A report from the BC Coroners Service released Thursday revealed that many car crash fatalities last year may have been preventable.
Putting on a seatbelt in the car/Shutterstock
In a news release, the Coroners Service said that 314 people, including drivers, passengers and pedestrians, died in 2018, up from 299 fatalities in 2017.
The data in the report also revealed that nearly 30 per cent of drivers and passengers who died in a car crash between 2011 and 2016 weren’t wearing a seatbelt. Further, the report said that one third of the total number of deaths from motor vehicle incidents between 2008 and 2016 involved drugs and/or alcohol.
According to the report, women were more likely than men to have been wearing a seatbelt at the time of a crash and, over the past decade, more than two-thirds of crash victims were men.
For motorcycle-involved fatalities, the service says 51 people died last year alone, a 50 per cent increase over the previous year.
With files from The Canadian Press
