Dangerous Highways

Interstate 405 runs 30 miles along the eastern shore of Lake Washington from Renton in the south through Bellevue, Kirkland, and Bothell to its junction with I-5 at Lynnwood in the north. It is the primary bypass route for commercial vehicles avoiding downtown Seattle on I-5, and it is widely regarded among truckers as one of the most difficult urban driving environments in the western US.

The combination of extremely high traffic volume, curves and hills that are unusual for an interstate, a chronically degraded road surface, and aggressive driving behavior from a tech-corridor commuter population creates conditions that demand constant attention from commercial drivers.

Northwestern Ontario is one of the most sparsely populated regions in Canada. The vast boreal forest between the Manitoba border and Thunder Bay is crossed by a thin ribbon of highway — Highway 17, the main surface route through the region and part of the Trans-Canada Highway system. The approximately 200-kilometre section between Kenora and Dryden distills everything that makes northern Ontario highway driving difficult: long distances, no services, dense wildlife, severe winters, and the particular hazard of fatigue that sets in when hours pass with no town, no fuel stop, and no change in scenery.

Highway 401 through southern Ontario is, by vehicle count, the busiest highway in North America — and arguably the world. At its widest point through Toronto, the 401 carries over 400,000 vehicles per day across up to 18 lanes of traffic. For commercial truck drivers, this corridor is the backbone of Canadian freight: virtually all goods moving between Windsor (and the US border at Detroit), Toronto, Montreal, and the Maritime provinces travel this route.

For commercial truck drivers passing through or around Atlanta, Georgia, Interstate 285 presents a category of hazard that is entirely different from the mountain passes and desert heat that dominate most dangerous highway discussions. I-285 is an urban loop — 63 miles of freeway encircling Atlanta — that carries nearly 2 million vehicles per day at some of its most congested points. The danger here is not weather, grades, or isolation. It is volume, speed, complexity, and the unforgiving consequences of getting a merge wrong at highway speed in heavy traffic.