Icy road conditions on Highway 881 last Tuesday kept firefighters busy as they dealt with two rollovers – and a vehicle that slid into a fire truck arriving at one of the crash scenes.
Around 7:30 a.m., a truck slid into the ditch and rolled near Conklin. The driver, who was wearing his seatbelt, sustained only minor injuries, mostly bruises and scratches from shattered glass, said Lac La Biche Fire Captain Shane Bair.
Then, three hours later and four kilometres north up the road, a second driver hurtled into the ditch. The late-model Dodge Ram rolled for about 30 metres before ending up on its side in a stand of birch trees, its roof and windows smashed and broken. The lone male driver also suffered only minor injuries.
With emergency lights on and sirens blaring, Lac La Biche County Fire Department crews travelled out to the scene of the second single-vehicle accident. En route, a green Dodge Ram tailgated the Owl River pumper truck and attempted to pass the emergency vehicle as it reached the crash site. As the Dodge swung back into the lane, it crashed into the pumper’s front bumper.
The driver stopped and was charged with careless driving by RCMP at the scene.
“It’s pretty upsetting when you deal with people who don’t pull over in the first place,” Bair said, who cautions drivers to slow down around emergency crews trying to do their jobs. “And then people that are tailgating you, they get right up on your bumper and follow you. Then they pass you when you get to the scene and get ahead of everyone else because they all pull over.”
Highway 881 has been a hotspot for speeding: in mid-October, enforcement groups were monitoring speeds on the busy single-lane road and spotted a Pontiac Sunfire driving 158 km/h, a silver Jeep doing 140 km/h, and a flat-deck semi going 130 km/h.
Now, with winter bringing icy conditions, it’s more important than ever to drive the speed limit – for your safety and others, Bair said.
“Anything east of town today was horrible, everything was caked with ice,” he said “This time of year, it’s going to be freezing rain, that crusty ice, snow-type stuff.”
Bair would like to remind drivers that it’s critical to pull over when emergency vehicle approach and that 60 km/h is the speed limit when driving by tow trucks, police, EMS, or fire vehicles stopped on the highway.
“That driving is putting our lives in danger too,” he said.
