the Harbour Expressway was the scene of three of the top 20 collision sites, with 13 at its intersection with Balmoral Avenue and nine where the Expressway meets Fort William Road.
Traffic Sgt. Glenn Porter said the results aren’t shocking.
“Not surprisingly, the highest numbers correlated with construction programs we had last year and the high volumes,” Porter said.
“Any of the intersections with high daily volumes generally tend to make the top five, sometimes the top 10.”
Porter added any roadway with a daily traffic volume higher than 20,000 is bound to come close to the top.
“You can expect that it’s going to be in the top five,” he said.
The list does change from year to year, although not significantly, Porter said.
“It’ll change depending where the construction programs are for the year and other variables. But it more or less reinforced what we say on a daily basis. Construction areas tend to frustrate some drivers. It means a re-routing of their daily commute.”
The delays tend to infuriate some drivers, who want to complete their commute in the same amount of time as usual.
The report also broke down the number of collisions by month.
January and February, in the heart of winter, were by far and away the most dangerous months, with 898 and 768 collisions respectively. November, when the city received its first significant snowfall of the season, was fourth behind March at 576.
July was the safest month, at 404, with similar, but slightly higher totals reported in June and August.
The data also breaks the collision numbers down by time of day. The 3 p.m. hour saw the most crashes, with 624, while the hours between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. proving to be the safest to be on city streets.
In terms of days of the week, Thursday saw the most collisions, at 1,037, two more than Friday. All told there were 6,246 collisions reported in 2014.
Four-hundred and-thirty-four of those were blamed on failing to yield the right-of-way, while 322 were cited for driving too close and 180 were blamed on speed or driving too fast for the conditions.
In terms of what drivers were doing at the time, the second-highest number of incidents, 1,183, occurred when one of the vehicles involved was parked, 861 while one was stopped and 769 while reversing.
There were also 40 incidents involving 42 pedestrians in 2014, with six occurring last August. The end of the morning commute, 9 a.m. was when pedestrians seemed most vulnerable, with six incidents reported. A dozen of the people struck were deemed to be crossing with the right-of-way, while four were crossing without the right-of-way.
The report also showed that 61 of the collisions involved alcohol or drugs, 10 of which occurred in November. February had no such incidents. Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday each had 10 collisions involving alcohol or drugs, although only 35 of the 61 were found to be over the legal limit of 0.08. Just three were found to impaired by drugs.
