VIDEO: Bad driving caught on dash-cams can be shocking, even entertaining, but also sometimes deadly

Are drivers on Lower Mainland roads getting worse? Stats say ‘maybe’

Anyone who commutes in a vehicle or drops kids off at schools has experienced bad driving, dangerous driving, bizarre driving. 

Many of us have seen terrible things happen. 

Not even three weeks ago, a 60-year-old woman was killed by a driver while crossing First Avenue at Spadina Avenue in Chilliwack in broad daylight in the intersection. 

Tuesday morning (Oct. 14, 2025) a friend messaged me to say that she saw a student lying on his back on the road in front of Chilliwack Secondary School after being struck by a car. As of this writing, there is no word on the status of the reportedly 16-year-old boy. Kids are resilient, but if he hit his head it could be serious. And regardless of whether or not this student is OK, this should never happen.

The horror his parents will have felt when they got the call, probably from a vice-principal, is real. I felt that briefly several years ago when my son got hit by a car in our residential neighbourhood while riding bikes with friends. We raced to the scene, terrified at what we would find. In the end, it was more that he hit the car than the car hit him. He rode right into the side of a sedan driving slowly, put a big dent in the car, bounced back, and cracked his bike helmet. That’s right, his bike helmet, not his skull.

In the end that was just a great lesson, a good story, he got an ambulance ride and a stuffed polar bear that he cherished for years. Lucky.

A series of dash-cam clips from recent days

Pedestrians struck in motorized vehicle crashes constitute the largest number of traffic fatalities worldwide. 

Excessive speed is the main factor in such crashes, and the relationship between estimated impact speed and the risk of a pedestrian fatality has generated much debate concerning what should be a safe maximum speed limit for vehicles in high pedestrian active areas.

Studies show that when an estimated impact speed increases by just one km/h, the odds of a pedestrian fatality increase on average by 11 per cent. That’s according to a 2019 meta-analysis of 15 studies in the academic journal Accident Analysis & Prevention. (There really is an academic journal for everything.) 

The risk of a fatality reaches five per cent at an estimated impact speed of 30 km/h, which is what school zones are in the Lower Mainland and across Canada. But if people ignore the speed limits, none of that matters. The risk of fatality doubles to 10 per cent if a vehicle strikes a pedestrian at 37 km/h, 50 per cent at 59 km/h, 75 per cent at 69 km/h, and 90 per cent at 80 km/h. 

When a 3,000-pound vehicle (smaller than average) driving at 20 km/h (no one drives this slow) strikes a 150-pound human being, it carries approximately 21,000 joules of kinetic energy, which is a lot in human terms. 

Specifically, for the nerds, the energy at impact is KE=1/2 mv². With m≈1,360 kilograms, v=5.56 m/s, KE≈2.1 x 10⁴ joules, approximately. (I looked it up.) Only a fraction of that car's energy is transferred to the person thanks to vehicle deformation, braking, and the pedestrian’s motion (“wrap and slide”).

Real-world data in an example such as this puts pedestrian death risk near one per cent and severe injury in the low single digits. Sure that’s small, but far from safe and broken bones, cracked skulls, or internal injuries can change lives.

Increased risk

There are more and more people in B.C. and the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley and Chilliwack than ever. That means more vehicles, more pedestrians, more cyclists, and now with technology we have electric scooters, bikes, skateboards, even unicycles, all of which can travel up to 40 km/h or more, the users of which are certain to be losers when up against a 6,000-pound pickup truck driven by a negligent driver or if they are negligent e-scooter users flying into the path of a cautious and safe driver. 

Just ask Tara Hartshorne whose daughter was killed while on a skateboard when she was struck by a 24-year-old in a pickup truck at an intersection in Rosedale on Aug. 2, 2022.

In 2024, there were 303,593 reported crashes of all kinds on B.C. roads, according to ICBC, a steady increase over the past five years, which makes sense because the start of that five years was the start of the pandemic. 

So are drivers getting worse in the Lower Mainland?

To a meaningful extent, yes, drivers and driving conditions in B.C. are slipping in quality. The uptick in total crashes and rise in fatalities (in absolute numbers) suggest that more mistakes or risky behaviour (or system failures: infrastructure, enforcement, distraction) are showing up.

That doesn’t mean all drivers as a whole are getting worse, but conditions are more complex than ever and people need to take driving more seriously than ever, not less.

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Paul J. Henderson
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