Please read letter written by a 7 year old girl, Riley Donahue.
Reassess the need for further CRB along Hwy 99/Hwy 12/Road 40 to prevent unnecessary deaths (Whistler - Lillooet- Lytton).
On Jan. 2, a car travelling south on Highway 99 sideswiped another vehicle and veered off a cliff to the shores of the Fraser River. Seven-year-old Sage McCaul and Trish Donohue, 46, died at the scene. Three other passengers survived.
Donohue isn’t alone in wanting the Ministry of Transportation to consider installing a concrete roadside barrier (CRB) along Hwy. 99. Between 2001 and 2013, 58 people died in fatal crashes between Squamish and Lillooet on the highway. We need to reassess the need for further CRB along Hwy 99/Hwy 12/Road 40 to prevent unnecessary deaths.
“It actually brought a tear to my eye,” said Stone. “It was a very articulate letter for a child that age.”
“We are looking at that corridor as a top priority right now…crews have been out there and we’re going to continue to assess that corridor, and we’ll see if adding some median there makes sense.”
That change can’t come soon enough for Ryan Donohue.
“We need to readdress this and make sure it doesn’t happen again, so someone else doesn’t have to lose a member of their family.”
There have been many tragic accidents over the past few years involving vehicles sliding off the highways in and around Lillooet BC. The 'ditches' in this part of the world are very deep and a re- assessment of highway safety and improvements is needed to prevent further unnecessary traffic fatalities.
The BC MInistry of Transportation website provides information on the rationale for location of CRB:
Concrete roadside barrier (CRB) is installed along the shoulder of highways where it is justified and where funding permits. Not all locations require CRB. Some of the criteria that is assessed when determining if CRB should be installed is: shoulder width, the slope of the ditch and volume of traffic on the highway. Generally – the steeper the shoulder, the narrower the shoulder, and the higher the traffic volumes – the more likely barrier will be justified.
