Synthesis of Safety for Traffic Operations - Transports Canada

Synthesis of Safety for Traffic Operations March 2003
Severity classifications differ
All of the Canadian provinces and territories classify fatal crashes as those crashes that
result in the death of an involved individual within 30 days of the crash, except for
Quebec who use an eight-day threshold.
Driver populations
Inexperienced and novice drivers are known to be over-represented in certain types of
crashes. A variation in the application of graduated drivers licensing (GDL) across the
provinces and territories will necessarily impact the safety performance between
provinces. For instance, novice drivers are over-represented in night-time crashes. In
comparing these crash statistics from Alberta, which does not have GDL, to Nova Scotia,
which has GDL, there may be a difference.
The fleet may differ
Areas and facilities that accommodate industries that rely heavily on trucking of goods
(e.g., logging, and the steel industry) will have a greater percentage of truck traffic.
Larger vehicles are known to be associated with fewer crashes, but also tend to produce
more severe crashes. Therefore, the application of results gathered from elsewhere need
to recognize and accommodate differences in the fleet.
Supporting legislation
Again variation across provincial and territorial boundaries may limit the transferability
of research results. For example, British Columbia law indicates that motorists must
yield the right-of-way to pedestrians at marked and unmarked crosswalks; this may
impact the safety performance of crosswalks. Ontario legislation imposes no such duty
on the motorist to yield to pedestrians except at signalized locations, and locations with
Pedestrian Crossovers.
Design standards
Although consistency and standardization of traffic operations and control strategies is a
major initiative of the transportation profession, there is some room for variation between
jurisdictions. For example, the use of backboards on, and the position of traffic signal
heads can vary between road authorities. SPFs for signalized intersections that were
developed in a jurisdiction that does not routinely use backboards, and tends to post
mount the signal head are not directly applicable to a jurisdiction whose minimum
standard requires backboards and mast-arm mounted signal heads.
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