Liz Gipson was the first to assist at the scene of a deadly crash on the Malahat Highway on Saturday afternoon.
“He was barely alive and I had to start CPR right away,” she told Global News.
Soon, three other bystanders joined Gipson’s effort to try and keep the critically injured man alive before paramedics arrived.
“He had lost a tremendous amount of blood and… his pulse was very very weak.”
Despite their quick work, the man did not survive. His female passenger was seriously hurt.
Police say the victim had been driving southbound when his vehicle was hit head-on by a northbound vehicle.
West Shore RCMP believe the woman behind the wheel of the northbound vehicle was impaired by alcohol.
“Investigators are gathering evidence as to the level of impairment of the female driver and any driving evidence observed by witnesses,” said Cpl. Chris Dovell in a press release.
The collision happened in a construction zone on Highway 1 north of Aspen Road. The stretch of Malahat from Aspen Road to Shawnigan Lake Road has a crash rate 41 per cent higher than the provincial average and is currently undergoing a $34-million upgrade to expand some sections to four lanes and add three kilometres of new median barrier.
“It was a horrible horrible feeling, seeing and reliving my accident again,” said Shane King, the survivor of a head-on crash on the Malahat last year.
The Victoria-area realtor happened to drive past Saturday’s fatal collision and says the scene immediately brought back memories of Sept. 4, 2017.
“It’s all a bit blurry. It was a real hard hit for sure.”
King was driving northbound through Goldstream Park just south of Finlayson Arm Road on Labour Day Monday when he says an elderly driver suffering a medical emergency crossed the centre line and slammed into him.
King, who escaped the wreckage of his friend’s classic Corvette with a concussion, fractured orbital bone and bruising, believes the collision was unavoidable but says a divided road would have minimized the damage.
“Had there been a barrier there, he would have bounced right off of it.”
In an email, B.C.’s Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure told Global News that when the current upgrade through the Malahat Village is finished later this summer, “there will be an 11-kilometre-long section between Finlayson Arm Road and the Malahat Summit with safer intersections and median barrier to protect against crossover collisions.” Then, 65 per cent of the Malahat would be median-divided.
“It’s a step in the right direction but it’s nowhere near enough” said King, who wants to see centre dividers on all 20 kilometres of the corridor from the Leigh Road interchange in Langford to the Bamberton overpass near Mill Bay.
In response, the ministry told Global News that “the ultimate goal over the long-term is to have the entire Malahat corridor with median barrier,” adding, “this will be difficult in some areas due to the rock blasting required to widen/add median barrier, but the ministry is trying to make the corridor as safe as possible.”
Sadly, Saturday’s crash site was just weeks away from being a divided highway.
“Had that barrier been there, that man would have been alive and that woman wouldn’t be as injured,” said Gipson.