With Alberta's population increasing by 9.8% since 2012, the number of new drivers on the road increased by 8.9%, but despite that, the number of vehicle collisions causing death and major injury are at the lowest they've been in some time.

The number of fatal and major injury causing collisions is at 63.4 per 100,000 people in 2016, down from 91.5 back in 2006, with the social cost of collisions being estimated to be as high as 10.3 billion dollars in 2015.

Consultant Donna Tona from Alberta Transportation's Office of Traffic Safety presented a report to Lacombe Council Monday night, and she said awareness and education are two of the big factors that are contributing to the decrease.

“I think roads are getting safer because our office is heavily invested in education, and I think that people are becoming more aware of other issues: weather conditions, how they’re vehicle operates, they’re in less of a hurry perhaps, there could be many many things, behaviour changes are big... We’re seeing that things are decreasing, and that’s a good news story.”  

She also gave props to Lacombe for their Transportation Master Plan implemented back in 2013.

“They’ve determined they’ve got some high volume arteries they need to pay attention to and some pedestrian corridors they have to pay attention to, and they’ve mentioned roundabouts in their traffic master plan as something they want to look at either in the future or fairly soon…So there is a lot of education that could be done in conjunction with that master plan that could enhance it even more, so it’s a great plan.”

She said that she has never seen a 5-way stop before, and planned to check it out before leaving Lacombe.