OTTAWA, Ont. – The safety record of Canada’s highways may be improving, but it looks like we’ll fall short of a goal to have the safest roads in the world by 2001.

For the second year in a row, Canada has actually dropped in a ranking of 29 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, recording 1.63 fatalities per 10,000 registered vehicles for ninth place in the recently released 1998 statistics. That’s better than 13th-placing U.S. and its 2.1, but well behind top-ranked Sweden and its 1.18.

In 1996, the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators (CCMTA) adopted its Vision 2001 program to have the safest roads in the world, and Canada has since enjoyed a five per cent drop in road fatalities and eight per cent drop in injuries from traffic crashes. The 1998 fatality rate actually dropped 6.3 per cent when compared to 1997 levels.

“(But) the safety improvements realized since inception of Vision 2001 suggest that Canada may not be successful in achieving its goal by 2001,” admits a recently released annual report on the program. “In the past, several European countries have established extremely ambitious goals and not achieved them within their originally specified time frame. They were more successful, however, with subsequent targeting efforts.”

“Yes, we have fallen, and of course to a certain degree it is disappointing,” says Pierrette Thibaudeau, CCMTA projects manager. Canada’s road fatality rate is dropping, but “the other countries are doing very well”.

So far, Canada’s road safety officials have focused primarily on seat belt and child seat use with the National Occupant Restraint Program, and the Strategy to Reduce Impaired Driving 2001, which wants to cut by 20 per cent the number of people killed in alcohol-related crashes as compared to the 1990-95 period. Meanwhile, Car Time 1-2-3-4 has tried to better educate motorists about how to secure children in car seats, while six provinces now have graduated licensing systems for new drivers.

While Canada’s road safety has improved, it still has a way to go.

Drinking and driving, for example, is still a bigger problem on Canadian roads than in some other countries. In 1996, a third of fatally injured drivers had more than twice the legal blood alcohol level of .08. That compares to Sweden’s legal limit of .02, and Norway’s limit of .05, and both of those countries have better safety records. Excessive speed was a factor in about one in four fatal single-vehicle crashes, a third of the drivers killed were not wearing a seat belt, and three out of every 10 young children who were killed were not properly restrained in a child safety seat. n