RECENT NEWS RELEASES
– BC Highway Patrol | Long Weekend
– ICBC | Statistics 2024
The Safest Long Weekend in Years: BC Highway Patrol Releases Stats for High Risk Driving and Motorcycle Awareness Month
BC Highway Patrol
2025-06-05 07:15 PDT
For the first time in at least six years, the Victoria Day long weekend did not have a single fatality on BC roads.*
Still, the high number of tickets shows that we all still have work to do to make BC highways safer as we look back on the High Risk Driving and Motorcycle Awareness Campaigns for May 2025.
We had a lot of positive public feedback about the impact of BC Highway Patrol’s high-visibility enforcement, and we’re very happy to do our part to reduce deaths on our roads,
says Superintendent Mike Coyle of BC Highway Patrol. We still find too many examples of irresponsible driving.
Over the Victoria Day long weekend, BC Highway Patrol officers did the following education through enforcement**:
- Wrote over 1,900 speeding tickets province-wide;
- Impounded 79 vehicles due to excessive speeding.
Over the course of the month-long High Risk Driving and Motorcycle Awareness Campaigns in May, BC Highway Patrol wrote over 9,600 speeding tickets province-wide including:
- Central/Okanagan Region: Over 2,200 tickets (94 excessive speed with a vehicle impound);
- Vancouver Island: Over 1,500 tickets (53 excessive speed with a vehicle impound);
- Kootenay Region: Over 1,200 tickets (66 excessive speed with a vehicle impound);
- Northern Region: Over 1,900 tickets (68 excessive speed with a vehicle impound);
- South Coast/Lower Mainland: Over 2,500 tickets (122 excessive speed with a vehicle impound).
Some BC Highway Patrol enforcement stories include:
- On May 17, a driver on Highway 3/95 in the East Kootenays was stopped doing 166 km/h in a 100 zone. The driver was also impaired, and received a 90-day Immediate Roadside Prohibition, an excessive speed ticket, and had their vehicle impounded for seven days;
- On May 18, a driver blew a
warn
on an Approved Screening Device (ASD) on Highway 21 near Creston and received a three-day driving suspension. Her husband came to pick her but he did not pass the ASD and received a 24-hour suspension. Both were picked up by their parents; - On the week of May 12, a Tesla Model S was stopped doing 191 km/h in a 100 zone on Highway #1 near Golden. This was the 24-year-old Alberta driver’s third excessive speed ticket in two years. He received a five-month driving prohibition, an excessive speeding ticket ($483), a 7-day minimum impound, and a notice to the Government of Alberta for a licence suspension there;
View a higher-resolution photo
- On May 19, a motorcycle was recorded doing 152 km/h in a 90 zone on Highway #1 in Burnaby. The Class 8 (Learner) was driving contrary to restrictions. He was ticketed for $673 in fines, billed for the tow, and paid the cost of the seven day impound.
View a higher-resolution photo
With the Summer Impaired Driving Campaign right around the corner, Superintendent Coyle has a message for everyone getting behind the wheel: Refocus and take safe driving more seriously. The heat of summer will bring a lot more traffic on BC Highways.
*There were three deaths over the May long weekend in 2024, and there were an average of four deaths between 2019 and 2023.
**Based on BC Highway Patrol statistics collected as of June 3, 2025.
Released by:
Cpl. Michael McLaughlin
Media Relations Officer
BC Highway Patrol
14200 Green Timbers Way, Surrey, BC V3T 6P3
Office: 778-290-5844
Email: bchp_media@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
Website: bc-cb.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/highway-patrol
ICBC: Data from 2024 on crashes, auto crime, violation tickets and more now available
Highlights on crash, vehicle population and auto crime trends
June 04, 2025
Data from 2024 on vehicle-related crashes and injuries, auto crime, vehicle population, driver licences, and violation tickets and contraventions is now available on icbc.com. This update is the first of two scheduled updates to ICBC’s online statistics for the year and includes data on injured pedestrians and cyclists, top crash locations by region, and crashes involving heavy vehicles, youth, motorcyclists, and hit-and-runs.
The next update is scheduled for this fall when 2024 data on fatalities and police-reported crashes will be published after a data reconciliation process between ICBC, BC Coroner’s Service, BC RCMP, and RoadSafetyBC. Contravention and violation ticket data will be updated again at that time.
We oversee extensive provincial data which helps inform road safety strategies and initiatives, research, engineering, and police enforcement. We also provide data to municipalities, the provincial government, and other partners to support research and initiatives, many of which focus on reducing crashes and vehicle emissions. We’re committed to sharing comprehensive data including self-serve open data tools on icbc.com to increase transparency and accessibility which benefits the public, media and our partners.
More information on sources and data availability is on icbc.com.
Crash and vehicle population trends
Crashes in B.C. have steadily increased over the last five years to 303,593 in 2024 since the significant reduction in crashes that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. We forecast the frequency of crashes in B.C., which is based on crash counts and the number of insured vehicles, to continue to increase in 2025 and then level off.
In terms of casualty crashes, where at least one person is injured or killed in a crash, the average annual rate of these casualty crashes when adjusted for the population in B.C. (per 1,000 people) decreased to 8.8 in 2024 from 8.9 in 2023 and is forecast to remain at that level. Note that the casualty crash rate decreased significantly in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic when there were fewer crashes including casualty crashes as people were driving less, and this figure rebounded in 2021 when people began driving more.
As our province continues to experience record population growth, this means there are more vehicles on our roads, which can lead to greater road congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, and ultimately, more crashes. The latest data on vehicle population in B.C. shows that the number of actively insured vehicles in B.C. has increased year-over-year for the last five years, and most recently, from 3.6 million in 2023 to 3.7 million vehicles in 2024. In addition, the number of actively licensed drivers in B.C. has followed a similar pattern with 3.89 million licensed drivers in 2023, which increased to 3.99 million drivers in 2024.
At the same time, the way people travel is also changing. People in urban areas are using more varieties and methods of transportation including ridesharing services and micromobility devices such as scooters, mopeds and e-bikes. These road users can be more vulnerable in a crash without road infrastructure and other safety mechanisms to help keep them safe.
We’re committed to making B.C.’s roads safer and more sustainable, and we’re both leading and supporting initiatives like the road improvement program that contribute to reducing the severity and frequency of crashes for all road users. We’re also working to encourage people to drive less by supporting alternative transportation options and expanding the products we offer like our usage-based insurance discounts.
Auto crime trends
The number of auto crime incidents in B.C. – vehicles stolen, thefts from vehicles and vandalism – decreased in 2024 compared to the previous year and compared to the increase that occurred in 2022.
Our commitment to improving road safety
We’re working to make our roads safer for all road users through investments and collaboration with communities, law enforcement, the provincial government and a wide variety of organizations who share our goal of reducing crashes.
We invested $51 million in road safety initiatives and loss management programs in 2023/24. We focus our investments on major crash risks, including distracted driving, high-risk driving, speeding, and impaired driving. We work with our partners to deliver programs that prevent crashes by influencing road user behaviour, improving road design, and encouraging drivers to travel at safe speeds.
We increased our annual investment in road improvement projects to $10 million in 2023 and share engineering and data expertise with municipalities and the provincial government to improve road design and reduce the risk of crashing throughout the province.
