August 18th was a day rarely, if ever, experienced by Olds Mounties.
During a time span of four hours, local RCMP detachment members responded to seven crashes on the QEII. And they couldn't blame it on road conditions of the weather.
“The road was in good condition and flat. It was sunny, a nice day,” said Olds RCMP Cpl. Troy Byrt.
The accidents occurred between 12:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. along the stretch of the freeway between Bowden and three km south of the Olds overpass.
“I've been here eight years and I have never been exposed to that many collisions in such a short window of time,” said Byrt. “We had a multiple number of collisions between Bowden to just south of Olds.”
The good news is that no people in the seven-recorded accidents suffered serious injuries.
However, there was property damage and significant delays with traffic as police investigated and emergency personnel responded, along with tow trucks to remove disabled vehicles.
In a crash at 1:30 p.m. near the Hwy. 2/27 over-pass a tractor-trailer semi struck a median. There were no injuries but it did block traffic for a significant period of time. The truck had to be removed by a tow truck, said Byrt. The driver of the truck escaped injury.
“There was a huge volume of traffic on the highway,” noted Byrt. “It has increased over the years but even still sometimes you have to question why this occurred.”
In the meantime, the Olds RCMP was left on its own to respond to the crashes as members of the Innisfail Traffic Services unit were not available, he said.
Byrt said the series of collisions was not a case of one significant accident immediately triggering a chain reaction of secondary collisions.
However, he suggested some motorists may have become distracted while passing an accident scene on the freeway, which could have led to another mishap minutes later.
“It just seems as people were driving by a semi major one, everybody gawks, checks it out and they are not paying attention to the highway,” said Byrt.
