Motor vehicle collisions happen every day, anywhere that vehicles are. In Kingston, the police collect data on each and every incident that happens, and on Thursday, the latest quarterly stats were presented to the Kingston Police Service.
“For us, being able to provide that quarterly snapshot to the community, to the board, to our officers. It’s got a lot of information in it,” acting chief Scott Fraser said.
The data collected by police is extremely concise.
With a skim through the report, you can figure out where the most accidents happen, when they happen, to whom and why, on average.
Police say that over the years, the worst intersections tend to stay the same.
At this point in the year, two of the worst are just a block away from each other, with Princess Street and Midland Avenue at number one and Princess at Gardiners Road number three, with a combined 42 incidents.
Traffic safety unit Sgt. Steve Koopman says it’s mostly a volume issue.
“What we’re looking at normally are high-volume traffic intersections with multi-turn lanes,” he said.
For pedestrians, the worst time to be out walking appears to be Tuesdays in the early afternoon, with 10 pedestrian-related incidents on that day so far this year, and the highest average number of incidents coming between noon and 3 p.m.
Of course, as many people may assume, the overall busiest time for traffic collisions is Thursday and Friday afternoons, during rush hour.
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John McFarlane has been driving for over 50 years, and he says he sees some unnerving behaviours out on the roads, even close to home.
“You know, my girlfriend drives like a maniac,” McFarlane said.
He said he thinks people aren’t taking the rules of the road quite as seriously these days.
“There comes a certain responsibility with driving,” he added.
Both Koopman and Fraser say there’s a clear culprit behind many of these preventable collisions.
“There is still an ongoing issue with distracted driving, predominantly through the use of a cellphone,” Koopman said.
At the end of the day, they simply want people to be safe.
“Just be safe, because we want everyone to be safe,” Fraser added.
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