Being based in Squamish, Cpl. Cheryl Weeks, unit commander with 小蓝视频 Highway Patrol, knows more intimately than most that not everyone who drives the Sea to Sky Highway makes it home safe.
Her job means she has seen terrible crashes that people don't live through, never mind walk away from.
is an arm of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), with approximately 455 dedicated employees who conduct traffic law enforcement and public education, among other things.
The 小蓝视频 sat down with Weeks to learn more about her job and what she wishes all drivers knew.
What follows is a version of that conversation edited for length and clarity.
Q: Can you tell me what it means to be a unit commander, and how long have you been with 小蓝视频 Highway Patrol?
A: As a corporal unit commander, I run the Sea to Sky Highway Patrol. I answer to a chain of command out of Burnaby and Chilliwack. I have been with 小蓝视频 Highway Patrol for just coming up on two years now. I'm in my 19th year of policing.
小蓝视频 Highway Patrol is a provincial unit, and then we're broken down under different umbrellas by region. So, Squamish Highway Patrol falls under South Coast Highway Patrol, which includes Squamish, Burnaby and Chilliwack.
As of May 4, we will be a four-member unit in Squamish, and then myself as the corporal.
You will start to see motorcycle members up here, too, which is another tool that we're going to add to the Sea to Sky. We are growing, and have surge capacity. We quite often do joint-force operations with other units. Or we partner with some outside agencies to bring them up into the corridor. We really try and create a presence.
Q: What is your day-to-day like?
A: Our main responsibility is enforcement. We are an enforcement primary unit.
Our goal is to make the roads safer. That is our ultimate goal, and, unfortunately, it can come with a consequence of a ticket, but sometimes, that's what it takes to change people's behaviour or send a message or remind them that we're out there.
We also do safety campaigns. For example, there's motorcycle awareness month, distracted driving month, and slow down, move over education. You would be shocked at the number of people who still continue to drive by you at 95 kilometres an hour, driving by us an inch from their mirror. We do a lot of education. We've done community outreach and job fairs.
Q: What drew you from other types of policing to 小蓝视频 Highway Patrol?
A: With my municipal department, I was actually part of the Fraser Valley Integrated Road Safety Unit. That was my first exposure to a truly traffic-primary enforcement-only unit. And, to me, we have so many contacts with the public—you just don't get that anywhere else. The number of people we end up talking to, whether we've stopped them, or whether we're sitting roadside and somebody walks up to us—you just have an opportunity to make many positive contacts with the public and educate them. Especially on this highway, which is notorious for collisions that can change people's lives, we're out there trying to prevent those things from happening.
Q: The highway is definitely an artery through the Sea to Sky, and we all worry when our family is on it, right?
A: Our unit understands that when you're issuing someone a ticket that it can be a big deal for a member of the public who has never encountered the police before. It can be very stressful. It can be very traumatic, in a sense, for them. But we're preventing a bigger, traumatic experience. That's what we're doing. Speed is still the number one contributor to all the collisions. And the speeds that we're seeing aren't just 10-over. They're 50, 60, 70 kilometres over. There are people doing 200 km/h now on this highway. People say, 'Well, I'm an excellent driver.' We're not questioning your driving ability. We're questioning whether or not you have time to react to somebody else's driving ability, or whether you have time to react to a deer, a bear, caribou, rock slides, landslides, logs, or lost loads.
Q: What do you wish more of the driving public knew?
A: The top three things that we see are speed, distracted driving and impairment. And we're not out there enforcing distracted driving where you turn your radio on, it's not that kind of distracted driving. We see people with their heads buried in their cell phones while their car is mobile on the highway. So, if you're looking at your phone, you're not looking at the car in front of you, you're not looking at the child at the crosswalk, you're not looking at the broken down car or the tow truck driver, or any of that. And so those three things, I wish people understood that they are genuinely contributing factors to collisions on the roadway.
Q: You mentioned impairment. Are people still drinking and driving?
A: There's a lot of drinking and driving. And it would shock you that it's not always at 2 a.m. when the bar closes. It's at 10 a.m., it's at noon.
People wake up the next morning and say, “Well, I slept it off,” and they get behind the wheel. We'll stop them at 9 a.m., and they're still drunk from the night before.
Q: I am surprised it is still such a big problem given the campaigns for decades.
A: To put it in perspective, I just looked at the numbers from last year and this year. For March and April alone, last year, we had 16 impaired files. This year, in that two-month period, we've had 36. That is in this community.
There are more alternatives now, like cabs and Uber, for people to choose from. There are alternative ways to get around.
Q: What else do you wish people knew?
A: I wish people would look at their driving behaviour and put themselves in the shoes of some of the families who have suffered the consequences of poor driving behaviour—speed, distracted driving and impairment.
