Stickers highlight some of Vancouver’s most dangerous intersections

An advocacy group in Vancouver is hoping to highlight how frequently traffic crashes happen in the city through the use of strategically placed stickers.

Stickers have begun popping up on street lamps and hydro polls at intersections throughout Vancouver. Those stickers include a handwritten number followed by printed text reading “crashes a year at this intersection.”

A sticker posted at the intersection of Main Street and Terminal Avenue in Vancouver. (Supplied)

The stickers are part of an awareness campaign by Vision Zero Vancouver — a group aimed at preventing serious vehicle crashes.

Mihai Cirstea, a volunteer with the organization, says the goal of the stickers is to illustrate how common vehicle crashes are.

“I think that’s something people don’t necessarily realize. They think that maybe they’ve been in a close call or two or maybe, heaven forbid, been in a crash themselves. But they think it’s kind of like a fluke, like this won’t happen again. We want to show that it’s far from that. It’s very common,” he told CityNews.

A sticker posted at the intersection of Oak Street and 70 Avenue in Vancouver. (Supplied)

The figures on the stickers come from data accumulated by ICBC. Cirstea says the stickers are targeting what could be considered the most dangerous intersections in the region.

“It’s not something that just happens once a year, once a month. This is something that is happening hundreds of times a day,” he said.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the intersections that are receiving the most guerilla messaging are the busiest ones in the region.

“Any time two big arterials combine, you usually have more than a crash a week,” Cirstea said.

“These are very common. More than any sort of crime or anything else. This is probably the most common incident that affects your safety and well-being in the city.”

A sticker posted at the intersection of Georgia Street and Burrard Street in Vancouver. (Supplied)

According to ICBC, there are 178,000 crashes reported in the Lower Mainland every year, resulting in 57,000 injuries and 90 deaths. Included in those figures are 1,800 collisions involving cyclists and 2,400 involving pedestrians.

The data shows in Vancouver, there are over 80 intersections where at least one collision per week on average (at least 52 per year) is recorded. A map shows most of these crashes happen around major arterial roads like Granville Street, Oak Street, Knight Street, Broadway, 41st Street, and Cambie Street.

The data shows the areas in Vancouver where most crashes were recorded in 2022 included the Knight Street Bridge with 266, Boundary Road and Grandview Highway with 190, and the intersection where Main Street, Kingsway, and E 7th Avenue merge, with 147 crashes reported.

A map showing the intersections in Vancouver that saw at least 52 collisions in 2022. (Screenshot / ICBC)

Recognizing that the sticker campaign won’t prevent car crashes altogether, Cirstea says he hopes it will get people thinking about ways traffic rules can change to make things safer.

“People tend to be a little bit complacent about it because they kind of think, ‘Oh, you know, these things happen, it’s inevitable, we need cars,’ which we do … But when they see how often it is, they might be a little more motivated to push for change,” he said.