Halifax concerned about quality of collision data from police

New data shows there were fewer deaths, but more injuries, on Halifax roads in 2023 compared with the previous year.

However, municipal staff said they couldn't break down the injuries by severity because police reports have not always been accurate.

City staff presented the annual road safety report to the transportation committee on Thursday. It showed there were six deaths and 785 injuries stemming from 5,527 collisions in 2023.

In 2022, there were 11 deaths and 776 injuries that resulted from 5,257 collisions.

The rate of fatal and injury collisions per 100,000 residents fell slightly to 160.7 in 2023 compared with 163.8 in 2022.

Police say human error to blame for data issues

Sam Trask, Halifax Regional Municipality's supervisor of road safety and transportation, said she realizes it's not ideal to have such a delay in releasing data publicly, with 2023 numbers only coming in 2025.

But she said it takes time for staff to manually check police reports and compare them with the overall numbers. It was through that process they realized there was conflicting information in reports from both Halifax Regional Police and Halifax RCMP "that wasn't lining up."

"[Police] believe right now it's simply due to human error in filling out those reports," Trask said.

She said police are looking into new quality control measures to ensure their reports are improved, and HRM staff hope to break down injury numbers by severity when 2025 collision data is eventually released.

Collisions in 2023 involving pedestrians (168) and micromobility users like cyclists or people on scooters (64) were slightly down from the year before, when there were 172 pedestrian collisions and 73 micromobility incidents.

It's unclear how many of the 11 fatalities in 2022 were people in cars, pedestrians or cyclists as staff said this breakdown was impacted by the police reporting issues.

The city relies on data to decide where it should make safety changes and what those should look like as part of its road safety plan, so Coun. Kathryn Morse asked whether this discovery cast doubt on past decisions or upcoming infrastructure plans.

Roddy MacIntyre, director of traffic and parking management, said while the data quality issues involving injury severity are "certainly a bit concerning, and threw us for a bit of a loop," the total number of collisions and where they happened is still accurate. 

He said they're confident information on pedestrian collisions is accurate, because there are fewer of them so it's easier to confirm details are correct.

Staff said they will complete designs soon for upgrades at four of the worst intersections for collisions, with construction starting in the 2025-26 fiscal year.

Trask also said they will ask for funding in the upcoming city budget to buy collision analysis software that would save staff time and enable them to better prioritize projects.

"It seems like a small investment for a really significant impact on our ability to plan," Morse said.

Councillors also raised concerns about a lack of police enforcement around speeding and distracted driving, given that only 5,879 summary offence tickets were issued by HRP and RCMP in 2023 compared with 13,748 in 2018.

No timeline for photo radar

Photo radar would improve the situation, MacIntyre said, but HRM must wait for the province to proclaim the long-awaited Traffic Safety Act to take that step. Halifax has also asked for the power to lower speed limits on its own, which is also connected to the act.

"Unfortunately I'm not sure what other mechanisms my department may have to tell them to hurry up … the mayor has written several letters to the province," MacIntyre said.

"I wish I had an answer to be able to say, 'Oh yeah I was told it's going to be ready to go next fall,' but I don't."

In 2021, Nova Scotia's then public works minister said it would take three or four years for the Traffic Safety Act to be proclaimed. Kim Masland said the delays were due to massive amounts of data related to more than 100 years of road safety records that had to be entered into the system.

CBC asked for an update on the timeline in October 2024, but a provincial spokesperson did not answer the question.

Halifax aims to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries to zero by the year 2038.