I wish people would drive down the road and think, if my son were on this roadway, or my daughter were on this roadway, or my mother was going to an appointment in the city, how would I want everyone to drive? I think you would find that most people would think they should drive properly and respectfully—safely. So, I wish people would not treat it like it's a distant problem.
Q: Can you speak to why the closures on the highway can be so long when the accident is serious, like when the Integrated Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Service (ICARS) is called?
A: It's a necessary requirement to investigate those incidents. The people involved in those incidents deserve that investigation. You're minding your own business, driving down the road, and something happens, and it alters your life forever. And the people involved deserve, for lack of a better term, the justice that comes with us investigating those. If there is criminality involved, then those people need to be held accountable, and the victims of that criminality deserve that. When people are insistent on the road opening, go back to what if it's your family member involved in that, and those 10 hours make all the difference to figure out what happened and why it happened, and if there is somebody responsible for that happening. You would want us to have the road closed for 10 hours to investigate.
These are very detailed and very complicated investigations, and you know, if you prematurely take down the scene, you can't set it back up.
Q: That's a good reminder to carry supplies in case of a closure, but when we write about that, I can feel readers’ eyes glazing over.
A: I think there is a disconnect with people not understanding that this Sea to Sky Highway is rated the same as the Coquihalla Highway. You check the weather when you take the Coquihalla, you should be doing the same thing with this highway, because in an instant, in Squamish, it can be beautiful and sunny in the winter, and then by the time you pass the Big Orange Bridge, it's snowing. And then the further north you go, it could be a whiteout, or the roads aren't plowed, or there's a massive snowstorm.
I think because we're so close to Vancouver, people treat it as just a regular roadway. This is a Mountain Highway.
Q: As a local, it can be confusing why some areas of the highway are prone to crashes, like at Brunswick Beach or the Big Orange Bridge.
A: 小蓝视频 Highway Patrol has what we call high accident zone locations. We refer to them as hazes. And part of our strategic application of enforcement is we look at the numbers and we look at where our high accident zone enforcement should be, because what brings down accidents is enforcement. What brings down bad driving behaviour is enforcement. And we try and centralize and focus on some of the high-risk areas. Intersections are one of our categories where we try and enforce, because there are a lot of collisions at intersections. People run reds or jump yellows.
At Brunswick Beach, it is a series of S curves. They're blind corners, and combined with people parking and crossing the highway to go hiking, there are on and off ramps for the exits that are very short. Drivers don't have a lot of time. There's even a new advisory sign there that says you're going too fast on the one curve, and that is one of our high accident zone locations where we do try and do enforcement. It's a 60-kilometre zone, and there's a reason for that, and it's not because we're questioning your ability to operate your car. It's because it needs to be that speed because there are so many other factors at play. It's just such a difficult area to navigate.
So we have our haze locations strategically. We look at statistics, and we base that on where we're seeing the collisions. Also, we have the capacity to focus on those if we need additional enforcement. You'll see the Fraser Valley Integrated Road Safety Unit up here. We have this surge capacity where if we know there's a big weekend, like May Long weekend coming up, we have enforcement operations, and you will see police on the roadway. We can call in that surge capacity in a phone call; it's an incredible ability, and we use it quite often. You saw it for the Invictus Games.
Q: Something I am sure you have heard and we hear is 'Why can't they just put police out there all the time, parked, ready to go all along the highway?’
A: We cover from Horseshoe Bay to halfway to Lillooet. It's a large region, and while we have our full-time staff here, we make use of this surge ability because this region is big. I wish we could be everywhere at once, absolutely. But we are always planning and conducting strategic enforcement. And sometimes, we are there, but people don't see us.
Q: With motorbike riders, are the contributing factors the same as other drivers?
A: I would say speed is the number one contributor, because this highway is tricky, and if you're on a motorbike, you're so vulnerable. You just don't know what you're going to run into. You don't know if you're going to hit a pebble on the roadway. You don't know if you're going to come around the corner to an animal. Speed is 100% one of the contributing factors
Q: You see some awful stuff in your job. And tough things happen, how do you deal with that personally? I imagine the RCMP has a good debrief program and resources?
A: I'm forever thankful for my chain of command, who are incredibly supportive. And I think that's what makes all the difference when you're involved in anything, the fact that you know your next level of bosses are, no matter what time it is, 3 a.m. the morning, on a weekend, a holiday, you always know that people are checking in on you, and there's lots of resources available as well. Also, we all have our coping skills. I have an incredible family. You just find ways to diffuse and take your mind off things.
Q: Is there anything else you want to get across to readers?
A: Our whole goal is to reduce serious injury and fatalities, because that changes lives so very much. That is what we're out here doing. And in Squamish, we're growing. Our unit is growing. We are bringing in different people, and you're going to see the officers on motorbikes. We're going to wave the flag, and I hope people adjust accordingly.
