EDMONTON – The Edmonton Police Service investigated about 7,500 hit and run crashes last year alone. That’s the equivalent of about 20 each day.
“I’ve noticed in the last seven days, we’ve had 39 claims of hit and run come into West Division counter,” says temporary Acting Sgt. Joe Spear, of EPS West Division. “In that same time period, 155 throughout the city and that’s just in one week.”
Police say there was a total of approximately 35,000 collisions in total in Edmonton.
Officers say the cause is not necessarily people who are already in trouble with the law. Spear says most hit and run offenders just don’t want to own up to their mistake behind the wheel.
“A great number I find are people who just don’t want to take responsibility. They’re afraid of insurance going up because they made a mistake,” he says.
Amy Tymchuk was on the receiving end of a couple of those mistakes last year. The mother of three says she was the victim of two hit and run collisions.
“It bothers me, but a certain part of me can understand it. They don’t want to have their insurance rates go up but they forget that there’s the other side of the story and somebody has to pay for it,” explains Tymchuk.
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She says her family’s Dodge caravan was hit once in June and again in December.
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“For us, the deductible on the bigger dent is $1000. To come up with that just doesn’t quite work when you’ve got kids, and there’s dental bills and all these other things that come first,” Tymchuk adds.
Kelly Brisebois can relate. The expectant mother, who’s due in April, says she was waiting for a tow truck on Whitemud Drive, when another vehicle rear-ended her.
“By the time I opened my door and got out, the car was gone,” she explains.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh my god is my baby going to ok? Did this person actually just hit my car and drive away? What am I supposed to do now?’”
“By the time the tow truck driver got there, I was hyperventilating, and I was in tears, so it was not good.”
The number of hit and run cases hasn’t changed much in recent years, and police are urging victims to take steps to protect themselves.
Edmonton police suggest collecting whatever information you can before the driver leaves the scene.
“Snap a pic of car, a pic of license plate, a pic of the person driving the car, and to go to the extreme, snap a snapshot of the VIN plate on the dash on the driver’s side window ledge of each vehicle,” suggests Sgt. Kerry Bates, who works on the EPS’ Hit and Run Unit.
However, Bates says police hear about crashes where the driver doesn’t even pull over.
“A percentage of them were people who waved off the road – say, in a rear-end scenario – they’ll wave and say ‘let’s just pull off here out of traffic.’ The first vehicle in the line does pull off and the next vehicle takes off or turns left and goes another direction. And the person who has been hit hasn’t collective any information – being a trusting person – so they’re going to be out in the end for the damage.”
Bates recalls instances in which hit and run suspects do pull over and provide information, but it’s still not good enough.
“We’ve had occurances of people providing bogus information,” he says. “They accept the info because the person handwrites the info. They say ‘oh, that’s great’ and then they go to report the info because the vehicle isn’t driveable and then find out it’s all bogus information.”
Still, even a description of the vehicle and the driver can help police with the investigation.
“Hopefully, with the leads and the information, the evidence we can gather, we’ll be able to find out who did the hit and run,” says Spear. “The downside and the sad part is if we can’t, sure enough, the victim is the one who ends up ultimately paying the price.”
With files from Laurel Clark
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