Hunt Club and Riverside remains Ottawa's fender-bender central

The plastic front bodywork of a car lies propped up on a snowbank on the shoulder of the westbound lanes of West Hunt Club Road at Riverside Drive on Wednesday, another trophy claimed by the most destructive intersection in the city this year.

"The intersection fails to adequately move traffic through there, particularly in the afternoon rush hour," said city Coun. Riley Brockington, who represents the area.

This week the city released its annual road safety report, and for the fourth time in five years, Hunt Club and Riverside tops the list for the most collisions at a signalized intersection anywhere in Ottawa.

• View a Google Map of the intersections here.

Here is the list:

1. Hunt Club Road & Riverside Drive (60 collisions).
2. Innes Road & Tenth Line Road (49 collisions).
3. Industrial Avenue & Riverside Drive (39 collisions).
4. St. Laurent Boulevard & Coventry Road/Ogilvie Road (38 collisions).
5. Donald Street & St. Laurent Boulevard (36 collisions).
6. Prince Of Wales Drive & West Hunt Club Road (36 collisions).
7. Bank Street & Heron Road (35 collisions).
8. Industrial Avenue/Innes Road & St. Laurent Boulevard (33 collisions).
9. Blair Road & Innes Road (33 collisions).
10. Bank Street & Hunt Club Road (33 collisions).

​Intersections where drivers running red lights are the cause of collisions can be made safer with the addition of red-light cameras.

But 85 per cent of the Riverside and Hunt Club crashes are rear-end collisions, which typically occur at slow speeds.

Though there was slightly more than one collision there every week in 2015, no one was killed.

Plans afoot to reduce congestion

Brockington said his daily commute doesn't take him through the troubled cross roads, but he avoids West Hunt Club and its heavy traffic whenever possible.

City staff are reviewing the intersection.

Since most of the crashes happen during peak times when congestion is greatest, city traffic analysts hope adding a second lane to the westbound right-turn ramp onto West Hunt Club will improve overall flow.

Without building a road somewhere to alleviate congestion, the volume is not going to go somewhere else.- Krista Tanaka, program manager for road safety and traffic investigations

Krista Tanaka, the city's program manager for road safety and traffic investigations, said 79,000 vehicles pass through Riverside Drive and West Hunt Club Road every day.

"Without building a road somewhere to alleviate congestion, the volume is not going to go somewhere else," she said.

Traffic volume high at all 10 intersections

Typically, she said, intersections on the top 10 list for crashes are there simply because so many vehicles pass through them.

This year, the daily traffic count for each of the 10 intersections is more than 50,000 vehicles.

There are no quick fixes, said Tanaka, adding that the city will launch a campaign to raise awareness around the potential for collisions there and at other trouble spots around the city.

Other potentially useful information that might help to explain a preponderance of crashes — such as who is involved in the crash, or how close they were to home when it happened — aren't included in the data, Tanaka said.

"It's hard for us to get a handle on that. We don't know why they're at the intersection at the time," she said. 

Tanaka said having information about where drivers who were involved in crashes lived might lead to an information campaign directed at a specific geographic area.

"It would be helpful in some situations," she said.

Tanaka expressed doubt that a public information campaign would keep Hunt Club and Riverside off the collision top 10 list next year.

"Probably not," she said. "But it may bring the numbers down."