Bad unprepared drivers and general unpreparedness is being blamed for the highway and byway gridlocks that forced drivers to reach home as late next morning last week after the first big snowfall this winter.  Mainroad Manager Darren Ell doesn’t think anything went wrong on their end on Tuesday but says too many drivers hit the road at the same time and that’s what caused issues.

Photos by Sukhwant Singh Dhillon/DESIBUZZCanada

VANCOUVER – Bad unprepared drivers and general unpreparedness is being blamed for the highway and byway gridlocks that forced drivers to reach home as late next morning last week after the first big snowfall this winter. 

Mainroad Manager Darren Ell doesn’t think anything went wrong on their end on Tuesday but says too many drivers hit the road at the same time and that’s what caused issues.

“A lot of people started going home at the same time [and] the rush hour began earlier than normal. There were a couple of incidents where a bus spun out or a truck spun out and it was a domino effect from that point on. More and more vehicles started spinning out and losing traction,” he told CityNews.

He also says too much snow fell in a short amount of time, which also complicated things.

“A lot of the vehicles we saw weren’t prepared to be out in that kind of weather, whether they were without snow tires or without proper fuel or emergency supplies, so it just exacerbated the whole event and just made it worse and worse,” he said.

He says there were abandoned vehicles because drivers weren’t prepared with things like sufficient fuel or emergency supplies, and it makes it hard for plows to get around them when left in the street.

Also pointing the blame at drivers for what happened on Tuesday, is the B.C. Trucking Association.

Association President Dave Earle says their biggest issue is drivers who get in the way of truckers.

“It’s a confounding, recurring, and continuing issue, is drivers getting cut off by other vehicles. When that driver is hanging back and leaving 20 or 30 metres of space between them and the next vehicle, that is not an invitation for somebody to deke into that and try and make space. What ends up happening then is the driver has to jam on their brakes and we end up in a jackknife situation,” he told CityNews.