Motor vehicle crashes with pedestrians and cyclists grew at an alarming rate for the year 2008, the City of Red Deer reports.
In the report released on Monday, city traffic engineer Rebecca Clark said pedestrians were involved in a 43 per cent more collisions than in 2007 while collisions with cyclists jumped more than 70 per cent.
There were 40 collisions involving pedestrians and 31 involving cyclists in 2008.
Clark says the actual number of crashes decreased 1.5 per cent in 2008 from the previous year.
In 2008, there were 4,161 crashes on public street and public parking lots.
The number of injuries fell 11.5 per cent but the number of deaths increased from three to five in 2008.
Clark said careless driving practices, more than anything else, create problems on city roads.
“When 24 per cent of all collision types are a result of one driver rear-ending another, we can see that drivers are following too closely and not paying attention to the driving task,” Clark said.
She noted that in 2008, two deaths resulted from impaired driving while two were because of speeding.