Calgary is generally a very safe city, and a great place to call home. When it comes to crime, Calgary and Alberta as a whole are models for the nation and for the world. There’s one area where Calgarians and Albertans face greater dangers than their counterparts in Canada at large, though: car accidents.

According to the latest statistics from Transport Canada, Alberta experienced slightly fewer injury-causing car accidents than the national average during 2013 (the last year for which reliable statistics have been made available), but saw significantly higher rates of traffic fatalities over the course of the same year. This report provides statistics based on a number of demographic criteria and other breakdowns, but of key interest are the province-to-province comparisons of casualty-causing accidents over that period.

Transport Canada considers any accident that causes a significant injury or a fatality to be a “casualty” car accident, and it measures the rate of these casualty accidents in three ways: by population, by the number of kilometres driven, and by the number of licensed drivers. In all three measures, Alberta ends up ahead of the national average.

In Canada as a whole, there were 470.2 injury-causing accidents for every 100,000 people living in Canada, and 5.5 accidents that resulted in fatalities. For every 100,000 people living in Alberta, there were 465.4 injury-causing accidents yet 8.9 accidents that resulted in fatalities. Shift from the general population to only those with driver’s licenses, and Alberta saw 12.1 fatal accidents per 100,000 drivers compared to 7.7 per 100,000 drivers in Canada as a whole—more than a 50% difference, and not in Alberta’s favor.

Looking at the number of vehicle-kilometres driven puts Alberta a bit closer to the national average; for every billion miles drivers throughout Canada put on their cars in 2013, there were 5.6 fatal accidents and another 481.9 that caused serious though non-fatal injuries; in Alberta, every billion miles driven led to 6.4 fatal accidents and 335.5 non-fatal casualty accidents. This suggests that Albertans are driving more than the average Canadian, which explains part of the higher fatal accident rates based on population, but even when controlling for the number of miles driven Albertans are more likely to be involved in a fatal car accident than the average Canadian.

Your Rights Following a Car Accident in Alberta

When you or a family member is injured in a car accident, or when a family member is killed in a fatal car accident, Alberta law gives you the right to seek compensation from the driver(s) at fault for the accident. If you have questions regarding an accident you or a family member was involved in, and would like to speak to a dedicated Calgary personal injury lawyer to discuss the specifics of your case, please contact the offices of Cuming & Gillespie LLP today to schedule a free initial consultation.