A 24-year-old Burnaby man is in serious but stable condition after his car crashed on Highway 1 Sunday.
At around 2 p.m. Sunday, emergency crews were called to the crash in West Vancouver on Highway 1 heading westbound just between 21st Street and where the highway curves towards Cypress Bowl Road.
A heavily damaged 2003 Honda Civic was found at the scene and the driver was immediately treated for multiple injuries and rushed to hospital suffering several bone fractures, a serious head injury and internal bleeding.
He remains in serious condition, but is expected to pull through.
“At this stage in the investigation it appears the vehicle drifted off-road – unknown exact reason why at this point – collided with a lamp standard and rolled over before landing back on its wheels back on the highway,” said West Vancouver Police Department spokesman Const. Jeff Palmer.
“It just appears to have gone off-road. It doesn’t appear like there was any attempt to brake or anything.”
Traffic was grounded to a standstill for approximately three hours as West Vancouver police and the Integrated Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Service examined the remnants of the crash.
“When it’s a very serious accident like that, it required a pretty detailed analysis of the scene,” Palmer said.
The extensive traffic backup was eventually diverted north of the highway onto Chippendale Road so drivers could reconnect with Cypress Bowl Road and the highway.
Palmer noted that a detailed examination of the car is being undertaken to “determine if a mechanical cause had any connection,” but he added that “at this point there isn’t a conclusive explanation of how or why the vehicle drifted off road.”
In another instance of a vehicle going off-road in West Vancouver, local police responded to a report shortly after 8 a.m. last Friday of a vehicle in a ditch just off the westbound off-ramp from Highway 1 to Westmount Road.
According to Palmer, a 44-year-old North Vancouver man became distracted after spilling his morning cup of coffee and “while he was attempting to attend to that, went off-road.”
The driver’s grey 2007 Audi Q7 suffered an estimated $15,000 worth of damage. The driver was not injured.
