RCMP Cars 2

The Alberta RCMP have released the stats for motor vehicle collisions (MVC) over the long weekend across the province, from Fri. July 31 to Mon. Aug 3.

Cpl. Hal Turnbull with the RCMP "K" Division says overall, the numbers were down.

"This year saw fewer accidents than last year," he says. "There were 264 motor vehicle collisions, which is what we classify motor vehicle accidents as, and that was for this long holiday weekend, 304 occurred last year in 2014."

But, Turnbull says it's not all good news.

"The sad thing is, the more serious collisions didn't really drop overall," he says. "The MVCs involving one injury per collision saw a slight increase this past weekend to 45 collisions—now that's an increase of two over last year, which saw 43 such collisions."

Turnbull says the RCMP can't pinpoint exactly why collisions were down overall, but he'd like to think Albertans are putting in an effort to drive safer.

"I'm hoping that through educating the driving public, that people are driving more carefully and being able to avoid collisions," he says. "However, as we've seen with some of these figures, the severity of the collisions remains about the same, even though the total number has dropped."

Turnbull says it's important to note these numbers only represent the RCMP's jurisdiction throughout the province, and don't include cities like Calgary or Edmonton, who have their own police force.

The stats release by the RCMP are as follows:

·       A total of 264 MVCs were reported to the Alberta RCMP over this past long weekend, compared to 304 collisions in 2014.

·       Those MVCs involving at least one injury saw a slight increase this past weekend to 45 collisions;  an increase from 43 single injury collisions for the August Long Weekend in  2014.

·       The August Long Weekend in 2014 and in 2015 both saw three collisions which resulted in three fatalities.  

·       Two of this past weekend’s fatalities occurred in rural locations and one was on a highway.  Of this year’s three motor vehicle collision fatalities, one involved a motorcycle.

·       Motorcycle collisions which resulted in an injury or fatality were up this past weekend over the same holiday weekend last year:  12 motorcycles in 2015 compared to 7 in 2014.

·       So far, 5 people have been arrested and/or charged in relation to the 48 injury/fatal collisions

The August Long Weekend, for the purposes of collecting this information, was considered to be from Friday, July 31, 2015 to Monday, August 3, 2015.

At the time of writing, statistics pertaining to impaired driving offences for the 2015 August Long Weekend were not available as they were still being compiled.