The Malahat was closed for an hour Saturday afternoon, with traffic delays lasting for several hours longer, after a truck crossed the centre line and collided head-on with a car.
Witnesses tell C-FAX that a silver pick-up truck hit a maroon coloured Mercedes near the South Shawnigan Lake turnoff.
“When I arrived at the scene there was debris strewn everywhere, all over the highway and the damage was quite severe,” says Malahat Volunteer Fire Chief Rob Patterson. He said 3 or 4 injured people were taken to the hospital.
The section of the Malahat where this collision occurred is slated to get centre barriers as part of “phase 3” of the province’s Malahat upgrades. Chief Patterson thinks this Saturday’s crash would have been different had those barriers been in place. “If there had been a divided highway, the truck never would have been able to cross the centre line.”