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During high school in Toronto, a friend took a summer job one year in Algonquin Provincial Park. He worked at the main dock in Canoe Lake with other young folk. It was pretty isolated and so, for entertainment, they would drive an hour west on Highway 60 for an evening in the town of Huntsville outside the park. One night, three of them were driving back from Huntsville to Canoe Lake, my friend asleep in the back seat and the other two up front. He woke up when 600 kilos of bull moose came through the windshield, killing his friends and pinning him in the back. After rescuers pried him out, he spent weeks in the hospital.
They knew about the moose on the road—there were signs everywhere—and were careful to keep to the speed limit. But here’s the thing: the limit was all wrong. Insane, in fact, at 100 km/h for a wilderness area with a high density of wildlife. Given the hazard posed by these enormous animals it made no sense to have the same speed limit when you could only see what was in your headlights, as in daylight when you could see as far as the horizon. And yet, it would take many more deaths on Highway 60 before things changed and the limit was lowered to the rural maximum of 80 km/h—a still-debatable night speed (I almost hit a moose at night in Algonquin during a snowstorm, and I was creeping along at less than 40 km/h) but one that gave drivers a fighting chance.
The original speed limit was determined based on a set of general conditions with respect to the road’s age, surface, engineering, routing and provincial categorization—while ignoring the reality of its setting. I trot out this example because, though clearly not as extreme a mismatch, I’ve come to believe that the speed limit on Highway 99 through Whistler—i.e, Whistler’s main street—is now too high for both its setting and usage.
Here’s some data from an American study that should give you pause: a pedestrian hit at 30 km/h has a mere 2.5-per-cent chance of dying; at 50 km/h, a 20-per-cent chance; at 55 km/h, a 50-per-cent chance; and, at 65 km/h, a whopping 90-per-cent chance. The critical jump is from 50–65 km/h, where you essentially go from a 20- to 90-per-cent fatality rate. I don’t need to get into the critical differences in stopping distances at these speeds, but with the lowest speed limit on the increasingly busy section of Highway 99 through Whistler—choked with traffic, much of it impatient, as well as a huge uptick in walkers, runners, cyclists, e-bikers and other nouveau forms of transportation—set at 60 km/h, it makes you wonder.
The Resort Municipality of Whistler recently lowered the speed limit around town to 30 km/h, which is fantastic for calming street traffic, but the highway remains a problem. Horrible things have happened on the highway since I’ve lived here: pedestrians killed (you’ve seen the memorials), dozens of bears as well, head-on collisions, a motorcyclist flattened by a load of logs, buses in the ditch—many of which would have had different outcomes at lower speeds. I’ve seen deer trapped by oblivious motorists in the Creekside intersection, dozens of bears narrowly missed by speeding cars (particularly in the ridiculous 80 km/h stretch from Function to Twin Lakes), including a large one last summer trapped in the intersection of Highway 99 and Nesters Rd./Nancy Greene Dr. where traffic was moving so fast drivers didn’t even comprehend what was happening until they’d passed it. The road is simply too busy for its current speed limit.
There’s a psychological reason for this. Studies have found that “traffic influence” (i.e., how fast other drivers are going) explained 41 per cent of the variance observed on roads with a 90 km/h limit where the majority of drivers exceed the limit, but only 15 per cent of the variance on 50 km/h roads where the majority of drivers are within the limit. In other words, when more drivers exceed the limit—typically at higher posted speeds—you’re more likely to join them; at lower posted speeds that suggest a tangible safety hazard, you’re less likely to join the speeders. There’s also a perception difference in speed limits based on general driving experience and territory: in B.C., 60 km/h suggests you are merely reducing regular highway speed to pass through a community, while 50 km/h clearly says you are in a community; given the hugely different probabilities of grievous injury or death between these two speeds, it should be obvious what needs to happen.
Considering the number of people walking, running and riding on the road, the impatient—and bad—drivers, the frequent hazardous weather conditions and daily wildlife crossings, it seems a modest proposal to lower the speed limit to 50 km/h from Function Junction to Emerald. Maybe we’d have to petition the provincial Ministry of Transportation, but it’s in everyone’s interest to have “Highway Mentality” end at Function and “Community Mentality” kick in. Don’t believe me? Cross the highway as a pedestrian or cyclist at the Function Junction lights and just imagine yourself in the way of one of the trucks roaring through at over 100 km/h; or at Creekside, where the general speed of drivers arriving to town in this 60 km/h zone is 70 to 80 km/h.
Some people I mentioned this idea to moaned it would seriously slow them getting from A to B, but this knee-jerk reaction doesn’t hold up. The difference in travel time over the 16 km between Function and Emerald would be 19 versus 15 minutes—inconsequential, and more so if you’re only travelling a fraction of it, say, from Creekside to the Village, which would take only one minute more. With a huge increase in safety for both humans and wildlife, I’m hard-pressed to imagine a cogent argument against it.
Leslie Anthony is a Whistler-based author, editor, biologist and bon vivant who has never met a mountain he didn’t like
