REGINA -- Katie Boehm died in a crash on Ring Road four years ago.
The memory of that night is still fresh for her mother, Lisa.
“She’d been travelling southbound on the Ring Road, at the southeast corner where there are no lights and her car went off the road and she hit a semi,” Lisa Boehm said.
Boehm says the investigation into the collision didn’t provide much information about the cause — drugs and alcohol, as well as cell phone use, weren’t a factor — however she believes lights on the expressway could have made a difference.
“If one person can die on that spot — now we’ve got three in just a matter of just over four years that lost their lives at that spot — certainly the potential is there for anyone to be involved in an accident there, so let’s just try to make the road safer,” Boehm said.
A crash last week on the same stretch of road claimed the lives of two more people, with another person still in hospital with serious injuries.
Ring Road between Wascana Parkway and Albert Street South sees on average more than 40,000 vehicles travel through that area each day. However, it’s the last piece of Ring Road to receive lighting with a $1.1 million project to install lights getting underway this week.
“We want to ensure that on those very important roads, where speeds are increased over normal amounts that there’s adequate lighting on those expressways,” said Chris Warren, Director of Roadways and Transportation with the City of Regina.
Construction on underground wiring started this week and the lights are expected to be operational sometime in July.
This is the second phase of the project, which saw lights installed between Assiniboine Avenue and Wascana Parkway earlier this year.
Boehm hopes lights being added to that stretch of road will help save more lives.
“If anything good can come from this horrific accident, I would like to see that these lights become a legacy,” she said.
