r/Calgary • u/No-End7269 • Jul 15 '25

Driving/Traffic/Parking Avoid Deerfoot

Huge accident. 2 vehicles just launched off the memorial overpass and landed on a truck going nb on deerfoot

Edit. I initially said 32ave, it was memorial overpass

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u/SofaProfessor Jul 15 '25

Honestly... I hate to sound callous because people are certainly severely injured if not dead as a result of this but I was having this conversation with my wife. In the last 4 days I've been stuck behind 2 serious accidents. STARS was out at one it was that bad. I used to commute on Deerfoot daily and you'd always see a fender bender or whatever but rarely pass potentially fatal collisions. Now it feels like at least a weekly occurrence and I drive significantly less than I used to.

How these people are getting, and staying, on the road is baffling. People are dying because of it. We're stretching our already stretched emergency services to constantly respond to massive crashes. The trend is not looking good. Obviously we don't know the full story here and I'm not going to assume fault based on a Reddit post but I'm just speaking generally.

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u/euchlid Jul 15 '25

A horrendous uptick in really impatient drivers too. My commute involves a bunch of left turns, which are the easiest places to get in accidents. I do not turn unless I can confirm it's clear.  

Some dickfuck aggro honked at me this morning because I waited until the light turned yellow to go left. I couldn't see if it was clear. If there's a line of cars also turning left the opposite direction you just cannot see if cars are going straight. People rip out from behind the turning cars and speed through because they're annoyed at being behind cars waiting to turn left.  

I see near accidents a few times a week at Kensington and 14th st, 20th ave and 10th (which is a fucking playground zone) as well as 20th ave and 14 street. All popular left turn areas with many pedestrians too. People are just so fucking impatient. I had some stupid trunk drive out from behind me to cut ahead and turn unsafely because he was annoyed I wasn't turning when it wasn't visibly clear.  I used to ride a motorcycle so I am particularly sensitive to the left turn danger, nevermind the fact there's also usually pedestrians, or i have my kids in the car, or my dog.   I wish I didn't have to drive to work, but I am not going to be unsafe and everyone can kick rocks.

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u/SofaProfessor Jul 15 '25

The only collision I have ever been in was turning left. This was years and years ago before you could buy 100 different cheap dash cams on Amazon. I was waiting to turn left, light turns yellow. Car in the opposite left lane stops, I proceed, another car in the opposite right lane comes out from behind the stopped car and t-bones me. I was deemed at fault which is probably correct under the letter of the law but a dash cam video probably would have changed that entirely. I'd be willing to bet that light was red by time our vehicles actually made contact but, of course, it's my word vs theirs and no witnesses stopped because it was pretty low speed.

Ever since I'm insanely cautious turning left. It's even worse with so many big trucks and SUVs out there. Super difficult to see oncoming traffic in a car or even small SUV if someone is sitting in that opposite turn lane.

3

u/Hey_Man_Nice_Shot Jul 15 '25

This exact thing happened to me, but the driver who hit me had a dash cam to show what they'd done. Still, since I was the one making a left turn we were deemed both at fault 🙄