If you travelled somewhere for the holidays, chances are you drove through some of the worst road conditions southern Alberta has seen in quite some time.
A rollover near Monarch late last week sent a 26-year-old woman to a Calgary hospital with serious injuries.
This morning, a car collided with the median at the Nobleford roundabout, sending two people to hospital with minor injuries.
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The ditch along Highway 3 looked like a graveyard for cars, as many lost control and slipped off the road.
Inside Lethbridge, drivers were having a tough time dealing with the conditions as well. A car crashed into the fence at the Mountain View Cemetery on Scenic Drive, while motorists were getting stuck in some residential neighbourhoods.
“I see a lot of vehicles, whether it be on the highway, whether it be in town, in snow drifts and ditches,” L A Towing driver Brennan Tanner said. “This wind and blowing snow definitely hasn’t been easy on drivers.”
Tanner says because there’s been so many, he can’t recall how many vehicles he’s towed in the last few days.
“I started with my first today at four o’clock in the morning,” Tanner said. “No sooner got back to the shop, that another one came. While I was doing that one, at the same intersection another one got stuck. So I got the one out, grabbed the other one right away, got him out.”
In these conditions, simple turns are anything but. A driver on the city’s north side needed a whopping seven people to rescue him as he tried to turn off Mayor Magrath Drive.
“I tried to get through,” Dustin Labiuk said with a laugh. “It felt really good that people cared to stop by and spend a little of their time helping me get out of a situation like that.”
Police ask motorists to drive to the conditions, but sometimes getting stuck is inevitable. For at least one tow truck driver, helping stranded drivers for free, makes his day.
“After I’ve helped them, people come up and they say, ‘I appreciate what you’ve done… You saved my day,’” Turner said. “It really makes a guy feel good.”
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