Ezra Hauer is a professor emeritus of civil engineering at the University of Toronto.
Part of the explanation stems from the knowledge that in most cases, had the persons involved in a crash acted differently, it would not have occurred – us drivers are the proximate cause of crashes. Another part comes from the admission that we humans are fallible, we all err and misjudge. Did it not happen to you that you noticed a pedestrian at the last moment and gasped: “My God, I could have taken a life and destroyed mine”? It did happen to me.
Had there been an overpass, these seniors would be alive today. Yes, building grade-separated intersections is expensive. But look south of the Manitoba border. There are no at-grade intersections on the interstates in Minnesota and North Dakota. The builders of the interstate system decided to build a safer system than the builders of the Trans-Canada Highway in Manitoba. Should one not ask why?
In the Humboldt Broncos crash in Saskatchewan, the proximate cause was that the truck driver ran a stop sign on the minor road. As usual, attention focused on the offending driver; was he speeding, impaired, tired, texting? None of these applied. Also, as usual, there was grieving, anger, coming together, offers of help, but there was very little discussion about how to prevent similar future tragedies.