A new municipal staff report says the rate of serious injuries and deaths from car crashes in Halifax are up for a third consecutive year.
The findings, which were presented to council on Thursday, also suggest the municipality is moving in the wrong direction when it comes to road safety.
“One of the biggest things is that we need to change our road safety culture here in Halifax as well,” said Sam Trask, supervisor of road safety and transportation with the municipality.
“So that’s not only with the engineering and infrastructure, that’s with our education as well and how people perceive road safety.”
Trask says as of August, more than 20 people have died from vehicle collisions in 2025 — the highest number of fatalities in years.
It’s nearly double the number of deaths recorded in all of 2024, a year that saw a jump in pedestrian and micromobility collisions.
“People still think it’s OK to speed on the highway, that they go 10 km/h over the speed limit. That is not OK. We need to shift that culture as well,” Trask said.
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Last year, Halifax adopted a Vision Zero strategy, aiming for zero fatalities or serious injuries for all road users by 2038.
Sam Austin, HRM councillor for district 5 and chair of the municipality’s transportation committee, says meeting that goal will come down to three things: education, enforcement and engineering.
“We need to be looking at how we’re enforcing traffic rules, how we’re educating the public about what they should be doing, what they shouldn’t be doing, and, you know, how are we designing our streets,” he said.
“Clearly we have work to do because our trend line is not going in the right direction.”
In a statement, Halifax Regional Police says that “the main causes of collisions in HRM are impaired driving, distracted driving, and aggressive driving.”
The police force says the number of tickets issued has decreased by nearly half in the last decade — attributing it to recruitment challenges. But Coun. Austin says electronic enforcement, such as installing traffic cameras, could be a solution for the future.
“Measures like that that are not necessarily popular in all quarters but are effective are things we are we’re gonna have to take a harder look at.”
—with a file from Rebecca Lau
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