Several authorities at the scene of a highway crash openly admired the driving skills of Lance Brownscombe.
He was behind the wheel of his B-2 Ranch tractor-trailer unit pulling a set of empty log trailers, heading north on Highway 97 towards Prince George. Approaching from the other direction was a pickup and an RCMP vehicle.
"This pickup truck was coming at me, and I can see it is out of control, fishtailing," said Brownscombe. "I could see him coming for quite a while. I kept saying 'take the ditch, don't try to correct yourself, just go for the ditch' but he didn't, he kept coming."
Brownscombe knew at the last second he would not be able to avoid a collision. He directed his rig off the road to the right, still striking the oncoming pickup while plunging off the snowy bank. Without losing control of the tractor-trailer, Brownscome kept the rig upright and pointed northward, coming to an orderly stop alongside the highway at the freshly plowed driveway of Wiebe's Farrier Service.
On the highway was carnage. The pickup truck exploded into countless pieces of metal, and the force of the impact shot it back up the road in the opposite direction. The following RCMP vehicle could not get clear of the sudden reversal and struck the pickup's debris.
"The impact to the police vehicle was not severe and did very little damage," said Prince George RCMP spokesman Cpl. Craig
Douglass at the scene.
Later he checked on the health condition of the crash victims and reported that the pickup's driver was expected to pull through his serious injuries while the police member was shaken up, as was Brownscombe, who had minimal physical injuries.
"He was en route, routine [no lights and siren], to a non-emergency call in Hixon," Douglass explained. "I talked to him, he is sore, and went home for the rest of the shift. He said it was quite an eye-opener, like the vehicle exploded in front of him."
There was no speculation from authorities at the scene as to what might have caused or even contributed to the crash. The provincial Ministry of Transportation and the Commercial Vehicle Safety and Enforcement unit sent representatives to the crash site, as did maintenance contractor Yellowhead Road and Bridge. It was noted that it was so slippery on the highway that it was sometimes hard for responders to walk without losing their footing.
Also at the scene were BC Ambulance Service paramedics, firefighters from the Buckhorn Volunteer Fire Department, and Area D Rescue Service (the auto extrication team from Pineview Volunteer Fire Department).
Since a police officer was on-scene as of the moment the crash happened, first response was assured.
"The officer, myself and one of the drivers who came along right after all worked together to get the guy out of the pickup," said Brownscombe. "He [the Mountie] was concerned about the leaking gas, so we had to get him out of there."
He was taken to hospital while forensic scientists from North District RCMP headquarters set to work analyzing the evidence at the scene to ensure a proper cause was determined.
The highway remained closed in both directions while this work went on.
Roadside Confrontation
That closure raised one driver's temper.
The crash happened on Highway 97 at about noon, in between White Road and Corval Road, at the top of the hill leading up from Cale Creek.
Traffic was backed up for more than a kilometre in either direction.
"How much longer will we be here," asked the driver of a U-Haul truck. She was clearly on her way to another destination with purpose.
"At least two more hours," responded Prince George RCMP member Cpl. Craig Douglass.
"From now?," she replied. It was already about 2 p.m. "Isn't that more excessive than usual?"
"Not at all. There's a lot of science and investigation that has to be done. It was a serious crash, it caused serious injuries, it was close to fatal, and those situations require a very detailed investigation," Douglass explained.
She did not like the answer, but she was content with its truth, even without seeing crash reconstrucionist Cpl. Harvey Nelson and his team of RCMP helpers measuring debris and dragging weighted blocks behind a scale to confirm friction coefficient rates, and so on, all inside the wreckage that nearly killed at least one man only two hours earlier.
No answer was satisfactory for another man who strode up the road from somewhere down the line of cars. Douglass, the nearest Mountie, became the target of a verbal attack full of expletives. He wanted the road opened and felt the longer it was closed, the more evidence that was that police didn't know how to do their jobs. He had a sick child in southern B.C. he was trying to get to.
Worse, the man added a physical element to his verbal assault. As he spoke his angry words he started advancing towards Douglass in an aggressive manner. A couple of civilians involved in the crash aftermath straightened up in preparation to intervene, while Douglass took a few steps backwards to give the man some distance. He stopped moving before the situation became violent, then he turned and headed back to his vehicle still swearing loudly.
"As much as his son is important to him, the guy in the pickup truck has a family too. If you were the one involved in the crash, you would want us to gather all that evidence and data for you," said Staff Sgt. Pat McTiernan, a commander with the region's traffic police and a crash reconstructionist himself.
So many questions emerge from a highway crash, said McTiernan, and although witnesses can provide helpful statements, it is the job of police to ensure the raw truth of what happened.
Did something go mechanically wrong to cause the crash? If so, vehicle manufacturers and insurance companies and drivers all over the world might potentially need that information.
Did something criminal play a role, like impaired driving? Was provincial legislation broken like driving without due care and attention?
Was the road properly sanded or cleared of snow?
Was anyone involved a commercial driver in contravention of professional driving or workplace safety laws? Do lawsuits hang in the balance that may stabilize or destroy someone's financial standing? There are too many major and unpredictable stakeholders in every vehicle collision to simply whisk through the clues at the scene. Common sense and best guesses don't often stand up in court.
"If we don't do it now, we can't do it later," said McTiernan. "We have to capture, interpret and document the scientific evidence at the scene and the only way to get it is in its undisturbed state. All evidence has to be at his [Nelson's] availability to make a true determination. And when it's a day like today, when the temperature is on the line of freezing, you have to be even more precise because the weather can change on you and affect the evidence."
As vehicles were lining up to wait for the police and other emergency responders to finish their work, one vehicle slid into the back end of another causing a second incident at basically the same spot.
Other crashes, most of them small, were going on all over the city as people failed to adhere to the slick conditions. This, said McTiernan, was exactly why their investigators had to do their job to the highest of standards, because driving is a dangerous privilege and its consequences sometimes devastating.
"When we hover around that 0, minus-1, minus-2 it can get really bad for us," he said.
"People don't slow down. They think the wet conditions mean they can drive like its summer but in the shaded areas or higher areas, the wet turns to ice and next thing you know the laws of physics supersede all the others and you're into problems."
One of the first vehicles in the line showed a different perspective on the long wait. The elderly man and woman sat patiently, chatting with Brownscombe about his fresh ordeal.
"Where are off to today," Brownscombe asked them.
"Oh, I have a cancer treatment," was the response, without complaint.
