The price tags we notice and those we ignore

On July 29, 2026, two crashes on Highway 102 in Lower Sackville involved 13 vehicles, sent four people to hospital, shut down afternoon rush hour traffic for hours, required police, firefighters, paramedics and tow operators, and generated a substantial investigation response. Adopting Vision Zero methodology and principles could have prevented these crashes.

According to the RCMP crash report: “a northbound Chevrolet Express van left the roadway, crossed the median into southbound traffic, and became airborne after striking a Toyota RAV4. The van then collided with a Buick Enclave before landing on a Chevrolet Colorado and coming to a rest on its side. A Subaru Impreza subsequently collided with the Colorado while travelling in the same direction.”  

Then, not even one hour later: “a secondary collision happened in the same area as vehicles were stopped in traffic. Officers learned that an International truck struck a GMC Sierra, a Ford Edge, a Jaguar XKR, and a GMC Terrain.  The Terrain was then pushed into a Ford Mustang which struck a Hyundai Elantra, which in turn collided with a Hyundai Santa Fe.” 

RCMP Nova Scotia concluded that “These collisions resulted in significant traffic disruptions.”

We need to unpack these two incidents because what happened was far more serious than traffic disruption. Using Transport Canada's social cost estimates, the reported injuries alone represent roughly $150,000 in societal costs. This figure is likely an underestimate. Once vehicle damage, emergency response, traffic delays, lost productivity, and insurance impacts are included, the full cost of these two Highway 102 crashes could conceivably approach $1 million. Yet, the societal costs of crashes are rarely assigned a dollar value, even though they are paid for through health care, insurance premiums, emergency response, lost productivity, property damage, and human suffering.

Transport Canada estimates that road collisions impose nearly $36 billion in social costs annually across Canada, including medical treatment, emergency response, vehicle damage, lost productivity, administrative costs, and the human costs associated with injury and loss of life. These are real costs - borne by taxpayers, employers, insurers, health-care systems, governments and the individuals and families directly affected by crashes. 

In Nova Scotia, major highway safety improvements often focus on highway twinning or new highways. These are extraordinarily expensive, with the Highway 104 twinning alone costing an estimated $718 million, yet these expensive “improvements” do not prevent serious crashes.

The cost of those two crashes, less than an hour apart, is worth considering the next time we focus on highway widening, or new highways. Instead, implementing a Vision Zero approach to road safety more widely at key locations could support much more impactful low-to-mid-cost changes. Median barriers, improved interchange infrastructure, and speed management measures could be deployed throughout our highway network at a similar or lower cost to twinning just one kilometre of highway.

This is the challenge at the heart of Vision Zero. Our national road safety strategy is built on the principle that fatalities and serious injuries are preventable rather than inevitable, and that governments have a responsibility to reduce risk through engineering, education, enforcement, and safer system design. Alberta and Manitoba both have provincial road safety strategies, something we should urgently develop in Nova Scotia to ensure our investments in road safety are impactful and cost effective.

Serious crashes are preventable, and the societal costs that flow from them are not simply an unavoidable cost of car-centric transportation. They are costs that can be reduced, avoided, or prevented altogether through effective safety investments. The upcoming provincial Traffic Safety Act offers a chance to fully embrace Vision Zero, but will the Province act on the evidence?