A North Shore traffic flagger is calling drivers to slow down on the Lions Gate Bridge after she was the victim of a hit-and-run by a driver trying to avoid nightly lane closures.
The incident happened just around 10:30 p.m. on Feb. 18 not long after Amanda McRobbie and her fellow flaggers reduced the Lions Gate to single-lane alternating traffic for ongoing bridge work.
As she was bringing southbound traffic to a stop to allow northbound vehicles across, one driver in a black BMW SUV tried to skip the six-minute wait by veering around the vehicle in front of him, McRobbie said.
She called out for the driver to stop and held out her stop sign, but the driver kept going until he struck her, pinning her between his hood and side view mirror. McRobbie said the man drove for about 10 feet before she freed herself and he sped off into Vancouver.
“My head was turned to the driver. (I) was screaming ‘Stop!’ and we looked each other in the eyes. No shock, no remorse. He was b-lining it past me and just wanted me off his vehicle. If anything, he accelerated,” she said.
McRobbie said she estimates the driver was moving between 10 and 25 kilometres per hour. She radioed her supervisor at the south end of the bridge, who was able to get photos of the vehicle and licence plate as he sped into Vancouver.
West Vancouver police offered to call her an ambulance but it wasn’t until much later that she started feeling pain from the collision.
“At that time, I was still all revved up on adrenaline and I didn’t feel anything. The next day, I went to my doctor and by 3:40 p.m., everything was all tightened and I’ve suffered from neck, shoulder, arm and back pain on my right side as well as constant headaches since,” she said.
McRobbie has opened files with ICBC and WorkSafeBC and she remains off work.
The incident has been just the latest in a series of conflicts and drivers frustrated with the bridge delays, McRobbie said, noting she already once had to jump out of the way of a speeding BMW.
“Sadly, we had to think it was only a matter of time. We knew somebody was going to get hit,” she said.
In her two years on the job, McRobbie said she has never seen flaggers have to deal with so much abuse from drivers.
“It’s just soul crushing. I’ve flagged from Langley to West Van to Richmond and I’ve never had anything quite like dealing with the Lions Gate Bridge,” she said.
Her nickname for the area has become “international waters” since police from the three jurisdictions surrounding the bridge never seem to patrol it.
Also frustrating has been the length of time it took West Vancouver police to ticket the driver, despite having his licence plate number.
The 25-year-old West Vancouver man has since been served three violation notices for disobeying a traffic person, unsafe passing and failing to remain at the scene of a collision, according to Const. Jeff Palmer, West Vancouver Police spokesman.
“The suspect driver, not surprisingly, has a different story. We’ll test the stories at traffic court,” Palmer said.
Ultimately, McRobbie said she hopes the driver doesn’t dispute the tickets and learns his lesson
“This is important. We have 50 people walking around in this work zone including the flaggers who are standing in the way of traffic. All we have is a plastic hat and a sign. We’re trying to keep everyone safe — drivers, workers, pedestrians, ourselves and we need everybody to work together,” she said.
Work to replace the joints of the bridge deck was originally scheduled to end in late February, however the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure now lists the project extending until mid-March.
