Fatal crashes can be avoided, roads expert says

Morning North8:22Zero road fatalities - Is it possible?

We've been examining what is going wrong with our northern highways this week. Some road safety experts say we could live in a world with zero road fatalities. Can it be done? We hear more from the CBC's Megan Thomas.

In the past monththere have been several deadly collisions on highways innortheastern Ontario. But some road safety advocates believe it's possible to reach zero fatal crashes through changes to car and road design.

According to Neil Arason, theonly acceptable number of deaths on the roads is zero.

Arason is a road safety expert based in British Columbia whohas written a book called No Accident: Eliminating Injury and Death on Canadian Roads.He also supports a global movement calledVision Zerowhich explores ways toeliminatefatal and serious road collisions.

INTERACTIVE:When and where collisions happen on highways in the northeast

Even though crashes in North America have killed tensof thousands of people over the past decade, Arason said he doesn't believe road safety is a top priority.

"Part of it is we've just accepted that accidents just happen. So it's really the way we think," he said.

"System designers have to design roads and vehicles so that everyday errors can occur without people being killed or injured."

Arason said some European countries,such as Sweden, are now designing roads with safety as the number one priority,with impressive results.

He also pointsto measures such as collision avoidance systems in cars and transport trucks as a step in the right direction, but questions why they are not mandatory in all vehicles now that the technology exists.

'Likely to be alive'

For Ron Henderson of Sudbury,safer road design includesmore four-lane highways in the north.

His sister Kelly and her two sons died in a collision on Highway 69, south of Sudbury, in 2002.

After the tragedy, Henderson was part of a campaign to improve safety on the highway by making them wider.

"I often think that Kelly and the boys would have been alive today would more than likely be alive today if that four-lane highway had been built at the time," he said.

The Highway 69project ispegged at about $10 million perkilometre,plus millions of dollarsmore to put in required the interchanges.

People may think it's too expensive to upgrade and change highways, Arason said. Butbillions of dollars a year are also being spentresponding to collisionseverything from police investigations to health care costs to tow trucks.