The Malahat highway claimed another life last weekend.
But is it really the highway itself that we should be blaming?
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: it’s how drivers use the roadway more than the roadway itself that is the problem.
Speed is being considered as a major factor in one of the weekend crashes, while alcohol is being investigated as a contributing factor in another.
That’s the people getting behind the wheel and behaving recklessly — both to their own detriment and the detriment of anyone unlucky enough to be sharing the road with them.
One might have expected, as we had the first rainfall in months, that weather and slippery roads might have contributed to the crash toll, but according to police, not so.
The message is clear.
People need to slow down on the Malahat, not pass and tailgate like crazy people, or the only thing they’ll be late for is their own funeral. Unless luck is on their side, since good driving clearly isn’t.
There are some notable times when the highway and its conditions are a little scary — especially if you don’t know the road like the back of your hand.
On occasions when the sun has set, there is heavy rain, snow or sleet, or there is fog, the Malahat is not a nice road to be on.
Reflectors and reflective paint, along with other types of lighting could definitely be better, or better-maintained at least.
Without these helpers, drivers can be left peering through their windshields, trying to figure out where the road ends and the dropoff begins when visibility is poor.
We have always argued those, along with traffic enforcement, is where our money should be going, not mega-million dollar widening projects.
You widen the road and the yahoos just take it as a licence to go even faster, bullying their way down the pavement and around the bends at a clip that would make a race car driver gulp and grab for a handhold.
These folks seem incapable of grasping the idea that tourists are seeing the road for the first time and will not be going as fast as they are.
Where are the brains of the people willing to endanger their own lives and the lives of others for the sake of a car length?
Who hasn’t seen the lunatic who almost forces a car off the road at the end of the passing lane only to be stymied in their speedster ways and forced to hit the brakes hard by the multi-car line of traffic ahead that’s going pretty much the same speed as the car he was so desperate to pass?
Almost inevitably he then rides the bumper in front of him until the next passing section.
Get these drivers to slow down and we’ll all be a lot safer.
