WATCH: Following a fatal motor vehicle collision at the Nobleford highway intersection, attention has again turned to making the crossroads a safer place. Blake Lough reports.
NOBLEFORD- Progress for constructing a roundabout at the intersection of Highway 519 and Highway 23 is coming along quickly and local first responders are looking forward to a change to the high-collision area.
“We see a lot of bent metal, a lot of cars destroyed,” said Nobleford Fire Department Chief Ryan Wagner. “We’ve seen cars ripped in half.”
The intersection just outside of Nobleford has kept local volunteer firefighters on their toes for years.
Thankfully, change is coming in the not-too-distant future. In April, Alberta Transportation announced the construction of a roundabout. They say it could be completed as early as this fall, weather permitting.
“We have put the work for the roundabout to tender,” said Alberta Environment spokesperson Carrie Sancartier. “We are expecting to choose a contractor in the coming weeks and currently our expectation is that the roundabout will be complete by the end of the construction season.”
A roundabout will take away the possibility of a left-hand turn through oncoming traffic; a type of collision that has plagued the intersection for years. In data collected from 2008 to 2010, that left-hand turn contributed to 50 percent of all collisions. The latest fatality at the intersection, a motorbike being struck by a pickup truck, was the result of one such left-hand turn. But, government officials say a roundabout will make the area safer in other ways as well.
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“Roundabouts also reduce potential for right angle or t-bone collisions, and they eliminate head-on and high speed collisions,” said Sancartier.
Fire Chief Wagner says calls to the nearby intersection almost always mean a serious accident.
In a letter shared with the village of Nobleford last year, Wagner shared the amount of motor vehicle collisions that happened at the intersection over the past years:
2009- 7 MVC
2010- 7 MVC
2011- 5 MVC
2012- 9 MVC
2013- 14 MVC
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