Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) says 2020 is on track to be the worst year on record for catastrophic and serious injuries. Included in that designation are vehicle crashes that result in paralysis and brain injury.
So far, the Crown corporation says 18 such claims have been opened through the end of July.
Over the same time in 2018, just nine were opened — while there were eight such claims from January to July 2019.
Last year was the worst on record, with 23 paralysis and brain injury cases reported.
The vice-president of employee and community engagement at MPI, Satvir Jatana, says it comes even as the number of crashes has nosedived.
“While we’ve experienced a decrease of nearly 22,000 collision claims during the period of January to July 2020, compared to the same timeframe in 2019, unfortunately serious injury counts are dramatically higher.”
MPI says traffic volumes are still relatively low because of the pandemic, but it’s resulted in more drivers dramatically increasing their speeds.
The public insurer recently reported a 60% increase in speed-related serious driving offences, where a motorist is travelling more than 50 km/h over the posted speed limit, from April to June.
Manitoba RCMP say 57 people have died on highways in the province this year, but that statistic doesn’t include crashes inside the city of Winnipeg.
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