The Written Word
for January 3, 2001

Every day I drive a highway that is truly unsafe at any speed – I refer to the highway to Whistler or more romantically known as the Sea to Sky highway. I’m lucky that I only have to drive 11 kilometers of it but even in that stretch you literally take your life in your own hands.

When I say that the highway is unsafe I admit that this is not really accurate – it is the number of idiots that drive the highway that cause the trouble. But the fact remains that any idiocy will be brought out in the motorist by the nature of the highway.

To begin with, the speed limit is too high. 90 kms, for a road little wider than the street in front of your house and windy in the extreme is simply too fast. But reducing the speed limit isn’t enough. It has to be enforced.

The West Vancouver police evidently think that setting up radar traps in the speed trap as motorists come into the highway at Exits 2 and 1 will slow drivers down. It won’t because everyone knows that’s the last time they’ll see a cop until they get into another slowdown area.

The problem is that everyone is in a hurry to get to Whistler then home again. And chances are taken on a highway that is a highway in name only. The number of curves are such that 70 should be the limit.

But other things must be done. It is a hugely expensive road to expand and maintain and the government has spent vast sums not only keeping the highway repaired but containing the numerous creeks that flood in a flash after any decent rainfall. But giving credit to the Ministry of Highways, as I do, doesn’t alter the fact that far too many people are killed every year on this highway, most in head-on collisions.

Here are the things which must be done in addition to lowering the speed limit.

There must be widening done and concrete medians erected in key areas. This is because lighting is so bad … so better lighting, which is to say much more lighting must be put in place. And there must be much greater appearance of policemen throughout the route. Normally I think speed limits are ridiculously low but not so on this highway.

It isn’t open to us to just shake our collective heads and say "well, that’s what you get when you combine booze and windy roads". We have an obligation to all drivers to see that people don’t cross the center line and kill them.

There is some hope that Whistler will get the 2008 Winter Olympics. That can’t happen unless that road is improved. But there is a hell of a lot better reason to fix things than the Olympics – it’s the lives of people who drive that highway whatever the reason.